Comment: 'Why is the super prime property market pivoting to wellness?'
All eyes are on London’s super-prime property market with Buying London, a new Netflix series that offers a snoop inside the glitzy world of the DDRE Global agents selling to the uber-wealthy.
It’s our version of Selling Sunset, the LA-based property-slash-reality-TV series that’s now Netflix’s second most-watched show ever. It’s certainly making a dramatic entrance when the topmost end of the market has been struggling for years.
London’s most spenny homes (super-prime means £10 million and up) often go to overseas investors, but certain markets have dried up while UK political and economic wobbles are off-putting.
No agent would ever talk down their market, but the signs were there with the dip in transactions and surge in super-prime rentals. The surprise change to non-dom tax status will have also spooked many potential buyers.
Super-prime agents are now not just looking to America and the Middle East to find the deepest pockets, but to a younger age bracket. The average age of a trophy home buyer is now 41, reports Beauchamp Estates, 12 years younger than it was a decade ago. Daniel Daggers, star of Buying London, told the Evening Standard that some clients are still in their late twenties.
Millennial millionaires and billionaires are health-obsessed and want wellness centres and proximity to the coolest gyms. At-home nightclubs and champagne fridges are out, it seems. London’s most palatial properties must have room for the latest in longevity treatments.
Ice cold plunges are the new obsession. The team behind the Garrison Club wellness centre at Chelsea Barracks have installed some ahead of the grand opening next week, when residents will also be able to enjoy IV drips on demand from Effect Doctors.
As for me, I’ll be investing in cyrotherapy chamber stocks. The hottest new trend, for those who can afford it, is to freeze yourself young.
