The £25,000/week Grade II-listed rental home on north London’s Billionaire’s Row was once the most expensive property on the open market.
Heath Hall was originally listed for sale in 2011 for £100m when it was the most expensive home for sale in the UK on the open market.
The following year the price was slashed to £65m and it eventually sold in 2015 for a quarter of the original asking price.
The property, then called East Weald, was first built for Tate & Lyle sugar magnate, William Park Lyle in 1910 in grand Downton Abbey Edwardian Arts & Crafts style.
It became a home for the blind and was then owned by the Bank of China when it fell into disrepair.
The property developer Andreas Panayiotou bought the house as a near wreck for £5m in 2006, changed its name to Heath Hall and spent a reported £40million and seven years restoring the property to its former glory.
He extended the house, which sits on one of the largest plots in north London at 2.5 acres, to 27,000sq ft and fitted it out with indoor and outdoor pools, a fully-ftted gym, steam room and sauna, a library, a wine cellar for more than 600 bottles, and a steel-walled dressing room in the master bedroom, which doubles as a safe-room with a separate control panel and telephone lines with wires that can’t be cut.
Worked on by 120 craftsman, the master bedroom bathtub is carved out of one solid piece of marble and various luxury stones and wooden finishes are used throughout, including on the solid oak staircase with its dramatic night time LED lighting.
White gold leaf is used as an accent feature.
Grant Alexson at Knight Frank who eventually sold the property last year for £25million told The Telegraph: “You need full-time staff to run a house of this scale.”
Why would someone spend £1.3million in rent each year in the knowledge that they will have to pay huge sums in running costs and staff wages on top of that?
New prime London rental research from Knight Frank said that higher transaction costs have “caused some buyers to explore the rental option,” meaning that demand for rental property above £5,000 per week is strong compared to that for comparable sales properties.
The stamp duty on a £25million property is now £3million, an off-putting factor in an uncertain economic and political climate.
New regulations, changes to non dom status and additional charges are also putting off overseas buyers, who are opting to rent before deciding whether or not to take the plunge.
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