Month: September 2019

A multi-millionaire from Hong Kong has acquired the four-bedroom, top floor residence Corinthia Hotel London: Private Residences at 10 Whitehall Place for £10.75m.

The new 3,703 sq ft trophy home at the unnamed buyer’s ‘favourite hotel in London’ comes with access to 24/7 room service, the ESPA spa, The Northall Bar, Tom Kerridge’s Restaurant as well as the lounges at the adjoining five-star hotel.

After looking at other residences in Mayfair to buy before learning that the site was for sale, the couple agreed to buy the site within 72 hours.

Stamp Duty on the deal was £1.2 million.

The apartment is one of 11 at 10 Whitehall Place, which previously houses the Ministry for agriculture, Food and Fishereries.

As part of the purchase, the hotel agreed for the residence to be fitted with Hypnos mattresses, bed linen and throws used at Corinthia London, rather than the bespoke dressing that had been installed.

The four bedrooms, two reception rooms and four bathrooms have been designed by Goddard Littlefair.

Simon Deen, director & partner at Aston Chase says: “The Corinthia Hotel Private Residences purchase is the biggest deal in Whitehall in the last five years.

The deal equates to a price of just under £3,000 per sqft, compared to other high-end developments in Mayfair the couple looked at which were priced at around £7,000 per sqft.”

Deen adds: “Hong Kong buyers want homes with pristine, brand new interiors, but they also love British history so properties like the Corinthia Hotel which have an illustrious history, room service and uniformed staff really appeal to them.”

Corinthia Hotel interiors:neighbouring penthouse sells for £10 million — but only after the beds were changed

They say you cannot put a price on a good night’s sleep. But in the case of a Hong Kong tycoon looking for a London pied-à-terre the bill has come in at £10.75 million.

The multi-millionaire businessman, who had viewed properties in Mayfair, Chelsea, St John’s Wood and Regent’s Park, snapped up a serviced penthouse adjoining his favourite hotel, the Corinthia in Whitehall, within 72 hours of it coming on the market because that is where he had enjoyed his best nights’ rest.

However, the deal came close to collapsing because the beds, mattresses and linen provided for the apartment were not identical to those at the hotel, according to agents involved in the deal.

Simon Deen, director at estate agents Aston Chase, who advised the buyer, said: “It must be the only property deal in London where a mattress has helped to seal the deal.”

The four double beds in the residence have now been ripped out and replaced with those from British manufacturer Hypnos, which supplies the hotel as well as Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.

The buyer and his wife also insisted on the same bed linen and throws to recreate the experience of sleeping at the Corinthia in as much detail as possible.

The fifth-floor lateral apartment is one of 11 at 10 Whitehall Place, which previously housed the Ministry for Agriculture, Food and Fishereries.

It has 24-hour access to room service at the hotel. Mr Deen added: “Hong Kong buyers want homes with pristine, brand new interiors, but they also love British history so properties like the Corinthia Hotel which have an illustrious history, room service and uniformed staff really appeal to them.”

Features include a private fifth-floor lift lobby, entrance hall with gold gilded ceiling, hand-embroidered, hand-painted silk wall panels and guest powder room clad in Tunisian black and gold marble.

There is a media room, an eight-seat dining room and a Bulthaup-designed kitchen and breakfast room.

The £10.75 million price, equivalent to just under £3,000 per sq ft, is thought to be the highest paid in Whitehall for at least five years.

The Corinthia is among London’s most luxurious hotels and was the subject of BBC documentary A Hotel For The Super Rich & Famous.

Guests have included Beyoncé, Jay-Z, George Clooney and Rihanna. Donald Jr, Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany Trump were reported to have stayed during the US president’s state visit to London this summer.

During a home-scouting trip to London earlier this month, a couple of buyers from Hong Kong looked at 20 developments— spanning neighborhoods from Regents Park to Chelsea. Their first viewing of the four-story penthouse at the Private Residences at the Corinthia Hotel in Whitehall was on a Monday; their second viewing was on a Saturday. The £10.75 million (US$13.41 million) sale was agreed on by the following Wednesday.

The decision would usually take three to four weeks, said Simon Deen, director and partner at Aston Chase, who represented the buyer. Mansion Global could not determine the identity of the buyer, but Aston Chase confirmed that they were from Hong Kong. The sale closed the first week of September.

Visitors enter the four-bedroom, four-bathroom penthouse via either a private or public elevator lobby and are greeted by a gilded entrance hall with hand painted and embroidered silk wall panels, according to the news release.

The rest of the 3,703-square-foot penthouse is composed of a sitting room with a stone fireplace, a media room/study and an eat-in kitchen. The master bedroom features a walk-in closet and an en-suite marble-clad bathroom. The apartment’s lighting, heating and window blinds systems can also be controlled remotely or set to timers, according to the release.

Mr. Deen said that the buyers visit London only two or three times per year and were looking for something move-in ready, furnished and centrally located. The penthouse is fully serviced by the hotel, including white glove room service, a direct line to the concierge, a dedicated service entrance and private elevator access to the spa.

Alex Lawrie, press officer for Aston Chase, said that the penthouse could also be leased back to the hotel and rented out to guests as an income-generating investment.

Mr. Deen said this is one of two high-end deals involving Hong Kong buyers with which he is currently involved. The combination of the Brexit drama dampening the London market and the political uncertainty in Hong Kong has encouraged interest from Hong Kong buyers, he said.

“He’s done quite a canny buy,” Mr. Lawrie said of the buyer. Whitehall is an area that is changing, with lots of old government buildings turning into hotels, residential and commercial buildings, he said.

Mysterious Hong Kong Millionaire Snaps Up $13 Million London Penthouse

Last week we exchanged contracts on the sub Penthouse at The Residences at Corinthia Hotel London. The buyer saw the best of what was on offer in Prime Central London (from St John’s Wood to Chelsea and everything in between), before settling on Whitehall. Thankfully, they proved more adept in the art of doing a deal than their new neighbour at 10 Downing Street!

Whilst there aren’t that many £10m + deals happening in London right now and that’s newsworthy in itself, the interesting theme for us here didn’t focus as much on the transaction itself, but rather the process. As agents we have become reliant on the property portals for our enquires as it’s the fastest way to attract buyers who are already halfway down the ‘marketing funnel’. By the time they’re on Rightmove or Zoopla, they’ve normally decided where they want to live and how much they want to spend, and are more often than not what we might consider a ‘qualified’ buyer.

However, if you’re not familiar with the UK residential property market, then the likelihood is that you’re starting your property search in the same that 90% of internet searches start, on Google. Remember ‘Ask Jeeves’? No, us neither. However it’s not just Google. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn are all extremely useful when it comes to content based marketing, and it has a clear advantage over the property aggregator websites – you’re capturing people early, hopefully before they’re even buyers. You’ve piqued their interest, and with the right messages on the right platforms delivered in a consistent way, you will hopefully keep them engaged long enough to coincide with their buying or renting cycles. Or if not, maybe they’ll recommend you to a friend, family member or business associate because they see you, or your company as the leading authority on whatever market you’re aiming for.

The buyers in this instance were from Hong Kong, and making their first foray in to the London property market. As we wrote about recently, they joined other international buyers who are currently long on London if a little short on cycle. Taking advantage of both the currency play available to Dollar based buyers and general market conditions, they feel that they’ve bought well. Despite the continued debacle surrounding Brexit, London is still a safe haven for many based on an established legal system, great schools and world class amenities.

The other positive takeaway from this has been agent collaboration. In a tough market vendors are prepared to pay meaningful fees, and other agents are prepared to collaborate in ways which they’ve often been reluctant to in the past, and perhaps this is also a nod to the future. www.lonres.com has made great strides in providing a relatively open source way for the agent community to see which agents are listing what properties, and provided the opportunity for greater transparency on fees.

The net result of this has been a great deal for the buyer, the vendor and the agents involved.

DURING WWII, envious British soldiers complained that their better-fed American counterparts were ‘oversexed, overpaid and over here’. The Americans, in turn, responded that the British were ‘underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower’.

No one in the London rental property market is complaining about Americans now, as expats fuel an unprecedented demand for luxury rental properties in the most prestigious areas of the capital.

‘Americans have always played an important role in the London rental market because of the financial sector — but their numbers reduced significantly after the Lehman Brothers crash back in 2009,’ says Mark Tunstall, managing director of Mark Tunstall Property and former Savills director, who focuses on the super-prime London lettings market.

‘But in the last few years they’ve been coming back. We’ve seen a big increase in American tenants in London — particularly in St John’s Wood, South Kensington and Notting Hill — partly because some US banks have increased their profile here as some of the European banks have moved out. But there’s also more diversity in the sorts of companies setting up here which is creating a more stable market. It’s heartening to see the US having such confidence in London and the UK as a base.’

Goldman Sachs has just opened a new ￡1bn European HQ in the City for 6,000 staff; Facebook is opening a third London office with the trio housing 3,000 staff; and Warner Music has opened a 500-person office in Wrights Lane, Kensington. Meanwhile, Nike, Google and YouTube have all opened HQs in King’s Cross. Half of the tenants in St John’s Wood premium lettings market are now American expats, according to estate agent Aston Chase, which also reports that lettings in St John’s Wood for homes priced more than ￡3,000 a week are up 25 per cent on last year. Highest demand is for properties priced from ￡4,000 to ￡10,000 a week with tenants wanting large family houses of between 3,000sq ft to 6,000sq ft.

Americans are prepared to splash out on rented furniture — spending ￡30,000-￡5,000 a year on packages from firms such as Milc and Camerich.

Mark believes families are drawn to St John’s Wood because of its proximity to the American School and the number of homes with gardens, a driveway and low-build lateral living ‘just like they have at home’. It is also, he adds, driving up the standard of rental stock. ‘There have been a slew of exciting new schemes with all the bells and whistles the Americans like. At Burlington Gate in Mayfair, a recent scheme of 42 super-prime apartments, there’s a waiting list for two-bed units renting for around ￡2,000 a week. Many of them are Americans.

‘Americans are demanding tenants — but rightly so. They want to rent something that’s as good as a property they would buy. But they’re not buying because of higher stamp duty and price growth uncertainty.’

Ben Sloane, lettings director at Aston Chase, says there is a shortage of high-quality rental properties and suggests that building to rent — with the two to three year leases Americans favour — being a solution.

‘The prime central London addresses of St John’s Wood, Marylebone, Mayfair and Fitzrovia are still undersupplied in terms of premium build-to-rent and refurbish-to-rent property,’ he explains. ‘There is a significant lack of good supply.’

Built with us in mind: Family home for ￡268,000 (a year!)

AT BLENHEIM Terrace in St John’s Wood, a newly built five-bedroom townhouse will cost you a cool ￡286,000 a year in rent — the price of buying a flat in south-east England.

But there’s such enthusiasm about the scheme — the first ultra-prime, build-to-rent project in St John’s Wood — that one of the three townhouses has already rented off-plan to a US financier and his family.

A second townhouse has now been launched on the market. More than 60 per cent of enquiries about renting the properties has come from American companies or individuals.

With interiors designed by London-Miami designer Natalia Miyar of Natalia Miyar Atelier, each townhouse is 4,025sq ft of luxury accommodation with five bedrooms, all with en suites.

American tenants in the area are typically a couple aged from their mid-thirtiess to early fifties with two to three young or teenage children.

Americans want newly built or newly refurbished homes with comfort cooling, modern kitchens and good security, and it is their demands which agents believe is driving up the quality of the rental market.

Blenheim Terrace townhouse ￡286,000 a year, astonchase.com