PROPERTY NEWS Zoe Dare Hall

SALES of the YEAR

From record breakers to rare gems, it’s been an extraordinary 12 months on the London property market, reports Zoe Dare Hall

Now we have political chaos to add to the roster of uncertainty that has rocked London’s property market for several years. But as this year’s best and biggest deals show, yo-yoing currencies caused by Westminster farce merely present opportunities to the super-rich – and especially those with dollars in their pockets, who are now seeing average discounts of 45 per cent, compared with 2014.

Savills adds that the first nine months of 2022 saw more £5m+ transactions than in any year since records began in 2006 – and more than the total number of sales in any entire year between 2015 and 2020. Those super-prime sales had a combined value of £4.8bn – which is 31 per cent higher than during the same period last year, thanks to some big ticket sales in the £15m-£20m bracket. And the “established prime hotspots” of Chelsea, Kensington and Knightsbridge have been the top performers, marking a shift away from pandemic demand for prime suburbs, comments Savills’ research analyst Frances McDonald.

Financial volatility, adds Jonathan Hewlett, Savills’ head of London residential, is simply galvanising buyers from America, the Middle East and Central Asia. Beauchamp Estates has seen £500m of deals this year, with early £10m+ sales to domestic buyers at the start of the year giving way to big deals by dollar-based buyers more recently. While Aston Chase – who entered the year after a rather prescient sale of a £12.75m house in Hanover Terrace that once belonged to H G Wells, author of War of the Worlds – had notched up £200m of sales by October.

Global turbulence, once again, has dominated 2022, and the highest echelons of the London market aren’t immune, comments Hewlett, “which may impact sales volumes and values in the final few months of this year”. But it won’t take the lustre of what has been a record year so far, and here are some of the sales, NDAs permitting, that have made it so…

THE BIG DEALS

Kensington Park Gardens £26.5m

“One of the finest locations in London,” says Caroline Foord, head of sales at Knight Frank in Notting Hill.This Grade II listed, seven-bed house, left, set over six storeys, attracted multiple offers. “It offered exceptional family living, wonderful natural light and magnificent views.”.

41-45 Cadogan Square £20.5m

Beauchamp Estates sealed the deal for this stand-out home on the prestigious Knightsbridge square. The three-bedroom triplex was geared for “fully-modernised, contemporary living”, says founder Gary Hersham, after an overhaul by Parisian architect Joseph Dirand and dressing by Dutch influencer Annmiek Kessels.

Chester Square £19.5m

This six-bed house has the prime spot – “the favoured south-east corner,” says Matthew Armstrong, head of sales for Knight Frank in Belgravia – on a prime square, and was in “immaculate condition”, with a mews house, parking and a lift.

THE NORTH (LONDON) STARS

28 Hampstead Lane £14.95m

Mark Pollack, founding director of Aston Chase, can’t talk about the two £25m+ deals he did in St John’s Wood and Primrose Hill this year, mired as they are in non-disclosure agreements. But he can mention this Highgate house, right, opposite Hampstead Heath that was originally developed by Regal London in conjunction with Kelly Hoppen and sold close to its asking price.

St John’s Wood £9m-£11.5m

Demand for St John’s Wood’s huge stucco mansions has rocketed among the super-rich since the pandemic. And as Aston Chase’s recent deals in NW8 show, its appeal is truly global, with sales including a £11.5m house in Hamilton Drive to Russian buyers (pre-Ukraine war), a £9m house in Langford Place to Swedes and a residence in Springfield Road to Indian investors. Add in Aston Chase’s £6m+ sales in neighbouring Hampstead and Regent’s Park this year, and the buyer pool includes Singaporeans, Yemenis and Turks.

RARITY VALUE

Carlyle Square £14m

Long live the iceberg house. Not only does this house, right, have access to the Chelsea square’s award-winning communal gardens, and its own beautifully landscaped garden set over three levels, it’s home to what’s thought to be the square’s only triple basement, adds Guy Bradshaw, managing director at UK Sotheby’s International Realty, who sealed its eight-figure sale.

Moreton Place, Pimlico £4.1m

Set within the “highly-desirable Moreton Triangle, in an extremely quiet part of the Pimlico Grid”, informs Harry Buchanan, JacksonStops' director of prime central London, this sale represented a rare deal, as it offered two houses in one. ”In 20 years of being an agent in Pimlico, I've never sold this combination of a five-storey home linked with a mews-style property next door,” Buchanan adds. “This possibly unique combination offered superb versatility, including seven bedrooms and six reception rooms.”

LIGHTNING LETTINGS

A newly-developed, three-bedroom townhouse in Mayfair’s New Burlington Place at the end of Savile Row recently let within a day of being listed for a total of £156,000 – £7,800 a month – for a 20-month rental. It’s the quickest house to rent in Mayfair this year, thinks Peter Wetherell of Wetherell estate agency, who adds that the tenant stumped up a £10,800 deposit. Wetherell is hopeful that this marks the return of super-prime overseas tenants to Mayfair post-pandemic.

HOUSES WITH HISTORY

70 Brook Street, Mayfair £18.5m.

Earls, barons and viscounts galore – including politician William Keppel Barrington – have lived in this 5,600 sq ft mid-terrace Mayfair house, left, built in the 1720s. And it has just been sold 300 years later by Carter Jonas. “With only minor alterations to the porch in the late 18th or early 19th century, it looks much the same as when it was first built,” says Tim Macpherson, who notes that the 85-feet garden is the longest he has ever seen in Mayfair.

28 Cadogan Gardens £17.35m

From one Lebanese billionaire to another, this Knightsbridge house was another of Beauchamp Estates’ deals of the year – and minimalist it is not. Architect George Levey’s design of this Grade II listed house in 1885 was inspired by Penshurst Place in Kent, complete with sweeping staircase, classical fireplaces and ceiling mouldings. Previous owners, the Hariri family commissioned the late Alberto Pinto to modernise it. And it clearly struck a chord with the UHNW businessman who bought it as a home for his children.

28 Old Queen Street £16.5m

This 1770s house – an eight-storey mansion, one of a pair of rare black-brick houses overlooking St James’s Park – was once the home of the Coutts banking dynasty and was sold this year by the Canadian billionaire Benisti family through Beauchamp Estates. The house underwent a total renovation with interior design by Nicola Fontanella. It includes a wine store, cinema room and a master suite with ensuite dressing rooms and bathrooms that take up the entire second and third floors.

LOCAL RECORD-BREAKERS

36 Warwick Avenue £13.95m

Moments from the canal, this address set a new price record for a Little Venice house when Beauchamp Estates achieved nearly £3,000 per sq ft this year.

1 Caroline Terrace £14m

With this turn-key house selling for £3,800 per sq ft, it represented one of the highest per-square-foot house sales in Belgravia in the last five years, according to Beauchamp Estates, the agents behind the deal.

Hat Factory, Soho guide price £6.5m

This cool, three-bed loft-style penthouse, right, crowns the redevelopment of two Victorian factory buildings in a quiet backstreet just off Wardour Street. Its sale by Savills marked both the high capital value, and highest price-per-square-foot achieved in Soho this year.

Holland Park, W8 £3.75m

The apartment set a new record for the road when it sold for £2,495 per sq ft. “First-floor lateral apartments are rare as they often get split up, so we were unsurprised that this home, which is also on one of the most desirable streets, attracted so much attention,” says James Deans, sales manager of Marsh & Parsons in Holland Park. Other highlights, he adds, were a lift, “which is always a big draw”.

INSTA SUCCESS

Park Crescent, Marylebone Guide Price £10.8m

The super-rich are as likely to spot opportunities on social media these days as they are by old-school marketing means – and this fourbedroom duplex apartment in CIT’s super-prime Park Crescent development was the perfect example. “It sold to a British buyer looking for a London base, and they had seen the flat on Savills’ Instagram page,” explains Alex Ross, co-head of sales in Savills’ Marylebone office. The property also represented the second highest-priced flat sale in Marylebone this year.

HOTLY FOUGHT OVER

34 Eaton Square, Belgravia Guide price £8.95m

It’s “the most coveted address in Belgravia”, says Savills, so little surprise a 2,200 sq ft duplex – which sits on the raised ground floor and garden level of a Grade II listed building on the southern side of the square – sparked a bidding war between two buyers and sold over asking price for a record £4,200 per sq ft.

Pembridge Villas, Notting Hill Guide Price £7.5m

There was no need, or time, to produce a brochure. A Notting Hill house sold off-market in September after three competing buyers pushed its final sale price to “well in excess” of its guide price, says Savills.

25 Queen’s Gate Place Mews £4.7m

This beautifully-modernised, three-bed house on a peaceful South Kensington mews, right, was on the market for five years – but its sale was a case of right time, right place. It went to competing bids and achieved a price that has made it one of Lurot Brand’s sales of the year. L