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PCL buying agency closes £100m of deals in ‘vintage year’

‘2021 was a year when more and more people realised they needed some professional help to secure the house of their dreams’, says Black Brick.

PCL agency Black Brick has reported a “vintage year” as more buyers sought out professional help to navigate the market.

The Mayfair-based firm bought 25 properties on behalf of clients over the last 12 months, with a combined value of nearly £100m and an average saving of 3.6% off the asking price.

That compares to 2020’s tally of 13 deals for a total of just under £60m, with an average discount of 7.1%. Prices ranged from £700k – spent by a young musician in Hackney – up to £30m, which was offered for a “full-scale” country estate.

“In recent history it is certainly one of the best years we have ever had,” said Caspar Harvard-Walls (below), a partner in the firm.

Over four in ten of the deals were done off-market, compared to just under one in five during 2020.

“The majority of people have been buying houses, and the availability – in areas like St John’s Wood, Barnes, and Dulwich – has not been great,” said managing partner Camilla Dell: “We are making discreet approaches, because there is so little stock actually on sale.”

A third of this year’s clients were British, while the rest hailed from the USA, Europe, and as far afield as Hong Kong, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Maldives.

The overwhelming majority were owner-occupiers, but that could all change in 2022, added Dell: “We are just starting to see investment interest coming through, from people who think that the prices are right and interest rates are very low. I suspect that this time next year the split between owner occupiers and investors will look very different.”

The super-prime rent race in London

Renting a high-end property in central London has always required potential tenants to present the best possible credentials to exacting landlords. But, as the UK capital has reawakened to commerce and travel, this ultra-exclusive beauty contest has become even more intense. Richard Davies, head of lettings at estate agent Chestertons, gives the example of wealthy tenants who want to bring their pets into a pristine luxury property — often a tricky sell to landlords. “Pet owners have had to up their game in an already tight market,” he says, “by supplying very detailed information about their pets, usually in a pet résumé that includes information about their grooming regime, behavioural analysis and even details of the pet’s therapists.”

Tenants eyeing super-prime homes in London — defined as those costing £5,000 or more a week to rent — face a combination of ferocious demand and dwindling supply. After a year in which international travel virtually ground to a halt and tenants with deep pockets shunned the apartments that predominate in the “golden postcodes” of prime central London, a rapid recovery in this niche of the market is under way.

Expatriates have begun returning for corporate stints in the city, along with the wealthy families that divide their time between London and other favoured destinations. The resumption of office life is picking up pace, while theatres, galleries and restaurants have reopened their doors. The UK capital is once again asserting its gravitational pull. That means prospective tenants can no longer take their time if they wish to secure a place they want.


A four-bedroom flat in Holland Park available to rent for £10,000 a week

Davies says tenants last year had the luxury of being able to choose from around half a dozen properties. “Now they’re lucky if there’s one or two,” he says. “They need to make a decision if they want to get it. The situation has reversed very quickly — I’d say over the last four months.” According to Chestertons’ data, the stock of prime rental homes available in mid-October was 73 per cent down on the first month of lockdown in 2020.

Popular areas for super-prime rental properties are similar to those in the sales market: Belgravia, Kensington, Chelsea and Mayfair are high on the list for most tenants, though leafier St John’s Wood and Hampstead have risen in popularity over the pandemic.

One recently marketed by Chestertons was a five-bedroom terraced house in the Outer Circle of Regent’s Park in central London, with views over the park, a cocktail bar, gym, sauna and a separate mews house for staff or guests. The rent was £25,000 a week. Another, a four-bedroom property in Westminster at £14,000 a week, overlooks St James’s Park and has a private garden — an extra attraction in the wake of pandemic lockdowns.

Rents in this sector of the market, already high, are climbing even higher. According to estate agent Savills, rents for prime property rose 6.4 per cent in Westminster over the third quarter of 2021, 6.2 per cent in Belgravia and 5.7 per cent in Chelsea. That compares with annual declines in 2020 of 7.9 per cent in Belgravia, 6.5 per cent in Chelsea and 7.5 per cent in Knightsbridge, and smaller pre-pandemic declines of between 0.2 and 2.9 per cent in 2019.

If demand is soaring, what is preventing supply from responding to meet it? Estate agents point to a confluence of factors. Some owner-landlords were tempted by a surge in buying and selling activity over the past 18 months and decided to sell up, taking their stock out of the rental market. As London has opened up to travellers, the market for holiday rentals on platforms such as Airbnb is recovering, further reducing the supply of property for traditional short lets. And a seasonal spike has just passed, when wealthy overseas students snap up rental properties in London ahead of the start of term.

Tenants also won significant concessions from landlords last year as the market for short lets froze up in the pandemic. Some secured exceptionally good deals at relatively low rents and made the most of it by signing tenancies of three or four years — homes that will not return to the market for some time to come.

Estate agents cite another less obvious factor: flooding in London over the summer had little long-lasting impact on the mainstream market but fuelled demand for top-notch properties by displacing some owner-occupier families from their homes for months, as they called in builders to reinstate inundated basements.


Space to entertain: a Mayfair flat, to rent at £13,000 a week, with three bedrooms and two reception rooms © Savills

Those in the mainstream market might legitimately ask why super-prime renters would not use their ample resources to purchase a home in London, securing a valuable asset and benefiting from any capital appreciation. Tom Smith, head of super-prime lettings at estate agent Knight Frank, says renting has become a much more popular lifestyle choice for wealthy clients who seek flexibility and freedom from red tape. The muted or even declining performance of London house prices in this segment in recent years has not persuaded them otherwise.

Stamp duty, too, is now a significant factor for the well-heeled when weighing renting against buying, with steady increases in the purchase charge for high-value properties. On a £10m property intended as an additional home, the £1.4m stamp duty bill alone could fund four years of super-prime renting in central London.

Those wrestling with these issues today are less likely to be corporate tenants, a market that agents say has lost share over the past decade or so to private wealth. “Eighty per cent of the time, it’s a contract with an individual, not a company,” says Smith.

Until the summer, agents say the main interest in rentals had come from the domestic market, though that does not imply UK citizens alone. Non-domiciled people, often with family members in the capital or existing ties to London, have been active in the super-prime market. But, from August, says Smith, discretionary international tenants returned as travel rules eased. “That’s happened quite quickly. Supply is really strained,” he adds.

The influx of wealthy renters varies by region. Europeans are returning to London faster than those from other regions, while Chinese tenants at the super-prime level are thinner on the ground. Turkish and Indian renters have also reappeared, often ahead of the start of the autumn term at British private schools.

One knock-on effect of this, says Smith, is a rejuvenated market for luxury apartments of a type that went rapidly out of fashion in the pandemic. Then, people sought outside space even in the densely developed areas of central London. “In the first half, rental demand was very house-heavy — 85 per cent at one point,” says Smith. “But now, between July and September, that’s swung back and it’s 45 per cent apartments.”

Landlords range from families who have left the UK for a spell overseas and want to draw an income from their property, to developers and investors who have failed to sell and prefer to let while waiting for an upturn in the market. “At that end of the market, it will often be a developer who hasn’t managed to get a price that’s acceptable to them or their investors,” says Camilla Dell, founder of buying agent Black Brick, who also acts for prospective tenants.

By contrast, many private owners are reluctant to let their properties because of the hassle, estate agents say. But securing mortgage financing for a super-prime rental property is seldom part of the problem for well-resourced owners. And, given that mortgage interest rates are at or near record lows, owners have an incentive to overcome the problems involved in becoming a landlord.

Nigel Bedford, associate director at mortgage broker largemortgageloans.com, says he recently set up a remortgage on a central London property worth about £20m for a Middle Eastern owner who had failed to sell at a price they wanted. Instead, they decided to let it. As is typical with ultra-wealthy owners, the mortgage came from a private bank, which charged 1.75 per cent above base rate for five years on the interest-only loan of £12m. “They can get money at sub 2 per cent, so it is not going to cost them to keep the property. The rental income will easily cover Ated [an annual tax charge] and running costs,” he says.

In a red-hot market, how does a prospective tenant improve their chances of securing the home they want at a price they like? Speed is key, says Izzy Birch Reynardson, head of super-prime lettings at Savills. “We’re seeing a lot of people who are not quick enough. I have two tenants seeking homes to rent who have lost three properties each.”

She describes a market in which, given the sums involved, the pool of landlords and potential tenants is small. This means a prospective tenant’s “profile” is a big factor in securing a deal. Wealthy families or those who work at the top echelons of financial services move in similar circles. “They all know each other,” says Birch Reynardson. “And if they don’t, they can always pick up the phone and very quickly find out what they need to know.”

That includes not only whether tenants are reliable payers but, for example, how they treat a property and how they interact with neighbours. Tenants with a record of bad behaviour will struggle. “It’s all very well if I get a massive price for my client but, if we get someone who’s throwing late-night parties, they’re known in the network,” says Birch Reynardson. “We know how people run their households.”

A poorly supplied market leaves much less room for negotiation. Many prospective tenants are finding themselves asked to submit sealed bids, fuelling price rises. But Dell of Black Brick suggests one eye-opening tactic that worked for two people she dealt with recently: “You can offer to pay the rent for a year up front. That makes you attractive as a tenant.” Such an approach is not so unusual at super-prime level, particularly for newly arrived expats without 12 months of payslips to show landlords, or young adults who could never afford the rent on their own but can rely on wealthy parents to write the cheque.

The imbalance of supply and demand has also given a big boost to off-market lettings, where agents do not advertise a property for rent but offer it to prospective tenants who have committed to a budget and are keen to move, says Smith of Knight Frank. “There are some very focused people out there and you can take it directly to them.”

In a sign of the times, he says he has even had tenant-clients recently who have signed pre-letting agreements on development properties where building work was not yet complete. “I had one client with a very healthy budget who had been looking for nine months. It was apparent that you could chuck a lot of money at the problem and it still wasn’t going to fix it. So, when he saw something that wasn’t finished, he was ready to commit.”

‘Try before you buy’: homebuyers remain reticent in Marylebone Rental apartments, however, are being snapped up and prices are rising fast in this fashionable London enclave

By Liz Rowlinson

Kristin Young has just moved from Seattle to London for her job in tech. The 26-year-old American and her partner, Will, will be renting a one-bedroom apartment at The Marlo, a new purpose-built rentals scheme in Marylebone, a wealthy part of central London to the south of Regent’s Park and north of Mayfair.

“Not knowing London, we looked into places popular with other expats such as Chelsea and South Kensington, but Marylebone was the right fit for us,” she says. “With its great restaurants and cute, independent shops, it feels more like a neighbourhood.”

Marylebone may be highly prized for its high-end “village” feel, but the lockdowns of the pandemic have been extremely tough for the businesses along Marylebone Lane and Marylebone High Street that have become the area’s “shopfront”, says Julian Best, executive property director of the Howard de Walden Estate, the landowner: “We reduced retail and residential rents to support tenants.”

Private landlords were forced to slash asking prices: last autumn, some flats and houses in the area were being advertised with 25 per cent discounts in a bid to appeal to tenants.

A year on, an increasing number of people are returning to the office, along with wealthy international students and renters such as Young. Rental prices are being pushed up again.

From January to September this year, the number of new lets in Marylebone was up 11 per cent on the same period of 2019, with the number of properties on the market to let down by 36 per cent — slightly more than the 31 per cent across prime London, according to LonRes, which tracks the sector.

Rates are not yet at the level that they were pre-pandemic. The average price per sq ft per year being paid on a flat (flats currently account for 94 per cent of the market in Marylebone) is £46, still 10 per cent below the £51 recorded in the third quarter of 2019.

Almost anything between £700 and £1,000 a week — the average rental price of a two-bedroom flat in Marylebone — is getting snapped up, says David Ornsby, head of lettings at Carter Jonas. “One in a period building off Marylebone High Street went on the market at 11am on a Friday this month at £775 per week and by 3pm we had 11 offers. It went for £950 a week to two Kuwaiti students at UCL who paid 12 months’ [rent] upfront,” he says. At The Marlo, one-bedroom flats with a shared garden start at £785 a week.

At the end of August, the lowest two floors of a six-storey Georgian terraced townhouse — a 3,570 sq ft four-bedroom duplex — received six offers. The luxury property, which had an initial asking price of £5,000 a week, eventually went to Mark Shipman, who beat American and French bidders after selling his five-storey family home in St John’s Wood.

“I’ve always liked the idea of having everything on my doorstep,” he says. “We’ve been to the theatre half a dozen times, I hop on the Brompton bike to work — the car hasn’t been used for a month.” His three daughters attend the local independent day school Queen’s College. The family are now looking to buy a property nearby.

Francesca Fox, lettings manager at agent Beauchamp Estates, says the Shipmans are not the only ones “trying before they buy”. But there has been less activity in the sales market this year than the rentals market. The average price of flats sold in Marylebone this year has been £1.45m, down from £1.5m in 2019; the average price of a house has been £3.6m, down from £3.84m in 2019. While they make up only a small proportion of properties in the area, houses are taking an average of 237 days to sell, if they sell.

“You’ve got to really love Marylebone to buy a house there,” says Camilla Dell of Black Brick, a buying agency. “If you want a garden and off-street parking, Holland Park, Notting Hill and St John’s Wood are better bets.” Houses can take years to sell; five sold in the past 18 months through agent Knight Frank. “It’s been a largely domestic market but the area’s new-build schemes are selling, albeit slower than before [the pandemic],” says Christian Lock-Necrews of the agency. These schemes include Harcourt House in Cavendish Square, Regent’s Crescent and The Park Crescent. Opening its show apartment last week was The Bryanston, on the north-east corner of Hyde Park — its 54 apartments are priced from £2.4m.

While prices in Marylebone are high, they are still typically 20 per cent less than next-door Mayfair, says Dell, although the gap is narrowing for the area’s super-prime, new-build apartments. “New-build in Marylebone now trades at well over £3,000 a square foot,” she says. This includes Marylebone Square, with its 54 apartments on Marylebone Lane due to complete in 2023, from £2.55m. So far, 22 of them are sold, the developer says.

The price of flats has been falling recently, however. Per square foot, the average price of a flat sold this year has fallen 15 per cent year-on-year, to £1,380, according to LonRes — good news for tenants testing the water with a view to buying in Marylebone.

Buying guide

  • Marylebone is between Baker Street (Jubilee/Bakerloo line) and Bond Street (Jubilee and Elizabeth Line) Underground stations, with its mainline station the southern terminus of the Chiltern line towards Oxfordshire. By May 2023 (the full opening of Crossrail), Bond Street to Heathrow airport will take 34 minutes.
  • The average discount off initial asking price on rentals was 4.1 per cent in Q3 2021, down from 14 per cent in Q3 2020, according to LonRes.
  • New businesses in Marylebone include an Ottolenghi deli and space for fashion brands RIXO, Fursac, Wyse and Mejuri; Australian eatery Granger & Co and Italian deli Lina Stores are on their way.

Unrepresented buyers don’t stand a chance in London’s hottest markets, says buying agent

Even those with healthy budgets of between £4m and £10m are coming unstuck in hotspots like St John’s Wood & Putney, according to Black Brick

A buying agency has claimed that finding a decent house in one of the capital’s hottest markets is now “impossible” without professional help.

A number of firms have flagged up how stiff the competition has become for properties (specifically houses, rather than flats) in areas like St John’s Wood lately. Competitive bidding and record prices continue to be fuelled by a shortage of stock and strong demand for large family homes in the leafiest enclaves.

Camilla Dell, managing partner of Mayfair-based Black Brick has gone further, declaring: “I would go as far as to say that it is impossible to buy in one of these very busy markets without a buying agent.”

House prices in NW8 have risen by over 10% in the past 12 months alone, according to Dell, who notes that even unmod examples on good streets have breached the £3,000 per sq ft mark – and are currently changing hands for £3,200 to £3,300 per sq ft.

“A lot of the clients we are taking on at the moment are people looking in the £4m to £10m bracket and they just can’t find anything to buy or they find something and then get gazumped,” she added.

SW15 is another hotspot, said partner Caspar Harvard-Walls: “We showed a house in Putney to a client on a Friday, the day it went onto the market…They didn’t want it, but within two days the vendor had an asking price offer and one of over asking price. It was gone in two days.”

The firm doesn’t see the imbalance between supply and demand resolving any time soon and advises those looking in one of these sought-after areas to “prepare themselves for a real bun fight”.

This super-prime family house in St John’s Wood was acquired for a Black Brick client recently, following six months of ‘persistence and patience’.

Other buying agencies have reported a “wave of demand” for their services over the last two years, with many unable to meet the level of enquiries coming in. Jonathan Hopper of Garringtons, one of the largest operators, said the pandemic had “transformed the way buying agents are seen” while Jonathan Harington of long-established firm Haringtons said representation had “become the norm for savvy buyers”.

No capital decline: Why London property is regaining its lustre

Is a dose of reality returning to the UK property market, with London once again the traditional driving force of national house price growth?

“It’s clear demand for London property is back to pre-pandemic levels; however, the underlying story isn’t quite that simple,” says Stephen Moroukian, Product and Proposition Director at Barclays Private Bank.

Rewind to the start of the pandemic and months of cooped-up indoor living and the great work-from-home experiment initially drove an urban exodus, as the idea of leaving London and other cities for a new life in the country appealed to many. Buyers became engaged in a race for space – with a desire for bigger homes to live and work in, as well as gardens and easy access to the coast and countryside.

Yet today, things feel different. Commuters are pouring back into London, and the UK finally seems open for business once more.

“While there’s been talk of a London exodus, people now need to spend more time in the office again – and the commute is a greater factor within their property thinking,” says Lucian Cook, Head of Residential Research at Savills.

A shortage of available UK housing stock has also made buyers refocus on the London market.

Areas with bigger houses and gardens close to central London have recently done particularly well, according to Cook – such as “the ‘wealth corridors’ that run north through Islington and St John’s Wood towards Highgate; the strong southwest corridor from Fulham and Clapham to Wimbledon; and the emerging corridor from Ealing to Chiswick have all done particularly well recently”.

Savills is reporting that properties with five or more bedrooms in prime southwest and west London are now 7.3% higher than they were in the third quarter of 2020, compared to just 2.4% across the capital as a whole1.

Reversal of pandemic trends

Figures from Knight Frank reveal the number of buyers moving from urban to rural peaked in January 2021 and has been declining since2.

Another pandemic trend was a shift away from apartment-based city living. Flats lost not only their popularity, but also their value in many towns and cities across the country, according to research by the Office for National Statistics3 – with flats failing to keep pace with price rises for detached and semi-detached homes in the period from January 2020.

House price growth suffered in London, too, during the first year of the pandemic, according to the ONS data3. London property prices increased just 5.1%, compared to 9.6% for villages, 9% for towns and 7.8% for cities – reversing the trend of the last decade where London recorded the highest average annual growth.

“London has enjoyed incredible property price growth over the last 30 years and there haven’t been many events like the pandemic where the rest of the UK has increased more in value – nevertheless 5% growth in London is still a reasonable return on an investment,” says Moroukian at Barclays Private Bank.

The resilience of the UK capital is there for all to see – London’s average property price in 1991 was around £75,0004. Today, it’s £493,400, according to Zoopla5. That’s a more-than 500% increase in just three decades.

And as buyers return to the market, Knight Frank is predicting that the prime central London market will outperform all others in the UK by 2025, with cumulative growth of 25%6.

London could also be facing up to a shortage of new housing supply in prime areas; for the first three quarters of 2021 there were 352 transactions in the UK capital of £5 million-plus properties, compared to just 348 for the whole of 2020, according to Savills7.

“While there’s been a flight to quality, especially in the flats market, there’s no doubting that the prime central London markets are picking up,” says Tim Hyatt, Head of Residential at Knight Frank. “And with London back in full swing, there’s much more positivity about.”

London rents, too, took a tumble during the pandemic – falling as much as 10% at one point, according to Zoopla8. But again, rents are rising as tenants return to London.

“We’re seeing a big increase in rental searches, and also people buying flats,” says Camilla Dell, Founder of central London buying agency Black Brick. “It’s a complete reversal of the pandemic trend. Renters and buyers are craving well-located apartment living. They want central London again with a proximity to work, a good high street and public transport – rather than outside space.”

Overseas investors returning to UK property market

Foreign buyers are also gearing up to return to the market, although passenger numbers at Heathrow Airport were still only at 38% of pre-pandemic levels as of September 20219.

When they do return in bigger numbers, they will be looking for investments in prime real estate areas such as Chelsea, Kensington and Belgravia. Urban pieds-à-terre could see a resurgence, too, with owners embracing the country while keeping a foothold in London.

“As international buyers return, you’ll see additional demand flow back into the system,” says Cook at Savills. “London’s credentials as a safe-haven investment remain. The fundamentals underpinning demand for central London for the last 25 years are still there; it’s just international travel that’s been put on hold. London looks set for a burst of growth.”

New London commuter belt emerging

Although COVID-19 has reshaped the UK property market, it’s one of the few sectors to have shrugged off the pandemic. Sales have boomed across the country. The average UK property is today £235,000 – £17,500 more expensive than before March 2020, according to Zoopla10.

For those making the move out of London but still wanting easy access to the capital, many are settling in the prime regional urban markets of Oxford, Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham, Winchester and Cambridge. A new commuter belt is stretching far beyond the peripheries of London.

“For London leavers looking for a less dramatic lifestyle shift, and more accessible commute, there’s been a real resurgence in the last six months of these ‘uber-towns’ with their space and greenery, great accessibility and all the urban amenities,” says Cook at Savills.

Sales of £1 million-plus properties have also surged outside London11. While London is still home to a significant portion of the prime market, there’s now a broader geographical spread of sought-after, luxury properties.

London calling

Yet London is far from finished and, despite lockdowns, the things that made it such a sprawling metropolis never really went away.

So as London’s importance to Britain resumes and the future hybrid working model evolves, the return of a more “normal” property market beckons – with London again very much front and centre.

“The fundamentals for London have remained strong,” says Moroukian at Barclays Private Bank. “The UK capital has always been a property hotspot for global high-net-worth individuals.

“And with the return of international buyers, which could create a mismatch in supply and demand, this is all likely to continue to support future growth.”

International buyers are back as travel restrictions lift — what does it mean for London house prices?

By Ruth Bloomfield

Next spring Peter and Melanie Tunstall will finally be on their way to London to start a new life – and find a new home.

The couple, both originally from Connecticut, are planning to swap the frenetic, high rise, and increasingly politically-unstable Hong Kong for a leafy London urban village. And, if property pundits are correct, they will not be alone.

The relaxation of UK travel restrictions has opened the floodgates for overseas buyers to return to the British capital after a 16-month absence.

Experts believe that when they do the fading fortunes of Prime Central London will be decisively reversed.

Buying agent Camilla Dell, managing partner at Black Brick, has been advising high end clients on their property purchases since 2007.

During the height of the pandemic, she said, overseas buyers vanished. In September her phone started ringing again and her client roster now includes buyers from across North America, Africa and the Middle East keen to drop £2m to £5m on a PCL property.

“Overseas buyers are certainly back; you only have to walk through Mayfair or Knightsbridge or try and book a table at Scott’s to see how busy London is again,” agreed buying agent Jo Eccles, founder of Eccord, who is currently working with clients from the US, Israel, Germany, and Azerbaijan.

Peter and Melanie visited London in January 2020 to reconnoitre potential locations. After rejecting everywhere from Chelsea to Shoreditch (“I don’t have facial hair or a man bun, so I feared I would be discriminated against,” explains Peter), they settled on Marylebone, for its village feel and central location. Their budget, for a flat with outside space, is £5m to £6m.

“I have been in Hong Kong for 21 years, and I met my wife here,” explained Peter, 57, who works for a logistics company. “But we were never going to be here forever. Hong Kong is more a place to work and get out than a place to stay.”

The couple had hoped to move last year but the pandemic prevented them. “The problem is not getting into the UK, it is getting back into Hong Kong,” said Peter. “There is a three week quarantine period, in a government-specified hotel, and they are increasingly hard to book. We have realised that we are not going to be able to look at property until we are living in London full time.”

Fortunately, the couple have friends with a pied-a-terre in South Kensington they can borrow, and they plan to move next spring. Melanie, 40, will continue to run her fashion company remotely while Peter is planning to set up a company himself.

How do high-end international buyers affect London house prices?

The absence of buyers like Peter and Melanie have, collectively, had a massive impact on the property market PCL.

Pre-pandemic overseas buyers were responsible for around half of all property sales in neighbourhoods like Knightsbridge and Mayfair, according to estate agent Hamptons. This year that figure had dropped to just over a quarter.

Prices have not plunged – according to most house price indexes they have simply remained reasonably flat – although the number of sales has collapsed.

“That is because of the nature of property ownership in PCL,” said buying agent Andrew Weir, CEO of London Central Portfolio. “At times of soft prices people just don’t sell, because they don’t need to.”

Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills, believes that as overseas buyers return prices will start to rise.

“As international travel is progressively reinstated, we expect to see more pronounced price growth in this market, which has been a long time coming,” he said. “While we expect prices to end the year around two per cent higher in 2021, we expect annual price growth to rise to eight per cent next year.”

How the high rollers house hunt

One measure of the presence of high rolling international visitors is activity at Farnborough Airport, one of the most luxurious private airports within easy reach of London, where the number of arrivals and departures last month was up 62 per cent compared to September 2020.

Emirates has reopened its lounge at Heathrow as travellers from the Middle East return, and London’s hotels are also busier than they have been since the onset of the pandemic.

And from private jets to five star hotel high rolling international buyers have a very different experience of house hunting to those lower down the property ladder.

Marc von Grundherr, a director of Benham & Reeves estate agents, said buyers coming in from Hong Kong favour the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge as a crash pad during buying trips, while Asian buyers like the JW Marriott Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane. Middle Eastern clients tend to favour old school luxury hotels and can be found at the Dorchester, Claridge’s, or the Connaught.

Buyers who know London well are happy to whip out their Oyster card and go to viewings by train, while newbies might hire a driver.

And agents like von Grundherr might volunteer to chauffeur them around town themselves. “Some agents have a Rolls Royce to drive clients around in, but I think that gives totally the wrong impression,” he said. “We have a nine seater Mercedes.”

While looking around ultra-luxurious houses buyers must place shower-cap style plastic covers over their designer shoes to protect floors, and if children are to be present von Grundherr brings a colleague to help supervise the little darlings to prevent breakages of priceless pieces.

Non-Disclosure Agreements are a rarity, required only if a property has a very high profile owner, but taking pictures on your phone during a viewing is a massive no.

The top London areas for HNWIs

Buyers at this level also have a strict list of buying requirements, said Simon Barry, head of new developments at Harrods Estates.

“High net-worth individuals are always on the lookout for any property with a view of one of London’s parks and Hyde Park especially and will usually stick to the golden postcodes around Kensington, Knightsbridge or Mayfair – though many are happy to look at Bayswater and Marylebone where they will get more for the same budget,” he said.

Von Grundherr adds leafy London villages like St John’s Wood, Richmond, and Wimbledon to the list.

“Would I show them anything in East London? Absolutely not,” he said. “They would think I had gone mad. “They don’t know the location and there is an awful lot of keeping up with the Joneses, so they look at where other people have gone before them.”

Many international buyers want a London home for occasional visits.

Karen Goodin, a partner at Heaton & Partners, is finding increasing numbers of her buyers want a London crash in favour of staying in hotels when in town, perhaps because a private home provides a more Covid-secure environment.

“I have a Canadian with a £1.5m budget, and an American with a £4.5m budget, both looking to buy a Chelsea pied-a-terre as an alternative to staying in a hotel and with the added prospect of future capital growth,” she said.

Others are looking for student digs for their fortunate offspring. “One US client searching for a property in Mayfair is a couple looking for an apartment for their daughters, who will be attending boarding school in the UK,” said Eccles. “They were only willing to consider two of the most sought after streets in Mayfair.”

With these kinds of budgets and stories overseas buyers are, certainly from the standpoint of a Londoner struggling to get onto the ladder, easy to hate.

But in many ways what happens in PCL, boom or bust, doesn’t really matter in the real world. If average prices in Kensington & Chelsea, currently just over £1.3m according to the Land Registry, were to rise or fall ten per cent overnight they’d still be too expensive for all but the one per cent to consider.

“A very exotic, rarefied £6m flat in Knightsbridge being sold has a very negligible impact on the wider market in the greater scheme of things,” said Weir. “What you have got in PCL is a certain group of very wealthy people from a vast array of countries buying and selling properties to each other and it has been that way for a very long time.”

Is now a good time to buy luxury property in London?

By Emanuele Midolo

There are 317 homes over £10 million for sale — the race for super-prime real estate is revving up

London’s super-prime property market is roaring back to life. Overseas buyers are beginning to return and the supply of luxury bricks and mortar is set to be boosted by the launch of luxury developments with multimillion-pound price tags.

A silver Lamborghini with a blue camouflage wrap and a Kuwait registration plate comes gunning into the narrow Mayfair street and parks on a double yellow line next to where Peter Wetherell, the founder of the Mayfair-based estate agency Wetherell, stands. It is a potent symbol of the va-va-voom returning to the capital.

“We should be proud that so many people are flying themselves — and their cars — over just to ride our streets and view our properties,” Wetherell says.

Wealthy Middle Eastern visitors are not just driving their cars, but driving the market and snapping up properties, while Far Eastern purchasers — who for years have led the pack and paid the premium for a central London postcode — are still unable to get here because of travel restrictions.

“Typically, high-net-worth buyers from Hong Kong are the early movers, followed by those from the Middle East,” says Henry Faun, a partner and head of the Middle East project marketing team at the estate agency Knight Frank, who adds that “phones are ringing off the hook”.

With the UAE having come off the government’s red list in early August, Faun says that a year’s worth of pent-up demand is being released. “One of our clients arrived in London recently with £30 million ready to invest. Within two weeks they had made an offer and exchanged on a property.”

Data from Knight Frank shows that demand for London properties is returning to pre-pandemic levels. When it comes to nationalities, homebuyers from the UAE have increased 47 per cent between January and August, compared with the same period in 2019. The estate agency also says sales over the period were up 56 per cent compared with the whole of 2020.

Analysis by the estate agency Hamptons shows that Middle Eastern buyers were the only nationality to increase their share of properties purchased across London since 2019.

Andrew Wishart, a property economist at the consultancy Capital Economics, says: “The real estate sector makes up about 12 per cent of GDP, so overall the sector is very important. But while the price of homes in prime central London is high, the value of prime homes transacted — around £4 billion in 2019 — is just a fraction of the £285 billion in the national market.”

Nonetheless it is a market that fascinates not just those collecting the hefty fees from top-end sales, but also the general public, who see it as a bellwether for the desirability of the capital, if not the country. During the pandemic, while the rest of the country’s property market boomed central London was subdued as domestic buyers fled to the country while international investors stayed at home.

Now though, as travel restrictions ease and vaccination programmes are rolled out, multimillionaires with money to splash are being given plenty of choice thanks to the launch of luxury developments that were delayed by the pandemic. According to figures published by this week by the estate agency Beactive there are 317 properties for sale for £10 million or more in the capital, giving buyers ample opportunity to join a global elite: there are 63 billionaires living in London, the largest concentration in the world outside San Francisco and Hong Kong.

On Monday, the developer Almacantar unveiled its showroom apartment at the Bryanston, a 54-flat ultra-luxury scheme next to Marble Arch and overlooking Hyde Park. The developer will be hoping that state-of-the-art features such as air purification systems will help to lure wealthy buyers to the block, designed by the starchitect Rafael Viñoly, where prices start from £2.4 million. The spacious apartments look out towards One Hyde Park, the original development of choice for Middle Eastern buyers.

Also overlooking Hyde Park is Park Modern, a 57-flat luxury development by Fenton Whelan where prices start at £2.2 million. A spokesman for the developer says growing demand from the Middle East was the reason it launched a roadshow of the scheme in Dubai.

Amenities at both the Bryanston and Park Modern include the now standard concierge, restaurant, café and valet parking, plus wellbeing facilities — a 25m pool, gym, spa, cinema and treatment salon.

Further out in Kensington, Lancer Square — a 36-apartment, three-block multi-use development by the Malaysian developer Bellworth, designed by Squire and Partners — also launched last week with prices beginning at £4.86 million for a two-bedroom flat.

Meanwhile, Christian Candy, of One Hyde Park fame, has a new scheme too: 80 Holland Park, where prices for a two-bedroom flat start at £2.6 million. The 25-apartment development has a 24-hour concierge, underground car parking with electric charging points, a 16.8m pool and a gym.

Despite their high-end facilities, the new breed of luxury developments are more understated than their predecessors. Tastes have changed since the Candy brothers launched One Hyde Park ten years ago and the style now is more pared down and minimalist with white the primary shade, not black.

Nonetheless, Will Watson, the head of London at the buying agency the Buying Solution, says: “The super-luxe London crash pad is definitely having a moment.”

Period flats and houses in Mayfair, Belgravia and Knightsbridge are also selling fast. “We have the most enormous pipeline with over £50 million worth of properties under offer, anything from flats priced at £2 million up to £25 million,” says Camilla Dell, the founder of the buying agency Black Brick.

She says North American buyers are starting to come over too, a strong dollar making London properties more affordable. “The New York market is hotting up and some American buyers might think they’ve missed the boat there and decide to buy here instead,” she says.

An anonymous American entrepreneur bought a £6 million flat in Mayfair through Black Brick just before the pandemic. He says he was not daunted by the stamp duty tax because he was investing for the long term. “In the US, you pay property [wealth] tax every year,” he says. “I’m planning to use the flat for many years to come so I don’t mind paying tax in one go.”

Some Far Eastern investors are making a leap of faith and buying without viewing the properties in person. Agents say these buyers favour trophy assets that are in the £10 million-plus price bracket and new-build properties. One Chinese buyer is rumoured to have recently snapped up an entire block of flats with two ground-floor shops on Mount Street in Mayfair for £45 million.

Not everyone, however, is opting to buy. A growing number of high-net-worth individuals are in the market for luxury rentals and in many cases they are happy to pay several months’ rent in advance to secure the best properties, which in Mayfair would easily amount to many millions of pounds.

“What is often forgotten about Mayfair is that 91 per cent of the properties are flats and that over half of the homes in Mayfair are rented,” says Wetherell, who adds that his agency had twice the number of lettings in the third quarter of this year compared with the previous quarter, renting 26 properties over the past six weeks, most of which were for over the asking price.

Wetherell says renting, even at this level, is the cheaper option as an overseas purchaser buying a £10 million second home would pay £1.614 million in stamp duty. Renting is also more discreet. “If they buy, the information is out. It’s public. With renting no one knows,” he explains.

For years, the ultra-rich have used offshore companies to shield their identities, but through a number of leaks over the years — the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers and now the Pandora Papers — the names and details of hundreds of heads of governments, businessmen and oligarchs have come out, shining a light on this world of elite transactions.

“[The] rich try to minimise taxes, just like you and I would do, there is nothing illegal in that,” says Gary Hersham, the founder of the prime estate agency Beauchamp Estate, who last year sold the most expensive home in Britain to a Hong Kong billionaire for £210 million. “If they are allowed to avoid paying stamp duty that’s a problem for the government, not for the rich.”

So why would rich people want to spend all that money buying or renting properties in London? “The answer to the question why,” Hersham says, “is always the same: because they can.”

UK property Market for London’s top-end homes showing ‘signs of life’

By James Pickford

London’s high-end property market is showing glimmers of recovery as a second consecutive quarter of price increases followed years of falling or flatlining values, according to new data.

Prices for expensive London homes rose by 1.4 per cent in the year to September, including a rise of 0.7 per cent in the latest three-month period, according to estate agent Savills. “The research is the latest evidence that the prime central London market has bottomed out and is growing for the first time since September 2014, despite the absence of international buyers,” said Savills, which defines prime as the top 5 to 10 per cent of homes by value in a given district. Compared with the surge in prices seen in the mainstream market in other parts of the UK, the rise is modest.

Nationwide on Thursday said annual growth in UK house prices was 10 per cent in September, down from 11 per cent the previous month. The market for prime property in the capital extends from prime central London — Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster — to top properties in more distant districts such as Chiswick, Wimbledon, Hackney, Clapham and Hampstead.

Average values in the Savills index for prime central London are £4.5m; or £2.5m across prime London as a whole. This market has been in the doldrums since the end of 2014, when changes to stamp duty land tax raised the cost of a purchase at the top end. Uncertainty over Brexit added to the sense of caution among wealthy buyers, leading prices in prime central London to fall by nearly 20 per cent between 2014 and 2018.

Last year, pandemic travel restrictions stifled demand from overseas buyers, while homeworking shifted the balance of demand to larger homes outside city centres in the “race for space”.  But Savills said larger homes with gardens in London had increasingly benefited from the same effect, and this was accelerating as the return to office working gathered momentum.

In prime districts across the wider London area, homes with six or more bedrooms rose by an annual 6.2 per cent on average, with a 5.3 per cent rise for five bedroom homes. The effect was strongest in south-west areas of the capital favoured by families, such as Chiswick and Clapham, where price growth for the largest homes hit 8.9 per cent, comparable with rises elsewhere in the UK.

The gradual return to the office had started to change the priorities of buyers in the capital, said Lucian Cook, residential research director at Savills. “In our September buyer survey proximity to the Tube or train station took over from proximity to a park or green space at the top of buyers’ wish lists.” Tom Bill, head of UK residential research for estate agent Knight Frank, said prime central London had been in a “holding pattern” for the past six months, but change was afoot with the return of international buyers and “opportunistic purchasers”. Because the school year had now started, families will already have made their move, he said, leading to more purchasing by individuals over the next few months. “There’s an upwards momentum in London prime that’s long overdue. It’s straining at the leash to get going but we’re in a bit of an interim period at the moment,” Bill said.

Camilla Dell, founder of Mayfair-based buying agent Black Brick, said the prime central London property market was “finally showing signs of life”, particularly with the easing of travel restrictions. “It started in August when we suddenly had a lot of Middle Eastern clients coming over,” said Dell, adding that more clients arrived at the beginning of the school term, with prospective buyers coming mainly from North America, West Africa and the Middle East. Demand for apartments, which fell away during lockdown, may also be on the turn, with prices for prime central London flats growing by 0.6 per cent on the year in the Savills data — the first positive annual figure since 2014. Dell said that of eight clients she took on in the first two weeks of September, all but one wanted an apartment in prime central London. “There’s definitely more interest in apartments and the London pied-à-terre than there was 14 months ago,” said Bill. “That’s starting to change.”

Property woes hit women on divorce

By Simoney Kyriakou

Valuing the home on divorce can be a “bone of contention”, particularly for the woman in the relationship, specialists have warned.

Camilla Dell, founder and managing partner at buying agency Black Brick, said a lack of advice, distrust of valuations and having to be prepared for court battles are factors many divorcing women overlook, but all this can lead to additional stress and confusion.

Dell said: “We work with several divorce lawyers who often require our services for clients. When couples divorce the most valuable asset is often the family home. Who values the home can often be a bone of contention.

“If one side has an existing relationship with an estate agent there may be distrust from the other side that the valuation won’t be completely objective or unbiased.

“We have been asked by divorce lawyers to give our independent opinion on value in these situations.”

Historically, according to Debora Price, professor of gerontology at the University of Manchester, the man has taken his pension and the woman has taken the house on divorce.

Putting aside the problem of women not being able to fund their retirement years, Price said it is very hard for a woman to rely on the property as an “asset” later on in life.

We have been asked by divorce lawyers to give our independent opinion on value in these situations.

Dell commented: “There is a possibility that a woman might be able to release equity in the home, but outside of London and the south-east this is not a great option and comes with risks.

“The best way to release equity without any risks is to sell and trade down, but if you are living in a terraced house outside of London, it is not easy to trade down.”

There is also the importance of advising women to be prepared to explain why they need a certain value put on a home if the division of assets is contested and goes to court.

Often a woman might be left with a lower settlement because she does not know how to assess what sort of home she and any children might need – if the children are to live with her – as well as the ongoing cost of running a home.

Dell added: “We’ve also been asked by divorce lawyers to help prepare their client (often women) for court. We had one situation for a high-profile divorce where we had to prepare the wife.

“Part of that preparation included going on property tours to view houses of varying values, so when the judge asked her why she was seeking a certain value for her next home she could confidently talk about what things cost.

“That also included looking carefully at what the cost of running a home is too.”

PCL flats are back in demand, reports Mayfair agency

Black Brick has signed up eight new clients in the last fortnight – all but one of whom are looking for apartments in London’s top postcodes: ‘It was tumbleweed for 18 months but now it is a frenzy’.

Prime Central London flats are back on the wishlist for high-end buyers, according to a Mayfair-based agency.

Black Brick’s buying team has reported signing up eight new clients in the last fortnight alone, with a combined spending power of £17m. Interestingly, 100% of them want PCL addresses, and all but one are after an apartment.

Homes sold in London this summer were 20% bigger than the 2016 to 2019 average, according to LonRes, but the renewed appetite for flats suggests this particular pandemic-driven market trend “could be slowing down”, said the firm.

“It has been an extraordinary start to autumn,” confirmed managing partner Camilla Dell. “Demand for Prime Central London flats is back. It was tumbleweed for 18 months but now it is a frenzy.

“It started in August when we suddenly had a lot of Middle Eastern clients coming over…Then, literally as soon as the schools went back we started to get really busy with lots of new clients.”

The new crop of prospective buyers have mostly come from North America, West Africa, and the Middle East.

The return of overseas buyers is good news for PCL developers and vendors, added the firm, but the heightened interest isn’t yet reflected in house price data. According to the latest official UK HPI, prices in Westminster are down 3% year on year (to an average £898k) while in Kensington and Chelsea they have inched up by 0.7% to just over £1.3m.

Dell: “If you walk around London it really feels like the buzz is back. People are back in their offices, and just walking around town it feels almost like the pandemic never happened. In terms of prices, the needle is probably already moving, and we could see growth in Prime Central London of 2 to 3% by the end of the year if it carries on at the current rate.”

Is now the time to buy London property?

For many African clients, owning real estate assets in the UK is about wealth diversification.

The UK property market bounced back exceptionally strongly from the depths of pandemic last year. This year March was the busiest month for property transactions in at least 15 years with total spend over the preceding year reaching its highest level ($280bn) since before the global financial crisis.

This is according to Tom Bill, head of UK residential research for Knight Frank, who says that as a result of all the recent activity in the sector, house prices are rising sharply. The Nationwide House Price Index shows house prices registered their biggest monthly gain since 2004 in April this year, taking annual house price growth of 10%.

“In simple terms, we are seeing price distortion due to a lack of supply. The first two months of the year were marked by uncertainty over new Covid-19 variants, which meant that new sellers were reluctant or unable to list their properties. When demand escalated sharply in March, supported by the stamp duty deadline, the best properties sold quickly and as those properties disappeared from the market, sellers hesitated, which exacerbated the supply shortage and placed upward pressure on prices.”

The relief on stamp duty (tax on the sale of the home, usually set at £125,000) was increased to £500,000 pounds by the British government in July 2020 with the aim of making it easier for those who may have been financially impacted by Covid-19 to purchase property and to ultimately boost a battered economy. The initial deadline of March 2021 has since been extended to September and applies to both residents and non-residents.

“However, one reason to believe the supply and demand imbalance will correct is that the number of market valuation appraisals is rising,” Bill says. “This is a good leading indicator for supply.”

He says there has been a return to annual price growth in prime central London (PCL) for the first time in five years. “This serves as a reminder that there has been a long overdue return to growth in PCL that was beginning to pick up before the pandemic struck.”

Camilla Dell, managing partner at Black Brick Property Solutions, says much of the “growth and madness in the property market has been taking place outside of PCL. When analysing property in certain parts of city centre, there is good value and interesting buying opportunities”.

She says that across PCL, property prices are down just over 20% since the peak of the market at the end of 2014. She echoes Bill’s sentiments that PCL is due some sort of price growth, which was starting to play out just after the general election and after the pandemic started.

She says there is a window of opportunity for buyers in PCL. This, however, comes with a caveat: that PCL has never been a high-yielding asset class.

Dell has helped a mix of clients from across Africa, purchase property in London, ranging from clients relocating after having sold their businesses through to clients choosing to educate their children either at boarding school or university, and investors, ranging from those buying single, buy-to-let properties all the way to larger clients investing in larger property blocks.

“For many African clients, owning real estate assets in the UK and in particular, Prime Central London is about wealth diversification. Many of the families we advise have made their wealth in much higher risk countries and continue to view property in London as a safe-haven asset class. There are other strong pull factors, including education and business.”

She says the point of investing in a London property is “long term capital growth and in that regard, the forecasts are looking positive with Knight Frank forecasting 25% growth over next five years”.

Sanah Gumede, head of Standard Bank Wealth & Investment SA, says: “The pandemic has brought about a shift in societal conduct and investor confidence. It has caused unrest and fears about economic stability, which is now almost impossible to anticipate. However, investors seeking core assets continue to flock to regions such as the UK, which capitalises on its reputation as a safe haven for foreign investors.”

As with any investment, it is important to gain a thorough understanding of the market dynamics and potential risks associated. Non-UK residents who are looking at acquiring property in this jurisdiction should consider additional costs associated with the purchase price. This includes the new 2% non-resident surcharge for Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT), which was introduced on April 1 and that foreign buyers must contend with.

“This is yet another blow to the London property market,” says James Quarmby, partner and head of private wealth at Stephenson Harwood LLP. “Much of the prime London property market relies on interest from foreigners and, with this latest increase, the top rate of SDLT now stands at 17%, almost reaching VAT levels. This is a disincentive to invest in UK residential real estate.”

Despite this higher cost, the London market presents opportunity for foreign buyers at present. The tax relief does relief can be used to maximise a potential investor’s budget in the market. Quarmby says: “The rate for commercial building remains sensible,” which is good news for business owners looking to set up operations in the country.

“At Standard Bank we aim to guide our clients through the maze of issues surrounding finding and securing a property acquisition,” says Adam Hunt, head of international wealth and investment at Standard Bank. “We work with companies such as Black Brick to help our clients locate and negotiate their required property. We then work alongside them to arrange finance for the acquisition and, with firms such as Stephenson Harwood, how to structure ownership suitable for their requirements.”

Those who are interested in gaining deeper insight into key trends shaping activity in the UK property market and a more comprehensive understanding of legal aspects to be cognisant of, can download the free to view webinar below, recently held by Standard Bank.

Serenity rooms, drone jammers and reinforced steel doors: how the super-rich fortify their homes

By Mick Brown

Along with extreme wealth comes extreme security costs

A few years ago an international businessman – we’ll call him Hugo for the sake of discretion – was involved in the oil business in Latin America where he lived. He was doing well, winning tenders ‘in ways most of my rivals hated’. In a bid to discredit him, the rivals started planting stories in the media designed to blacken his name. Then the newspapers began publishing his address and pictures of his wife and family. “At that stage I had to make a decision whether to hire a squad of bodyguards or leave. I left.”

The bodyguards came later.

Roll on a couple of years and Hugo bought a company in another Latin-American country, rated one of the most unstable and dangerous in the world. His wealth alone would have been enough to bring unwanted attention, but in a volatile country, where the line between business and crime is a fine one and often crossed, the risk of kidnap or murder became real.

Hugo did not live in the country, but would fly in regularly for meetings, staying for two or three days at a time. This is how it worked: through a London security company, he hired a group of security professionals, ex-SAS and Royal Military Police – universally recognised as the best trained and most professional protection money can buy. A bodyguard would be waiting as he stepped off the plane and would accompany him to a waiting car and driver, parked at the closest point to the exit. “You wouldn’t know he was security. He wouldn’t be carrying a gun or have a radio in his hand or anything like that. The idea would be not to call too much attention to me or him.”

In the car, Hugo would be briefed on a ‘safety word’ (in one instance, Titanic) – to be used in any situation necessitating “getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible. Most people,” he says, “think security is about your guys fighting the other guys. It’s not. It’s about extracting you in one piece.”

Following an itinerary, he would check in to a hotel, taking a corner suite and booking either the entire floor or rooms immediately adjacent with a body-guard posted in each. All rooms would have been swept for bugs beforehand. One guard would stand outside his suite; another would be downstairs, watching people come in or out. For meetings in the hotel, everybody would be searched going in and have their mobile phones taken. If Hugo had to travel anywhere it would be in a bulletproofed vehicle, with two bodyguards and a driver. Wherever he was going would have been reconnoitred beforehand.

On one occasion, one of his business partners was travelling with three UK-trained security guards when the car was surrounded by a group of armed men, demanding to know their business. Rather than pulling their own guns, two of the security men calmly stepped out of the car and started photographing the group, who were so unsettled that they left. “It was incredible,” says Hugo. “The security guys knew how to read these things and exactly what to do.”

On another occasion, a gang was attempting to steal some documents from a car. They were confronted. Shots were fired and two of the thieves were killed. “It was serious stuff. And then, in countries like that, you don’t hang around for the police.” The security men skipped over the border to a neighbouring country and were flown out. Hugo estimates that he was spending around $200,000 (£144,000) a month on personal protection. “But it was worth it.”

Mayfair, Kensington, St John’s Wood and the Cotswolds aren’t Central or South America, but if you’re very rich things can still get a little sketchy, and in times of uncertainty help may be required.

In 2019, the UK market in security was worth over £13 billion. And Britain, says Philip Ingram, a security consultant and the head of content of the International Security Expo, held each year at Olympia in London, is seen as ‘the gold standard’, exporting more than £7 billion worth of material and expertise. “The Middle East in particular loves taking all the standards and processes the UK has developed and applying them there,” he says.

The International Security Expo brings together some 250 exhibitors and attracts security companies, architects looking for the latest technologies to design into buildings and public spaces, and representatives of government organisations who, as Ingram puts it, “won’t necessarily hand you a business card”.

But the exhibits on display – perimeter intruder-detection systems, technical-surveillance countermeasures, buried intrusion detectors – hold a particular interest for that mysterious group known as ultra-high-net-worth individuals. Silicon Valley titans, Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern potentates, lucky hedge-fund managers, the odd minted celebrity: if they’re not worrying about getting more money, they’re worrying about how to hold on to what they’ve got.

Earlier this year it was revealed that Facebook paid $23.4 million (£17 million) in 2020 to cover the security costs of its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his family, both at home and while travelling, in order to mitigate ‘identified specific threats’. Zuckerberg, who bought the four homes neighbouring his main residence in Palo Alto, California, to ensure his privacy, is guarded round the clock by armed protection officers and a security team that carries out a reconnaissance of wherever he is going, and he has bullet-resistant windows in his office.

There are few people who can match Zuckerberg’s £97 billion fortune – only Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bernard Arnault and family, to be precise. But for the other 2,751 billionaires in the world – and those struggling along with only hundreds or tens of millions to their name, wealth brings not only luxury but also fear.

A recent survey by the property consultant Knight Frank revealed that London has the most so-called ‘prime’ homes of any city in the world, with more than 68,000 properties valued at £2 million-plus. Meanwhile, crime figures in the UK continue to rise. There were 299,868 reported burglaries in 2020, with robberies at 68,095 and vehicle crimes at 371,278. There has also been a huge increase in cyber attacks in the past year, with a 300 per cent year-on-year rise in ransomware episodes.

These are figures that inculcate a sense of rising unease among the rich. A recent survey of high-net-worth individuals, by the security company Chubb, showed that on average 28 per cent felt more vulnerable at home, at work and travelling than five years ago. And the single greatest fear was of violent home invasion.

“The world’s becoming a more threatening place,” says Jack Mann, who runs Alma Risk, a company specialising in personal protection. “People want to keep their families safe, and they’re prepared to go to pretty extravagant lengths to do that.” Just how extravagant might that be?

Imagine for a moment that you are that Indian billionaire or Russian oligarch – or perhaps one of the 52 Hong Kong residents newly arrived in Britain, fleeing China’s new state-security laws, who have been granted a so-called golden visa after promising to invest at least £2 million in the UK. You’ve bought your house in Kensington or Hampstead, but your pride and joy is your new estate in the Cotswolds – not far, perhaps, from the £6 million property owned by David and Victoria Beckham, which masked thieves attempted to burgle in 2018. You are often away making more money, leaving your wife or husband at home with the children. What to do?

Philip Dowds is the MD of Okto Technologies, which develops and instals smart systems in homes and businesses. For a ‘360 degree shield’ and to keep any threat ‘as far away as possible’, he suggests the following.

Firstly, there is perimeter defence, comprising three elements: radar, thermal cameras to pick up body heat, and underground pressure sensors detecting anyone jumping over the wall. All of these would be integrated into a smart system that would eliminate the possibility of a false alarm being triggered by a fox or a badger. Anyone attempting to smash through the main gate in a truck would be met with a reinforced steel door capable of withstanding an impact at 40mph.

In the unlikely event of a breach in the outer defences, Dowds says, the super-wealthy will probably have their own security team on hand. (The raid on the Beckhams’ home was averted after their security staff spotted the intruders on CCTV, but not before the invaders had propped a ladder up to peer into an upstairs bedroom.) Lacking that, the occupier would be woken by an alarm, and have a control pad on hand to activate high-intensity security lights – imagine going from total darkness to the floodlights in a football stadium – along with loudspeakers, set at 110 decibels (as loud as a riveting machine), barking out a warning message. All of which is designed to make the intruder back off.

In the meantime, those inside have retreated to the panic room (or ‘serenity room’, as Dowds prefers). The old-fashioned panic room, he says, would usually be a bathroom or other small space, suitably reinforced. “But if your wife and family are locked in a small bathroom and they think people are attacking them, they’re not going to be very calm.”

A ‘serenity room’, on the other hand, will be the master bedroom, or a similarly familiar and comfortable area, specially customised – the walls lined with Kevlar, the doors made of reinforced steel, the windows bulletproof. Just as important, he says, will be ‘fully diverse communication’: separate phone lines buried deep inside the building and running in different directions in case the burglars or kidnappers have cut the obvious lines, with Wi-Fi, 5G and satellite channels to the outside world. Scented candles and piped new-age music to soothe jangled nerves are optional.

Then there’s the drone threat. It is estimated that one third of all the world’s 10 million drone flights a year have a criminal element. The latest perimeter-protection technology can alert a homeowner or their security team when a drone is heading towards them. And those who want can apply for government permission to allow them to locate the pilot and jam the communication system, causing the drone to fail, while at the same time notifying the authorities of the pilot’s whereabouts.

A complete home-defence system costs up to £1 million. A more modest package of perimeter protection with thermal cameras and radar, the lights and speakers, and a direct connection to the police ‘won’t blow the budget,’ according to Dowds – at about £100,000. He is working on a security system costing £2 million for a London property worth more than £150 million, for a client who will be there for only five or six weeks a year.

Can he tell me where it is? Dowds laughs. “No.”

Camilla Dell, the founder of luxury property agent Black Brick, which deals in London homes worth up to £20 million, says she is often surprised at how little security there is in older properties coming on to the market. “In a lot of the houses around The Bishops Avenue and Hampstead Garden Suburb it’s often just a burglar alarm and old-fashioned iron bars at the window.

“Where I do see security taken quite seriously is if you’re looking at a house owned by somebody who potentially could be under physical threat.” Ultra-high-net-worth Russians, for example, Dell says, “will often have bulletproof doors”.

What is also unexpected, she adds, is how little “very wealthy, very successful business people” know about security. “They tend to think in very simplistic terms: is this neighbourhood safe; what’s the crime rate? Does it have electric gates? If those boxes are ticked, they often won’t think beyond that. We always advise them to get a security firm to look where the weaknesses are and come up with a plan.” Recently, Dell hired a security team just to accompany her on viewings with a prospective woman buyer “who was very much in the public eye, in a negative way”.

“Technology is moving so fast that even security systems fitted two years ago may be outdated,” says Mann, who served with the Household Cavalry in Iraq and Afghanistan before setting up Alma Risk. “You would need to instal a system that is hardwired into the structure of the house and to change all the locks and alarms, because whoever was previously working there – cleaners or caretakers – might have access to existing systems.”

Screening your own staff is essential, and so is keeping them happy. A large proportion of break-ins and security breaches can be traced to disgruntled current or former employees.

“It’s the same principle as running a hedge fund in Mayfair dealing with sensitive information,” Mann says. “Everyone goes home in the evening, the office cleaners come in and someone hasn’t logged off properly, there’s some stuff in the wastepaper basket or left on the whiteboard… Generally speaking, no one has any idea who’s cleaning their office.”

Sweeping a house for eavesdropping devices – technical-surveillance countermeasures – is “another tick on the list for a happy client”.

Even the security systems installed for your protection become a threat in the wrong hands. Baby monitors can be hacked by mischief makers – stories abound of distressed parents hearing a voice coming over the monitor issuing expletives and threats, and rushing into the room to find there’s nobody there except a soundly sleeping child. “High-net-worth individuals will tend to have the latest gadgets, and the latest gadgets have security risks associated with them,” says Ingram. “Your internet-connected television, toaster or fridge could give someone a route into your network, and sophisticated hackers use people’s own security systems to target when they’re not in the home. These things need to be set up properly.”

“There’s a lot of technology on the market, and you can bolster up your house like a castle if you want to,” says Dom Whitmore, the operations director of Alma Risk, who spent over 20 years in the British Army. “But for the most intelligent, determined and driven criminal, there is always a way to navigate through that.” When thieves stole a reported £25 million in jewellery from Tamara Ecclestone’s Kensington home in 2019, they were able to evade the security and spend an hour undisturbed breaking into bedroom safes.

“It’s the mitigating procedures a security organisation implements that do the real work, and those constantly need reviewing,” Whitmore says.

Kidnapping, particularly of children, is another fear. There were about 1,100 child-abduction offences recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2019/20, 161 fewer than the previous year. There are no figures to differentiate how many of these were the result of domestic or custody disputes rather than ransom attempts, which often go unreported after being settled privately.

The security market abounds with all manner of devices to keep track of children, from wrist-worn GPS trackers to chips that can be sewn into clothing. But, as Mann points out, they offer no guarantee of safety.

“Children change their clothes a lot. You’d have to have a hell of a lot of trackers. If a child is taken and the kidnapper suspects there’s a tracker, they’ll just [remove it from] their wrist or change the clothes. The real question is, who’s monitoring that tracker? And what happens after it’s activated?” GPS tracker implants remain the stuff of fiction; there are no trackers small enough to implant into a child, and even if there were, recharging the battery would present a problem.

And as for prized possessions: what’s wrong with keeping the Monet or Warhol in a safe, or stashed away in a Zurich free port, and hanging a replica on the wall to fool visitors? And why not do the same with jewellery, when you can commission almost identical replicas?

The F1 racing driver Lando Norris may think again about choosing a timepiece from his safe after he had his wristwatch, worth £40,000, stolen by a group of thugs as he was approaching his McLaren sports car following the Euro final at Wembley. Which is where close protection comes in. Typically, hiring a personal bodyguard can cost anywhere between £500 and £1,500 a day. The stereotype of a pair of heavily muscled, shaven-headed goons in black suits is only for Chechen arms dealers and wannabe A-listers aiming to draw attention to themselves. The best security companies employ personnel so discreet you wouldn’t know they were there at all.

“Close protection is a skill,” Whitmore says. “Experienced protection officers are always anticipating what their client is going to do and considering, ‘What if X happens?’ It’s the way they dress, the way they hold themselves; it’s being streetwise. If someone is out shopping they might want the close protection to keep their distance; if they’re walking their dog at 10.30 at night they prefer to keep them near, looking like a couple.”

The more ostentatious your wealth, the greater the risk. Those who are in the business of showing off, not to mention footballers with Instagram accounts displaying pictures of their homes and supercars, are a particularly inviting target for thieves. In March, the Everton and Sweden goalkeeper Robin Olsen was held at knifepoint in front of his wife and children when thieves broke into his Cheshire home, making off with jewellery and a watch. A few weeks earlier two masked men burgled the home of the Everton manager, Carlo Ancelotti, while his daughter was said to be alone inside.

The best protection is not necessarily to instal radar, but to remain below it.

 

Where demand for homes is falling fastest and house price growth could slow

By Melissa Lawford

Stamp duty savings have disappeared and the race for space is receding – is the housing market returning to normal?

The property market is at a crossroads. For the past year, homes have been selling quickly at sky high prices, while buyers have been battling an army of gazumpers.

But now pent-up demand has run its course and stamp duty holiday savings have all but disappeared. A chronic shortage of supply is bolstering prices, but the post-Covid frenzy is starting to dissipate.

London, where higher values meant buyers benefited from the biggest stamp duty savings, is changing first.

Property website Zoopla found that of the 15 postcodes that recorded the biggest drops in demand across Britain, 10 were in the capital.

It compared demand from April 5 to July 25, when buyers were unlikely to be able to take advantage of the original stamp duty holiday, with the preceding 16-week period when the tax break was boosting the market. It measured buyer demand using a combination of searches and inquiries.

In London’s SW and E postcodes buyer demand fell by 26.5pc. Cory Askew, of Chestertons estate agents, said: “The absolute peak of demand was at the end of March when the stamp duty holiday was extended”.

“Then there was a steady decline in inquiries through April, May and June – levels were much lower than in 2020, but higher than in 2019. It is a normalised market.”

In almost all cases in the top 15, buyer demand was still significantly above the average in the same period in 2017 to 2019. In south-west London, where a rush for space and gardens drove massive spikes in sales in the likes of Barnes and Kew, demand was still up 17pc on the pre-Covid level. But the numbers show a gear shift.

The race for space seems to be receding. In Camden, demand is transferring to flats, said Mr Askew. “That market is predominantly first-time buyers who are feeling a lot more secure in their job prospects.”

But other parts of the capital are grappling with problems that the stamp duty holiday rush previously concealed. In the EC postcode, which encompasses areas such as Shoreditch and the City of London, demand fell by 19.5pc, and is now 12.6pc below the 2017 to 2019 average. “The engine is the City, and most firms have given no mandate for workers to come back to the office full time,” Mr Askew said.

Polat Ali, of Hunters estate agents in Shoreditch, said: “We had the busiest June ever. But then July and the start of August was extremely quiet. We had two offers in five weeks. Usually we have five per month.”

Now that the time pressure of the stamp duty holiday has gone, the problems of the cladding crisis are also becoming more apparent. East London has a large concentration of high rise blocks and many flat sales simply cannot happen because lenders require external wall safety (EWS1) forms before they can offer mortgages. “Probably 20pc of properties we see we just won’t take on,” said Mr Ali.

Meanwhile, London developers are scrambling to fill the affordabilty gap left by the stamp duty cash savings. Peter Gibney, of JLL, a property firm, said that many are now offering to pay stamp duty bills in full.

In outer London areas, such as Twickenham and Enfield, demand also fell, but this dip was partly because the peak was so high. In Kingston-upon-Thames, demand fell 21.8pc between the two periods studied, but it was still up 96.5pc versus the pre-Covid average.

By contrast, in the most expensive areas of central London, which suffered heavily during the pandemic, demand is now rising as international travel restrictions lift.

Camilla Dell, of buying agent Black Brick, said: “For the first time in a year and a half, I’m meeting up with clients from Dubai, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. They are looking for holiday homes and good long-term investments in Mayfair, South Kensington, Knightsbridge and Chelsea.”

Outside London, demand also fell significantly in parts of the North East. Property prices in the region rose by 15.3pc in the year to June, the second-highest rate in the country, according to the Office for National Statistics.

In Newcastle upon Tyne and the Cleveland and Teesside, demand fell by 18.7pc and 18.5pc respectively. In Darlington, in County Durham, buyer demand fell by 27.1pc, the largest drop in the country. But the level of demand was still historically high – 53pc above the average in the same period across 2017 to 2019.

Emma Wick, of Bridgfords estate agents in Darlington, said there has been a dramatic change in who is buying. “Earlier in the year, the market was primarily driven by families who wanted or needed to move for more space.” These movers accounted for half the market 16 weeks ago.

“Now, everybody who wanted to move for homeworking or lifestyle changes has done so,” said Ms Wick. “The world is becoming a bit more normal.”

Home movers now account for only a fifth of sales, she said. Instead, investors, who had made up only 10pc of the market, now account for half of buyers.

A change in the type of homes for sale has been key, said Ms Wick. “Now a lot of the properties we are selling are empty. There has been an increase in mortgage repossessions, which were banned during the pandemic, and landlords are offloading rental stock because prices are at an all time high.”

Why Britain’s punitive tax system risks deterring Middle East property investors

By Alice Haine

Experts say rising tax rates make residential homes less attractive to wealthy foreign buyers.

When the UK applied a stamp duty surcharge to overseas property investors in April this year, tax advisors and property consultants were flooded with enquiries from concerned buyers.

The big question for many was whether the 2 per cent increase in stamp duty for non-resident buyers made investing in Britain’s residential property market worth while.

But for clients contacting the tax advisory arm of global company The Sovereign Group, there was an even bigger shock in store. As well as a rise in stamp duty costs on new purchases, their tax liability on existing homes was also far higher than they realised.

Overseas buyers purchasing a property in their own name are now subject to a stamp duty levy of up to 17 per cent on homes worth more than £1.5 million ($2.08 million), higher than the maximum 15 per cent rate payable by UK residents.

However, high net worth investors, who choose to invest through company structures to reduce their tax burden, now face charges of 17 per cent.

In addition, those who invested through offshore structures must consider a raft of other taxes on their property portfolios – from capital gains tax (CGT) if they sell, to an annual tax on enveloped dwellings (Ated), and inheritance tax (IHT) of 40 per cent if the owner dies.

These levies have all been applied by the UK government over the past decade to prevent overseas buyers from escaping their tax obligations.

“The tax charges are punitive now and it’s getting to a stage where the UK property market is slightly less attractive than it once was,” Laurence Lancaster, group head of tax at The Sovereign Group, which advises high net worth clients around the globe, told The National.

“We are seeing clients invest less in property and choosing other investments.”

Britain’s property market has long been attractive to overseas investors who enjoy the country’s secure legal system, cosmopolitan lifestyle and high-quality education. London is a particular draw for Gulf-based investors, who enjoy the city’s cooler temperatures during the summer months as well as the many parks and cultural attractions for families.

The super-wealthy spent more on luxury homes in London last year than in any other city in the world, according to April data from property consultancy Knight Frank, shelling out almost $4 billion on super-prime properties.

However, that figure could be even higher this year with UAE buyers now able to enter the country more easily after the Emirates was moved from the red list to amber last week. Before then, UAE residents were prevented from viewing homes because entry into the UK required a 10-day quarantine in an airport hotel on arrival.

Property agents and developers are expecting a surge in transactions as buyers jet in to view properties they have already shortlisted online.

But Mr Lancaster said some buyers may consider their purchases more carefully in light of the higher tax burden.

“It’s the taxes that have to be paid immediately, such as stamp duty and CGT, that have created the interest from clients,” Mr Lancaster said.

“But there are many clients who are non-UK domiciled and sitting on offshore companies with property they maybe bought in the 1990s or 1980s and they’re not aware that they’ve got this looming inheritance tax problem.”

The overhaul to the UK taxation system first started in 2012 when the government clamped down on non-UK domiciles buying residential properties through offshore structures – even where the property was for personal use – to avoid IHT and stamp duty.

A 15 per cent stamp duty charge was applied to high-value homes acquired by a company. Then a year later, in 2013, the government rolled out the annual tax on enveloped dwellings, again to prevent tax avoidance from those with complicated company structures.

“Originally, Ated applied to properties worth £2m or more. Then it was extended to properties worth half a million or more with different charges that get higher the higher the value of a property,” said Mr Lancaster.

In 2015, corporation tax of 19 per cent was applied to the company sale of residential property, while CGT was applied to all overseas investors for the first time.

A change in the law around IHT came in April 2017, with those holding homes in company structures to avoid the tax made subject to the full 40 per cent hit on their death.

“The problem with inheritance tax is that most clients don’t expect to die, so it is a tax that is kicked down the turf to a later date,” Mr Lancaster said.

“We did send out memos, gave tax advice and had solutions in place before 2017, but not all clients wanted to pay for the tax advice that was needed.”

The taxation changes were necessary, experts say, because the overseas structures allowed buyers to sell and transfer the shares in their companies without paying stamp duty or CGT.

“It was a sort of free-for-all, as far as non-dom investors were concerned, with copious amounts of tax avoidance,” Mr Lancaster said.

“You can understand why the UK government decided to take action in 2012, but now they’ve gone too far because non-doms are actually taxed more heavily than their UK counterparts.”

Camilla Dell, managing partner at Black Brick, which helps Middle East investors purchase property in the UK, said wealthy buyers expect to pay high levels of tax when buying in a leading global city.

“Whether you are buying property in New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore or Sydney – there is significant tax and other additional costs, such as agency fees, to pay,” she said.

The cost of buying, holding and selling a property in London in 2021 is actually cheaper than 15 other global cities, according to data from property consultancy Savills, with Vancouver the most expensive option for investors, followed by Hong Kong in second place and Singapore in third.

Rising taxation has certainly not put off investors, said Sean Ellis, chairman of developer St William and St James, which has a number of new developments on offer in the new Nine Elms district of South London as well as Fulham.

At the company’s marketing suite for its Prince of Wales Drive development in Battersea, there has already been a slight increase in Middle East investors viewing homes, with many holidaying in Europe to get round the UK’s strict isolation requirements.

“In terms of owning a property in a world city, London is still relatively cheap. Yes it is expensive but in comparison to buying in Paris, Rome or Hong Kong or any of the world’s cities, it’s still relatively good value. The transaction costs are not as high as they are in other parts of the world,” Mr Ellis said.

He said the rise in stamp duty is the first time in his 30-year career he has seen a different tax regime applied to overseas buyers.

Interestingly, he said, the stamp duty holiday, which offered a saving of up to £15,000 on the first £500,000 of a purchase, created a surge in demand for luxury homes from overseas buyers.

“All our buyers wanted to save that money. I was surprised,” he said

Ms Dell says it is too early to tell if the latest stamp duty surcharge will hamper demand.

The rise has so far been offset by the stamp duty holiday, but the tax break now applies to only the first £250,000 of a purchase price and will disappear entirely on September 30

“My instinct is that the additional 2 per cent will be less of a concern to ultra high net worth buyers, but may cause pause for thought amongst lower value purchasers,” she said.

“I think most overseas buyers buying in London today are attracted by the fact that property prices in the capital are down 20 per cent since the peak of the market in 2014. Combine this fact with cheap borrowing rates, a weaker pound and good prospects for capital appreciation over the next five years of 20 per cent to 25 per cent forecasted, then an additional 2 per cent surcharge becomes more palatable.”

One tax her clients are “acutely aware of”, however, is IHT.

The regulatory change in 2017 that led to the 40 per cent tax also being applied to company structures meant that overseas investors could no longer get around the levy.

“Some people would like to refer to it as a loophole, but it’s not really a loophole, it was really just extending the tax net to attack these structures,” Mr Lancaster said.

However, Ms Dell said there are a number of legitimate ways to minimise IHT, such as borrowing on purchase, life insurance, trusts, and gifting before death.

“We always advise our clients to seek professional tax advice to plan for this. Since all the tax changes came in we see far less corporate structures being used when buying property. Most clients now buy in their own personal names,” she said.

Henry Faun, partner and head of Knight Frank’s Middle East private office, said while he urges his clients to consider taxation at the start of a property search, rising rates in the UK are “not a deterrent” yet.

“As opposed to being put off buying, we have seen our Middle East clients take a longer-term horizon,” he said.

“Perhaps they were looking to buy and own a family home in the UK for five years before. Now that’s got to be 10-plus years to make it worthwhile and ensure that stamp duty has been offset over a larger timeframe.”

Mr Faun said clients also increasingly buy in their own names, rather than through a company, and add several family names to the ownership of a property to offset Ased and IHT, while CGT is actually viewed as a positive because it indicates the asset has gained in value.

Another tactic to offset taxation is buyers choosing to buy several lower-priced units rather than a more expensive, larger unit, to reduce the stamp duty burden.

“If you purchase more than six residential units in a single transaction, that is considered for stamp duty purposes as a commercial transaction, so stamp duty drops from the higher levels of 17 per cent down to approximately 5 per cent or less,” Mr Faun said.

While Mr Lancaster fears the prime market may suffer if buyers switch to lower-priced properties or to another investment vehicle altogether, Mr Faun said the shift is actually heading in a different direction.

“Typically the type of conversation I have is ‘let’s not buy somewhere and incur the stamp duty, why don’t we rent instead’,” he said.

“It’s not about finding an alternative to buying in the UK, it’s usually a buying versus renting conversation.”

Are you a super-snooper? 60% of Britons admit to looking up house prices of friends, colleagues and lovers – and a quarter have ditched partners based on their findings

By Jane Denton

  • Six in ten Britons try to find out how much people they know paid for a home
  • Friends, family, lovers and colleagues are all of interest to property ‘snoopers’ 
  • Buying agent tells This is Money people ‘always’ want to know this sort of data 
  • Find out how you can  track down property sold prices near you now

Nearly 60 per cent of Britons have tried to find out how much people they know spent on their latest property purchase, new figures have revealed.

While few believe it is acceptable to ask someone what they paid for a home outright, the vast majority have adopted under-the-radar tactics to discover what family, friends, ‘frenemies’, neighbours, colleagues and even potential partners paid for their homes.

Twenty-four per cent of people admitted they had even called time on a relationship after finding out the value of their partner’s home, according to Zoopla.

People also use ‘super-snooping’ tactics, which include searching for sale records online, to see how much a home they want to buy was last sold for, or to track what has happened to the price tag of a property they used to live in.

‘People always want to know what others have paid for a property’, Camilla Dell, managing partner at Black Brick Property Solutions, told This is Money.

While the majority of people are activity snooping, 65 per cent said they would never admit to the owner that they had researched their property’s sold price.

Neighbours, friends and family member’s homes are the most likely targets for super-snoopers, but 11 per cent said they had also looked up what a colleague paid for a property.

Three in ten said they were able to make assumptions about their colleagues’ pay packets after finding out how much they were able to fork out for their home.

One in ten people said they had even checked out the value of the home of a prospective, current or former partner.

Nearly a third said they continued to date someone they would have otherwise ditched after viewing the price tag of their home online. For people aged between 35 to 44, this figure rose to 46 per cent.

Around half of people said seeing a partner’s property value ‘encouraged’ them to keep dating someone, rising to 63 per cent for men.

But a quarter of people said they had called time on a relationship after viewing the value of their partner’s home.

The emotions stirred by seeing how much someone has paid for a home can be complicated, and 11 per cent admitted they felt jealous after seeing the figures involved.

However, 10 per cent said they respected the person more after seeing their property’s value, while 9 per cent said they felt they liked the person more than before.

Tom Parker, consumer spokesperson for Zoopla. said: ‘Buttoned up Brits love talking about house prices – but for most, asking someone straight up what they paid for their home is still considered a taboo.

‘But how much a house sold for is publicly available information and is easy to source online.

‘Whether it’s your boss, a friend or even a potential partner, it’s clear we want to know more about the homes they live in and will often treat them differently as a result.’

Buying agents will often go to great lengths to help their clients find out what other people paid for a home they are interested in.

Camilla Dell added: ‘As buying agents, before we submit an offer on a property, we always do a comprehensive “buying report” for our clients.

‘Within the report we highlight relevant comparable sales. It’s all about the price per square foot – the price paid divided by the internal square footage.

‘This gives our clients a pretty good idea if the price they are paying is reasonable or not, and also aids us with our negotiations.

‘We obtain data via Lonres – an industry-only database for agents, and the Land Registry.

‘For off-plan sales, obtaining comparable sales data is a lot more difficult as sales will only appear on the Land Registry once they have completed which could be years away.’

Last month, data from the Office for National Statics revealed that average house prices across the country increased by 10 per cent in the year to May.

Some buyers fear they paid too much for their latest property, after savings from the stamp duty holiday were eaten up by soaring price tags.

The main stamp duty holiday applicable on homes up to £500,000 ended on 30 June.

Until 30 September the nil rate band will be £250,000. It will then return to the standard amount of £125,000 on 1 October.