So many wealthy Americans have moved to the UK since the re-election of President Trump that it has been dubbed the ‘invasion of the Donald Dashers’. A chunk of them are celebrities, including Ellen DeGeneres, Portia de Rossi, Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes and billionaire designer and film director Tom Ford. Among the thousands of other recent American arrivals are lesser-known creative types, bankers, lawyers, tech workers, technology entrepreneurs and very wealthy students. They all have two things in common: they want to move to the UK, but they’re very reluctant to talk about it.
Spear’s reached out to more than a dozen recent American arrivals; none would talk on the record. Few would even speak off the record.
An executive at a large US tech company who spoke on the condition of anonymity says she asked her employer to transfer her from Silicon Valley to London on 6 November 2024 (the day after Trump’s election victory). She says the problem is ‘you’ve got no idea what he [Trump] might do if he finds out’ the identities of individuals or companies who are critical of him. ‘We all know how vindictive he is. I love my country, but I just couldn’t stay there any longer – the things he is doing to minority groups breaks my heart.’
The tech executive (whom I will call ‘Jackie’) and her family moved into a rented house in Belsize Park earlier this year while they look to buy a place. ‘You get a lot more for your dollar here than in Silicon Valley,’ she says.
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Jackie and her family can reside in the UK as she works here. The plan is to live in London for at least five years. That would allow her to apply for ‘indefinite leave to remain’, and eventually British citizenship. ‘I know this is where I want to be, and where I want my children to grow up. It’s a much more liberal, open-minded and progressive place. And you have all the arts and the culture, and it’s English-speaking – that’s essential.’
Home Office figures show that more than 6,100 US citizens applied for UK citizenship in 2024 – a 26 per cent increase on 2023, and the highest number since records were first collected in 2004. Applications submitted in the last three months of the year were up 40 per cent compared to the same period in 2023. All the five immigration law experts Spear’s spoke to for this article predicted the jump in US applications for citizenship in 2025 would be higher still.
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The explosion in the number of Americans moving to the UK or exploring the option of doing so is keeping London’s army of immigration lawyers, bankers, tax advisers and estate agents extremely busy.
Kathryn Bradbury, partner and head of citizenship and immigration at law firm Payne Hicks Beach, says she’s dealing with more enquiries from Americans than ever before in her 25-year career as an immigration specialist. ‘There has been a very noticeable increase from the end of last year right through to now,’ she says. There’s little doubt about the reason: ‘Concerns about the Trump regime.’ Bradbury says there was also a bump after his first election victory in 2016, ‘but that was mostly enquiries – this is people actually moving here’.
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The timing of presidential terms also fits in with the UK government’s new and ‘very generous’ Foreign Income and Gains (FIG) Regime, brought in in April as a replacement for the scrapping of the non-dom status. At least 10 per cent of the UK’s 255,000 wealthy non-doms left last year after chancellor Rachel Reeves’ crackdown on the status, according to a report by former Treasury economist Chris Walker. The true number could be even higher, according to a senior figure from a leading private bank, who tells Spear’s that 40 per cent of their UK-resident non-dom clients have left the country – and that the wealthier clients are, the more likely they are to leave.
Among those who have left the UK are: Egypt’s richest person and Aston Villa FC co-owner Nassef Sawiris; Shravin Bharti Mittal, an heir to billionaire Indian industrialist Sunil Bharti Mittal; and South African Richard Gnodde, Goldman Sachs’ most senior banker outside the US.
The non-dom scheme had allowed (mostly) foreign people living in the UK to pay tax only on income and capital gains arising in the country, but not on those generated overseas. (Most ordinary people living and working in the UK pay tax on income and capital gains arising here and abroad.) The heirs of non-doms were previously able to avoid paying the UK’s 40 per cent inheritance tax on assets above £325,000. But that is no longer the case.
With so many wealthy non-doms fleeing the UK, it seems odd that many rich Americans are choosing to move in. I asked Michael Lewis, a partner at EY and its specialist at US/UK cross border tax services, to explain why. ‘The key thing is that Americans pay tax on their worldwide income,’ he says. Non-American non-doms leaving the UK are tempted by low or zero taxes offered by places like Switzerland, Monaco or Dubai, or the annual ‘flat tax’ of €200,000 in Italy. Those schemes, says Lewis, ‘don’t work for Americans, as they can never go below the base rate. Italy isn’t more attractive as they’ll have to top up the tax [they pay] to the US base rate.’
Italy, he says, is also not as well set up to support rich foreign people to settle in. ‘If you come to the UK there is a support system of maybe 400,000 people dedicated to advising on tax, on houses, on property, on schools,’ he says. ‘You can come to the UK and be very well looked after if you’re wealthy. It’s not necessarily the same if you turn up in Italy.’
The fear of the UK’s much higher than average inheritance tax is also ‘cushioned’ for Americans thanks to a ‘very generous’ UK-US estate tax treaty. It means Americans are protected from the UK’s 10-yearly charging regime, which makes overseas people who have been UK tax resident for 10 of the past 20 years in scope for global UK inheritance tax. This applies even if the person leaves the UK before their death, as a ‘tail’ period remains that exposes their global estate to UK inheritance tax if they die within 3-10 years of leaving the UK.
Lewis says tax is often the primary reason rich Americans are seeking out a move to the UK, but ‘culture, schools, the legal system and the language are also key’.
‘The UK is the easiest move culturally, and the UK is seen as stable and secure for their assets,’ he says. ‘Trump is often the little extra push that gets people who were considering [leaving the US] to get across the line and do it.’
Some New Yorkers, he says, had thought about moving to Florida, where there is no state income tax compared to New York’s state tax, which is as high as 10.9 per cent for those earning more than $25 million. ‘But they don’t really want to go to Florida. They’ll say there are too many mosquitoes, or “they don’t have people like me in Florida. So why not do 10 years in London, where there is a whole community of people who are similar to me.”’
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It is primarily London that is attracting the influx, but some are venturing to the Cotswolds, the West Country and Edinburgh. American comedian Ellen DeGeneres and her American-Australian actor wife Portia de Rossi moved from Montecito, California to a £15 million farmhouse in the Cotswolds last year, with DeGeneres reportedly saying Trump’s election made her want to ‘get the hell out’.
An (as yet unknown) American bought The Holme, a vast 40-bedroom mansion within the grounds of Regent’s Park, for £138.9 million in January, making it the second most expensive house ever sold in the UK. The Land Registry records The Holme’s official buyer as a UK subsidiary of Zedra, a Luxembourg-based wealth company that advises the super-rich. A source told The Times the ultimate beneficial owner is ‘an American billionaire with tech money. It will be his London home and HQ base’.
Tom Ford bought the most expensive property sold in the UK last year. The £80 million deal to buy the white stucco Chelsea mansion was signed on the day of the US election. Other über-wealthy Americans buying in London include former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, who bought a £42 million house in Holland Park in April; and Lee Broughton and Christine Broadhurst Taylor (heiress to the late Jack Taylor, the founder of car rental company Enterprise), who bought a penthouse flat overlooking Hyde Park in 2023 for £68 million.
It is unclear if these types of buyers are planning on becoming UK residents, as the UK does not have investor visa route to citizenship, unlike Italy or Portugal. Entrepreneurs or those who inherited wealth and do not work (in the traditional sense) for a living are unable to apply for indefinite leave to remain, which can lead to citizenship.
In total, American buyers bought a quarter of all of London’s £20 million-plus properties last year, according to Beauchamp Estates’ annual Billionaire Buyers report. Beauchamp director Paul Finch says Americans are mostly looking for ‘large family houses or family apartments, ideally new-build or newly refurbished, in Notting Hill, which they know from the movie, St John’s Wood, close to the American school, and Chelsea. The American billionaires tend to choose mansions, lavish pied-à-terres or penthouses in Belgravia, Mayfair, St James’s or Regent’s Park.’
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Tara MacBain, owner of Notting Hill restaurant Julie’s, has noticed ‘way more American accents’ at the French brasserie recently. ‘We’ve always had a large American clientele but it’s definitely increased in the past year,’ she says. ‘They’re fleeing US politics, and enjoying the culture that London offers and the easy access to Europe.’
Another recent US émigrée, a 29-year-old events planner who asks not to be identified, tells me she chose to live in Notting Hill as a lot of American friends had already moved there, but also because it’s ‘posh and gritty’. ‘That’s perfect for me as I can be really posh, and also rock ’n’ roll and a bit gritty,’ she says. ‘Here [in Notting Hill] you have a council estate right next to £5 million apartments. I like that contrast.’
Every month she notices she has even more American neighbours. ‘There’s been a huge influx. I call it the “reverse colonisation”. A lot of people are coming to get away from Trump, to come to Europe, where politics is less volatile. America is great if you want to make loads of money, but that’s not everything.’ She says tax bills are much lower in London than in New York ‘because of higher state and city taxes there’.
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Property consultant Richard Rogerson says of the increase in American buyers in London: ‘It’s Trump, of course, but the thing we hear most often is the fear of US gun crime and that their kids have to take part in “active shooter drills”.’ The most popular areas for Americans, he says, are Notting Hill and Holland Park, ‘but a lot are looking in St John’s Wood, to be near the American School in London (ASL), and we have a lot looking in Chelsea right now’.
Grace Moody-Stuart, director of the Good Schools Guide, says so many American families have moved to London that it can be hard to secure a place at ASL, which costs £46,428 a year for high school students. ‘ASL is the most in-demand, but it is often a challenge getting a place, although they have rolling admission that helps,’ she says. ‘ASL teaches the American curriculum and has a very American vibe, which isn’t for everyone. There is also the Dwight School London, which offers the full International Baccalaureate curriculum, and there are all the UK’s public schools.’
Jo Eccles, founder and managing director of property search firm Eccord, says Americans now account for a third of all her clients. ‘They’re very demanding, and expect a lot, and the time difference doesn’t help,’ she says. ‘But they’re great to deal with and are serious buyers.’
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She had two instructions on the day of Trump’s re-election. Currently she is searching for a £20 million pound home in Kensington for ‘a businessman who previously split his time between the US and the UK but now wants to be here permanently’, and has a £30 million budget to find a Notting Hill home for ‘an early-forties American hedge fund manager who wants to move his team from New York to here as he sees more growth opportunities in London’. Eccles says the biggest increase in enquiries is from members of the LGBTQ+ community, ‘who are actively leaving America because of Trump and his anti-minorities policies’.
Sacha Wooldridge, a partner and immigration specialist at law firm Birketts, has also noticed a big increase in enquiries from gay and lesbian people, and more still from families with transgender children. ‘The number one thing motivating people to move is Trump,’ she says. ‘It is mentioned by everyone, but particularly those directly affected, like same sex couples and people with transgender family members.’
Wooldridge says most clients are being driven to leave America than being pulled in by the UK. ‘But we’re the number one choice,’ she says. ‘It has to be English-speaking, so it is usually either here or Canada, with good education, culture, stability and rule of law.’ She says Americans had feared a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn, ‘but given Sir Keir Starmer is so middle ground – to middle-right on some issues – US Democrats are very comfortable with his government’.
‘It takes quite a lot for Americans to not want to live in America, but I think – for many – Trump has achieved in driving them away.’
This article first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 96. Click here to subscribe
