Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Buckle Your Real Estate Safety Belts...

...The Times of London reveals (via Curbed) an unfathomably rich but unnamed member of an unidentified Arab royal family is fixin' to fling his titanic central London mansion on the market in a blaze of international real estate shock, awe and publicity with a intergalactic £250,000,000 price tag. That totals, according to Your Mama's trusty currency conversion contraption, a belly ache making $381,493,000 for all us Americanos.

The elegant, 1830-ish Georgian semi-detached terrace house—is that a proper description?—stands four floors above ground with another two subterranean levels that total a downright civic 50,000 (or so) square feet. It's less than half as big as a basic Wal-Mart and it's positively miniature compared to the gargantuan royal palaces some Arab royal families maintain but it is almost as large as the White House that weighs in at around 56,000 square feet.

A Greek temple-like porte cochere on the front facade stands out like a sore thumb against the rhythmic but featureless office block that dominates and absolutely oppresses the otherwise usually coveted tail end of the swanky cul-de-sac. Worse, perhaps, is the even more disagreeable office tower that looms forbiddingly directly across the narrow lane. Ugly and menacing office buildings aside, The Times goes on to reveal that India's multi billionaire Hinduja brothers also maintain one or more lavish residences on the terrace that's just a hop, skip, and a jump down The Mall from Buckingham Palace.

 Who's to say the Arab royal will get anywhere near his sky high asking price that The Times notes is "almost double the record for a residential property in the UK."Unidentified sources told the property gossips at The Times that the owner recently refurbished the redonkulously baronial residence that will likely appeal to a sovereign wealth fund for use as and embassy or ambassadorial residence.

If Your Mama was the betting type—and we're not—we'd throw down our pennies on someone more   like an obscure multi-billionaire commodities tycoon nobody who reads Vanity Fair has ever heard of from some place most Americans—including Your Mama—could probably neither pronounce nor pick out on a map will come along and snatch that thing up so his pampered youngest daughter and her retinue of handlers and keepers will have a decent place to live while she "attends" Central St. Martins.

What do the children think? What's the profile for a  buyer of this house at a quarter billion dollars?

photo: Google

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mama, The White House is 56k sq.ft. so that statement doesn't make sense, this house is about the size of the White House.

Anonymous said...

It appears like it is next to a Sheraton hotel. If there was a buyer for this, it would have sold off market. Look for more large Russian listings very soon.

Doug-G said...

Value is in the land?

*getting in my time machine and heading to the Valley circa 1982, so I can say, "gag me with a spoon!"*

Anonymous said...


Buenas tardes Mama, Ninos Y Ninas,

Mama, you've given us a proliferation of real estate abundance today, and sure as Shavuos the Rabbi adores a Greek temple carport! Unfortunately, the Rabbi experiences tsuris (Trouble with a capital T) when reconciling $380 million dollars and the tuition of Central St. Martins with the $5 to $10 per month cost of living in Cuba. Why Cuba, Kinderlach? By far not the poorest country in the world, los Cubanos tienen sufficient food, subsidized housing, electricity, and water, and free health care and education! Lacking, however, is Internet access, so please excuse the Rabbi for being incommunicado, while she (legally of course) meets the Jewish community of Havana durante las semana que viene.

Attentamente,
Rabbi Hedda LaCasa

Anonymous said...

Rabbi, didn't your name use to be Rabbi LaTess, not LaCasa? Please explain this discrepancy!

Sandpiper said...

Mama, you cheeky monkey. Thanks for a square foot analogy I can identify with, WalMart. Know thine audience and you do.

Who can afford it? Umm, I'm sure someone somewhere has a few spare rubles laying around to spend on, say, a new watch -- or this. I pray there's a lot of inappropriate neon. Huge selling feature. Might be all it takes except for one important legal improvement, removal of all structures within a distance of several WalMart parking lots to make way for large black cars and an entourage of helicopters.

Until the open house pics are available, I'll clam it.

marufhosen said...
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StPaulSnowman said...

that out sign in the lower right corner suggests a tube stop is close at hand. Inevitably the new owner will have to deodorize the porte cochere masonry weekly as it is sure to attract many a drunk's bladder. Far better to buy the gorgeous Mamhead House for only 8 million pounds.

Anonymous said...



A mansion that stands on the same London street as the Royal Society could become the most expensive home in Britain when it goes on sale at a reported asking price of £250 million.

A member of an Arab royal family is understood to be trying to sell his house on Carlton House Terrace, a minute’s walk from St James’s Park, Westminster, away from the open market. At the same time, a 16-bedroom house in New York is poised to become the city’s most expensive home. It is on the market for $125 million (£81.7 million).

Set over three floors, the US penthouse at the Pierre Hotel boasts a ballroom decked out with a crystal chandelier and French doors, which is described by Sotheby’s International Realty as “the most magnificent privately owned room in the world”.

The London house is thought to have been built around 1830 on the site of Carlton House, the residence of the Prince Regent until 1825. It has four storeys above ground and two below, and contains 50,000 square feet of space.

The price sought by the Arab royal family member would be almost double the record for a residential property in the UK.

A six-bedroom penthouse in a multi-billion-pound development at One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge was sold in 2010 for a reported £140 million, while an apartment in St James’s Square, around the corner from Carlton House Terrace, fetched £115 million two years before.

The booming super-prime property market in London is secretive, with the most expensive houses often sold away from the public eye. However, a source in the sector confirmed that the owner was seeking to sell the property, while another source said it had been refurbished recently.

He said the reported price tag — which values the property at £5,000 per square foot — was high but not impossible. “It’s certainly at a premium in relation to the known market,” he said. “But we’ve had . . . One Hyde Park, which sold for more than £7,000 per square foot.”


—The Times

Anonymous said...

“This sounds like a unique property, and residential properties in London have been known to go for upwards of £4,000 a square foot recently. I would not be the least bit surprised to see it going on at that asking price.”

The source described the address as “exceptional”, and said the most likely buyer would be a sovereign wealth fund, which might acquire the building for use as an embassy or ambassadorial residence. “There have been a couple of sovereign entities looking for that type of property lately,” he said. This would be in keeping with the history of the street, which numbers ambassadors from Prussia and their successors from Germany — including Joachim von Ribbentrop — among its past residents, and features several houses designed by John Nash, the architect behind the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and much of Buckingham Palace.

Carlton House Terrace’s other previous inhabitants include the former prime ministers Lord Palmerston, Earl Grey and William Gladstone. Today the street is home to the Hinduja brothers and several distinguished institutions including the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Academy.

In New York, the 12,000 square foot penthouse occupies the entire 41st, 42nd, and 43rd floors of the hotel and has four corner balconies, providing panoramic views of Manhattan.

There are five master bedrooms, six bathrooms and separate guest suites as well as staff accommodation and an elevator to all floors. It also features a Swedish sauna, a private lift for all three floors and three kitchenettes and a main kitchen. Elizabeth Lee Sample, of Sotheby’s, said the property has already attracted considerable attention from overseas buyers including Britain. “There has been a lot of interest from London,” she said.

The property was owned by Martin Zweig, the stockbroker who died in February and who famously predicted the 1987 crash three days before it happened.

Buyers will not only have to come up with the sale price in cash — a requirement at the Pierre — but will also have to pay a monthly maintenance fee of $47,000 to cover a two-person housekeeping staff. Mr Zweig paid a record $21.5 million for the property in 1999 and put it on the market in 2005 for $70 million. But he withdrew it in 2007, just as the real estate market began to dive.

Sotheby’s said it had based the $125 million asking price on comparable properties sold recently in New York.


—The TImes

Free Stock market tips | Free share market tips said...
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Pozos Real Estate said...
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Realestateint said...
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Sandpiper said...

Hi Snowman!!!

lil' gay boy said...

Quite a bit of dosh...

...but not as bad as it seems. The picture probably shows off the property in its worst light -- the other side faces the Old Admiralty & Admiralty Arch at the east end of The Mall. Snowman is right that there is a tube stop nearby; Charing Cross is on the far side of the building at the left, but on the far side of Trafalgar Square. Google Street shows that the "OUT" is for a private drive servicing the other terraced houses to the west.

Unless the buyer is blind, the remodeling might put a sizable dent in the quarter billion pound price tag.

Mightiadd said...

You can see vintage photographs of the interior of 18 Carlton Terrace at www.englishheritagearchives.org.uk
I'm sure the decor has changed considerably, but these you get an idea of the massive scale of this house.

Anonymous said...

The weather sucks there. Don't know why all the Russians and Arabs want to live there. Maybe Beverly Hills is too far away for their Escape Homes.

Sandpiper said...

Awesome catch Mightiadd!
Nothing like your touchdown find but I caught a very dry read on original mansion complex plans and few so-so exterior shots. 18 Carlton Terrace distinguished as No. 4.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=68416

Anonymous said...

For example, beacuse there's no stock market in Beverly Hills. If you think about it, Beverly Hills is actually quite provincial, full of questionable architecture, bad construction techniques and vast overpricing. If you look at the world as a whole, province is what describes it best: it comes much down the line after New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore and all the other hot and vibrant business capitals of the world. It cannot touch Paris.

StPaulSnowman said...

Salutations Sandpiper!

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Aman Heights said...
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Sandpiper said...

Hi 1:06 - Are you speaking stock on the exchange?

Perplexed, which I do so well :)

If you don't mean above, number crunchers pigeon hole an are like this, without industry, as a "bedroom community". Unfavorable tax implications, too.

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