An exclusive mansion located a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace, London, looks set to become the most expensive property sold in 2014.
The $380 million Grade I-listed home, in St James’s, is one of ten properties predicted to top home sales next year, according to research carried out by wealth management magazine Spear’s and wealth consultancy WealthInsight.
The research follows a year of large sales transactions involving celebrity names, including Cher, who reportedly sold her Malibu home to Beyoncé for $45 million, and baseball player Alex Rodriguez, whose Miami mansion fetched $30 million.
One of the highest transactions of 2013 was the sale of billionaire Howard Marks’s Malibu oceanfront villa, which he sold for $75 million to an unnamed Russian couple.
Residential sales in 2014 are expected to be dominated by London and New York’s property markets, according to the research. Nine of the ten properties in the list are in the US and UK.
Spear’s editor Josh Spero said: “No-one is surprised that London and New York have the most entries in the top ten as they are the two cities which best marry economic might with outstanding housing stock: you only need to think of Canary Wharf and Kensington Palace Gardens or Wall Street and Fifth Avenue.
“But the other entries are revealing: wealth in America is much less concentrated than in England, so we see other centres like Los Angeles (film industry money), Dallas (oil) and Connecticut (hedge funds and finance).”
New York’s highest priced property was the Residence at the River House. Listed at $130 million, the private members’ club is proposed to be turned into a 62,000-square-foot home over five levels, which would make it the largest private residential property in New York City’s history. WealthInsight analyst Oliver Williams said: “Almost all the properties in this ranking are significant in some way, whether architecturally, historically or prized for their location.
“This goes to show that buyers will pay hefty premiums for unique houses that might be coming on the market for the first time in their history.”
Spero added that despite their high asking prices, the properties are likely to encounter huge demand internationally. “It may sound staggering but in some cases these properties could even enter a bidding war, so flush are so many,” he said. - See more at: http://www.elitetraveler.com/features/380-million-london-mansion-predicted-as-most-expensive-sale-of-2014#.U3kdVXYn_Cc
