How much luxury can it be?
Something funny happened in London this year. I think so. Madonna has bought the six-story home next to her own for six million pounds and converted it into a private gym.
Madonna has not reached the top ranks in a long time.
With this purchase (on top of that she has an estate, a fake British accent and an English ex-husband from a distinguished stable) she should actually belong here to the upper class. But on the real estate scale, Madonna has far from reached the top ranks.
The most expensive houses are bought by people who are not even married to the British and who leave their property empty most of the time. London would like to be considered an ultramodern city that cares for the needs of the population around. Especially now, in preparation for the 2012 Olympics.
Mecca for foreign millionaires
The truth is different: The city is still struggling with age-old class problems and a crumbling infrastructure. And yet London is the mecca of ever new waves of foreign millionaires who apparently can not be happy without a fat slice of our real estate cake. These super-rich, including several billionaires, have a special name: "Ultra High Net Worth Individuals"? Individuals with megahohem net worth.
The gap between rich and poor gapes more sharply.
Statistics, experts and London taxi drivers are in agreement: the gap between the increasingly wealthy and the considerably poorer population has never been so far apart. We (not so rich) Londoners have an unseemly hobby: on the famous Bishops Avenue in East Finchley (better known as the "billionaire mile") we mock the curious XL villas. When I was there with my girlfriend Leslie the other day, she pointed to a confectionery-style property: "I would take that, but only if I get it for free."
On the other hand, it had done to me a neo-Gothic castle. The diverse, often oblique architecture of these villas reflects the sometimes eccentric, sometimes exotic taste of the owners. These include the Sultan of Brunei, the Saudi Arabian royal family or the Indian steel baron Lakshmi Mittal. Once I was invited to a wedding on Bishops Avenue No. 9. The swanky address had the added glamor factor that the heavily guarded Salman Rushdie used to live there. The windows were bulletproof glass. We felt protected - and sweated ourselves dead.
Villas for 50 million
Recently, the huge Toprak mansion (named after its builder, Turkish businessman Halis Toprak), with its "Greek" pillared porch, copper roof, and 8,000 square meter garden, hit the headlines: it was sold for a record £ 50 million, allegedly to a Horelma Peramam, a billionaire from Kazakhstan. The true identity of the lucky ones is unknown, but whoever she is, of course, Mrs. Peramam will have to make another 30 million leaps to beef up the place. A little more, $ 32 million, Lev Leviev, a Russian-Israeli diamond billionaire, spent on his Palladian seven-bedroom villa. Madonna could not have afforded more than a shed as a gym on the billionaire mile with her six million pounds.
The influential real estate broker Trevor Abrahmsohn, a native of South Africa, has been selling properties on Bishops Avenue and other city's filets for decades. He sees London as a barometer of what's happening in the rest of the world. In the 80s, his clients came from Japan and from the petrodollar-rich Middle East, now from Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria. "My buyers always had two common denominators: sudden wealth, mostly from oil, and political instability in their region."
London is considered a safe haven.
So, at the outbreak of the first Gulf War, the Saudi royal family bought several villas in case they had to flee quickly. The deposed Greek king came directly to London. The Shah of Persia. Benazir Bhutto. Suharto. "London is a safe haven," says Abrahmsohn. "For the financial elite, Bishops Avenue is better known than Buckingham Palace." The next buyer wave comes, he believes, from China. , ,
Inaccessible to normal residents
The wealthy foreigners spend several times their body weight in gold for safe houses in London, which is too expensive for the average person to live. In fact, they are inaccessible unless they are contractors, interior designers, cooks, dog sitter, security forces or cleaners. But for the British, who are rather poor at home, the weak dollar has finally turned the tables.
In the US, they can really afford their pounds. And so they fall there in droves with low-cost airlines and return with suitcases full of bargains. My house is in a quiet mid-range area, five minutes away from both large villas and tiny social terraced houses. I can do my dog in both directions. And you know what? It is completely sausage, where he drops his excrement and marks his territory. He is like most of the original Londoners: they hang on their own quarters and enter the rich areas only for visual substitute gratification. They tolerate the super-rich rather disinterested, unless they serve as gossip. Because if the Londoners of all strata connect something, then the passion for celebrity gossip. (May I briefly and proudly state that Amy Winehouse grew up in my neighborhood?)
Something always stays
So I just heard from my hairdresser, that again a villa for 40 million pounds was sold. The British record producer Simon Cowell, inventor of the successful TV format "Pop Idol" (the German version is called "Deutschland sucht den Superstar"), is astronomically rich, lives in Los Angeles and leads a worldwide music empire. He too could not resist and put his millions in a trophy in London. Does he fear that his empire might perish? I think he does not have to worry. If his music career crashes, he can still rent a corner of Madonna's Muckibude. Or my guest room.
