More than 160 properties worth £10m or more were sold in London in the financial year just finished – the most since 2016 when Brexit spooked the global super-rich from investing in the UK’s “super-prime” market.
A total of 161 such sales – or three a week – were made in the capital in the year to March, according to analysis of Land Registry data by the estate agent Knight Frank and the data provider LonRes.
The combined sum spent on the £10m-plus properties came in at £3.1bn, which works out to an average of just more than £19m a sale, and was up from the £2.5bn total spent on 144 properties in the previous year.
Paddy Dring, the global head of prime sales at Knight Frank, said: “After everything that has happened in recent years, London is still highly regarded by global buyers.”
However, he added that he expected super-prime sales to drop by at least 10% over the next 12 months as the global super-rich and their advisers worried about the prospects of Labour winning the next general election – expected to be held next year – and fulfilling the party’s pledge to scrap a tax loophole for non-doms.
Super-rich people resident in the UK and registered as having non-domicile status with a permanent home outside the country are legally allowed to avoid paying in total more than £3.2bn of tax on at least £10.9bn of offshore income a year, according to a report released last year.
An analysis of data by academics at the University of Warwick and the London School of Economics found that 26,000 people granted non-dom tax status by HM Revenue and Customs collected an average of £420,000 a year in unreported overseas income and capital gains.
The prime minister’s wife, Akshata Murty, avoided up to £20m in tax on dividends from Infosys, an IT business co-founded by her father, thanks to her non-dom status. Last year, Murty agreed to pay tax on all future worldwide income, though not on past earnings.
“Discussions around the general election have started to creep into conversations,” said Christian Lock-Necrews, the head of Knight Frank’s office in Knightsbridge, central London, where many of the most expensive properties are located.
The estate agency added: “Issues such as the taxation of wealth and property and the status of non-doms are likely to come under growing scrutiny.”
Among the buyers splashing out last year was the Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli, who spent £92m on an 80-room mansion in Belgravia complete with a 20-metre swimming pool, luxury gym and cinema.
Hanzade Doğan Boyner, the founder and chair of the Turkish e-commerce platform Hepsiburada.com, which is often referred to as “the Amazon of the east”, bought a six-bedroom mansion in Knightsbridge for £27m.
The highest number of £10m-plus sales were in Kensington (26), followed by Belgravia (25) and Mayfair (22).
Several even more expensive London houses have recently come on to the market, including 2-8a Rutland Gate, a 45-room “private palace” overlooking Hyde Park with an asking price of £200m. Agents selling The Holme, a 40-bedroom villa within Regent’s Park, are also seeking offers in excess of £200m.
Sources suggest some prospective overseas buyers have visited 2-8a Rutland Gate and The Holme on the same day.
