Leading super-prime property agents and developers are witnessing a ‘golden decade’ in London, with world-beating new developments, ample good stock on the market and attractive deals to be done, according to some of the industry’s leading figures.
Speaking at Spear’s 500 Live 2024 on 23 May, Mayfair property guru Peter Wetherell, founder of Wetherell, who has operated in the London market for over 40 years, told the audience he believed property agents were ‘living at the moment in what I think is the golden decade’.
‘We are in the “roaring twenties” for prime central London, and it’s very akin to what happened after WW1,’ Wetherell said. ‘I’ve never known in my career more new hotels, more new clubs, more new restaurants — we are the centre of the world.’
[See also: New kids on the block: inside Sotheby’s UK property arm as it makes a move on London]
Part of this was the quality of stock on the market. While he has traditionally been comfortable with access to around 150 properties to show clients in Mayfair, Wetherell said his eponymous firm currently had access to around 235 properties. ‘If you’re a consumer, you want some choice. I’m now able to show somebody not just three… they can see 10 or 15 properties, get a balanced view, and then make an offer.’
The panel event on the global property market, which was titled ‘Where the smart money’s going: The changing shape of the super-prime property market’ and hosted in association with Sotheby’s International Realty UK, Dubai and KSA, also revealed the bullish nature of UHNW buyers in London.
George Azar, chairman and CEO of the estate agents in the UK and the Middle East, said London-based buyers had snapped up a seizable number of super-prime assets in the six or so months since Sotheby’s International Realty relaunched in the UK.
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‘This business is about people’
‘I’ve already done over £1 billion — 36 per cent of that is London money. [For] first time in our career in 10 years, the number one buyer in the market in Sotheby’s is here, from this country,’ Azar said.
Azar told the crowd about how the firm had shaken up the UK super-prime property market, hiring some of the city’s top selling agents at a steep premium — paying some millions of pounds to join.
‘We’ve always had an eye for the UK market. We’ve always known… the big agencies were too comfortable, and we like to hustle. So that’s why we came here,’ he said. ‘All the agents in the market were making less money… we came along, we believe in the value of people. We pay them what they deserve, and we don’t overpay the market. You know, I’ve always surrounded myself with people better than me. And I’ve paid millions of dollars to people who work with me because it’s what they’re worth.
He added: ‘This business is about people. It’s not about agencies… Credit Suisse went under because of its people, even though it’s a strong brand.’
‘I wouldn’t have been able to build One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge today’
Nick Candy, who along with his brother developed the landmark One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge, completing it in 2009, said he believed that the capital ‘was still the greatest city in the world.’
Candy, whose personal penthouse at the development is currently listed on the market for £175 million, added the city was ‘relatively cheap on a global level today.’
Agreeing with Wetherell, the property developer said that the London townhouses market was ‘100 per cent undervalued’, adding that his wife had last year purchased a home in Chelsea. ‘They’re cheap, they’re wrongly priced. I believe that London is still — at the right time, at the right place, for the right product — very good value’.
[See also: Revealed: Where the super-rich really live in London]
However, he added, the soaring coasts of property finance, as well as new size restrictions on properties in Westminster — with new codes implemented in 2021 limiting the size of new-builds to under 200 square metres — were making projects harder.
‘It’s even harder to get planning today,’ Candy said. ‘If you can find the right site to build something, it’s quite rare in London, and it takes time, and to put the finance around it. If you asked me to do One Hyde Park in the middle of Knightsbridge today, [it would be] impossible, for a number of reasons, from planning to financial reasons.’
The panelists also called on the UK government to do more to welcome overseas property investors.
Wetherell explained: ‘The government doesn’t seem to be putting their arms out and saying to overseas investors, “come to London, this is a great place”. All the things that we love at the moment, these new developments, actually, they were all conceived over 10 years ago. They’re all overseas money —whether it’s the Qataris, the Abu Dhabis, the Hindujas, the Indian money, the Malaysian money for Battersea Power Station… all the ones that we actually “wow-about” now, it’s overseas money.’
‘We really should start thanking these overseas investors and not keep on pushing them away.’
Branded residences without a hotel are ‘like buying a fake handbag’
Candy also warned against branded residence projects which did not have a strong hotel service component. ‘What I don’t like is branded residences where they say “it’s a Four Seasons residences or St. Regis residences”, and there’s no hotel or anything nearby,’ he said.
‘That’s not a branded residences. That’s like buying a fake handbag. That’s like [saying] “I can’t afford the Louis Vuitton one in the shop, but I can get the one on the street from the seller.” That’s just absolute rubbish. It’s fraud, it’s a joke, and that’s not what branded residences are about.
[See also: Why London’s super-prime property market is hotter in 2024]
‘You’ve already seen it happening in London, where you’ve got the wrong brand in the wrong place. And it’s just not working,’ Wetherell added. ‘But if you’ve got a good hotel brand, which screams service, that’s what people want, and they’re prepared to pay for it.’
The growth of super-prime property in the Middle East
The panelists also reflected on the growing strength of the Middle East market. In Dubai, Azar said, the market used to be ‘so primitive’, but had changed rapidly given the influx of international buyers.
He added: ‘In the old days.. if you go to the Palm in Dubai, some houses have the kitchens on the sea view and the bedrooms on the street view. Who built that? It’s wrong!’
In terms of the quality of new homes, that’s now all changed, Azar said, adding his agents ‘were astonished’ at the quality they had seen. ‘But again, it’s an emerging market, it’s a market that’s taking place because of its leaders.’
While Dubai has seen a rise in prices of 225 per cent since the third quarter of 2020, Candy said Dubai’s super prime market was still undervalued compared to other global hubs, including Miami, Los Angeles and Singapore.
Candy’s company, Candy Capital, has entered into a joint venture with the Dubai World Trade Centre to build a mixed-used scheme of several towers in the city, which will include a branded residences project, hotels and commercial space.
[See also: The new ‘hypertowers’ shaping Middle Eastern super-prime property]
‘I’m not trying to flatter Nick, but I’ve seen the product he’s working on the Middle East. Until now, I haven’t seen anything of that level being built,’ Azar said.
In Saudi Arabia, which has recently opened up to international investors, Azar added Sotheby’s was working on a range of projects.
‘We’ve landed St Regis, we’ve landed the Raffles, we’ve taken the Jumeirah in Makkah. So they come to us, because we come in early with them, we help them on all their metrics. And if you get the product right and the pricing right, selling it is easy,’ Azar said.
Spear’s 500 Live 2024 is presented in association with our partners, Multrees, Henley & Partners, Sotheby’s International Realty, Stewardship, CAF, The Kusnacht Practice, Invest Barbados, Institut auf dem Rosenberg and Justerini & Brooks.
