Every summer, as London heats up, the city sees an influx of new visitors. You won’t find them on Lime bikes, or in the queue for the Ladies’ Pond. God forbid.
These are London’s most exclusive breed of renters: the ultra-wealthy, ultra-luxurious super-prime summer renters, here for the restaurants, the shopping and a good time. For the perfect summer in the city, their budget is limitless.
“The summer is particularly busy, especially with super-prime enquiries,” says Alex Evagora at luxury estate agency DDRE Global.
He and founder Daniel Daggers have just let a five-bedroom penthouse in Mayfair for £45,000 per week, or £109,286 for the 17-day period. This is not unusual.
Most summer lets cost between £10,000 and £50,000 per week, but rents of £200,000 per week — a sum it would take an average worker seven-and-a-half years to earn — are not unprecedented. There is no real upper limit.
Renters are usually wealthy families — often from the Middle East, China or the US — who come to London for the summer, and use it as a base for other European travel. There are also A-listers, sports stars and film crews.
They’ll stay between three weeks and three months, which comes at a heavy premium: as much as double the cost of a long let.
“Recently, we had two American families who stayed together, one large Middle Eastern royal family member and a professional poker player who rented a beautiful apartment in Knightsbridge with his girlfriend and chef,” says Evagora. “In terms of price point, our top three short-term rentals have all been billionaires.”
The wish list
So what do prime summer renters want from a property? A central location, for one. Mayfair, Knightsbridge, Belgravia, Chelsea and Regent’s Park are all top of the list. Americans supposedly like Holland Park, Notting Hill and St John’s Wood, close to The American School. Film producers and families with larger staff are keen on north-west London, particularly Bishops Avenue and Hampstead. For Dairin Moukarzel, lettings negotiator at Aston Chase, the most common request is air conditioning.
“This is quite tricky — one or two properties have what is called ‘air comfort cooling’,” she says. “They do insist on that. It seems to be the main driver.”
Then there’s the question of security. Most tenants bring their own security teams, who arrive early to assess the property. Yasmin Ulhaq, director of Glenfield Property Management, had a recent client with a secure CCTV monitoring room, manned by four security guards in rotation. Francesca Fox, Beauchamp Estates’ lettings manager, had a tenant who covered their gates with black mesh and applied reflective covers to windows to avoid people looking in.
Inside, says Moukarzel, “there’s very little room for error… It has to be immaculate and ready to roll, like a hotel.” Why not stay in one, then? Tenants want privacy and space for all their staff, which allows them to be “cocooned within their own ecosystem”, says Daggers. Besides, there is no hotel suite big enough. Sometimes, Ulhaq is required to go further. Once, she helped a client find a salmon mousse for their party. “It had to be a certain colour to match with the decorations,” she says. “We pointed them in the right direction to get it from France. They had their private jet and organised their chef to go and collect it.”
Tenants may not stay at their summer rentals for long — especially if they use it as a base for travel — but, they are happy to pay for tweaks to the interiors. Redecorations are rare, but installing a larger TV, changing the mattress and pillows, adding douches to the bathrooms and replacing the hobs are all adjustments that Fox has negotiated. Moukarzel even had a client who flew in their own bed. Bills will always be included in the cost, while the “full turnkey experience”, as Ulhaq puts it, includes cleaning, staging and clients’ clothes to be unpacked and pre-styled in the wardrobes.
“These tenants, whether it’s short or long term, will come with a wish list. Nothing is ever perfect to their standards,” says Fox. Once, she sourced a particular set of gold-leaf china at the request of a Middle Eastern tenant. “The whole set was between £20,000 and £30,000 from Harrods — she wouldn’t have anything else. It was a big part of the deal.”
Making the impossible possible
Another client, a pop star, wanted their swimming pool to be at a fixed temperature — specific to the degree — for their children. “It was impossible to get it to a certain degree and to keep it there, but we managed to make it happen after three visits from the swimming pool engineer,” says Fox. “It got to the end of the tenancy and they’d never used the swimming pool. That happens a lot.”
She adds: “Sometimes they just make a request because they can ask for it and they know that we have to say yes…When you’re dealing with people at this level and these types of requests, you just have to make it happen. Especially when they can spend anything.” Occasionally, however, Fox does have to say no. A tenant wanted to rent Tony Stark’s fictional house from Iron Man — an ultra-modern, circular mansion set on a cliff above the Pacific — for two weeks. They had an unlimited budget. “I politely told him that the house was a CGI. You would never be able to find something on the hills of Malibu in prime central London. The property just does not exist.”
While tenants’ requests are often difficult to fulfil, it is harder still when they are made at extremely short notice. Sometimes, agents have just 24 to 48 hours to find and secure a property for clients that matches all their requirements. “They want to move in immediately, and for some reason they all end up leaving it to the absolute last minute,” says Fox. “You have to drop everything for the short-term deals.”
Fox once had an extra walk-in wardrobe built from scratch for a client who made the request from their private jet. By the time it had landed, the wardrobe was complete. More challenging, however, was sourcing a specific set of weights and a Technogym treadmill just after the pandemic. The client was a “well-known US rapper” performing in London who wanted a base for two-and-a-half weeks. The let was agreed on a Friday afternoon; they were moving in on Sunday.
“We called about 10 companies to buy these weights, but they were sold out everywhere. We were looking at renting the equipment, buying the equipment, trying to buy from people who had bought it and hadn’t used it,” says Fox. “We did find one supplier who could make it all happen. We got lucky.”
House of horrors
In the current market, it is hard enough to find a property for tenants. “The market is dry,” says Moukarzel. “We’re very, very short-stocked in all areas of prime central London.”
Few homeowners are keen to commit to short-term lets, despite the premium that tenants will pay. They don’t need the money. As Daggers puts it: “It’s a want as opposed to a need.”
Often, landlords are looking to sell their properties and are concerned about the possibility of damage. Tenants, meanwhile, will pay hundreds of thousands of pounds of rent in advance, make offers immediately and put down huge security deposits — sometimes as much as £200,000 — to get ahead.
Landlords’ choices often come down to the tenants’ profiles. Pets are a common request — and a big deterrent. “Even with the biggest deposit in the world, people can’t re-buy the materials, the marble, the furniture that’s been made and designed specifically for the house. Sometimes, pets are just complete non-starters,” says Fox. She once had a client who was travelling with eight dogs (a no), while one of Ulhaq’s clients, to her alarm, wanted to accommodate their six-foot-long snake (she “pointed them in the right direction”).
Since most tenants have large teams of staff, horror stories are rare. But they do happen. Fox has had clients up and leave suddenly in the middle of the night, leaving all their possessions behind. Once, fire engines were called to a property at 3am after the tenant had a party with guests smoking inside. “We had to replace every single rug in the house; all the Minotti furniture. My client’s words were: ‘never again’.”
Landlords, therefore, are understandably cautious about parties — no matter how much tenants are willing to pay. Last year, Moukarzel dealt with a “huge American rock star” who was prepared to pay £250,000 for a weekend party pad after giving a concert in London. “We nearly pulled it off, but the ramifications were too big,” she says. “It sounds glamorous, but if somebody’s going to use your house, worth £50 million, can you imagine what collateral damage you might be facing on Monday morning?”
For agents, clearly, there is a thrill to operating in this high-stress market; a satisfaction in giving clients exactly what they want. Plus, Ulhaq has accumulated a good supply of Harrods loyalty points in her many trips for clients. “Sometimes it’s exciting to have a challenge — to be able to complete it and show what we’re good at: making unusual requests happen,” says Fox. “I think we all enjoy the stress a little bit.”
Often, tenants are appreciative: they will refer friends or come back to buy a property. Evagora has received gifts from clients in the past. But sometimes, huge efforts will go unnoticed. On a couple of occasions, Fox has “moved heaven and earth” for a royal family. Their staff have stocked the fridge; made the beds; got everything just right for their arrival — only for them never to come. The pristine properties, with their brand new treadmills or their £30,000 sets of china, are left completely untouched.
