Ultra-Wealthy US Buyers Snap Up UK Trophy Homes

Savills has seen a 40% jump in the number of UHNW US buyers registering with its London Private Office in the last two years, reports Abode2. These are serious players – most have budgets ranging from £20m to £50m – able to take their pick of the best properties London and the UK has to offer.

There is a serious amount of US-based wealth looking to buy residential property in London, says Alex Christian of Savills. “This level of interest is something we haven’t ever seen before – around a third of our buyers are now from the US compared to 10% in previous years,” said Alex Christian, London Director of the Private Office. “There is a serious amount of US-based wealth looking to buy residential property in London.”

Stateside users are now the second biggest group of visitors to the agency’s website, behind those from the UK; traffic to savills.co.uk from the US has soared by 92% over the last 12 months, compared to the previous two years, with most of it originating from California, followed by New York.

The Highlands and the Cotswolds have been proving especially popular, along with five central London locations: Kensington, Hampstead, Mayfair, Belgravia, and Notting Hill.

Significant deals (£20m+) have been done in Kensington and Mayfair recently, and the firm is expecting a further influx of “very motivated” US buyers to arrive in London later in the spring.

As well as the uplift in Americans looking for trophy properties in London, agents reports a notable change in terms of where buyers are coming from in the States. In recent years there has been a significant rise in young West Coast tech buyers with extremely high personal wealth whereas traditionally, the super prime buyers we tended to deal with were long-standing finance executives from the East Coast.

While there were some big ticket transactions to US buyers last year, travel restrictions have led to a real build-up of demand so we are expecting to see some very motivated buyers come back into London later in the spring. Primarily these are individuals who now either want to re-locate here, often for education reasons, or because they are in need of a base for any business interests in the UK or Europe.

Some are after new build developments with amenities, others prefer prominent statement houses but all want the very best addresses. In recent months we have sold a house in Hyde Park Gate which was guided in excess of £20m and recently, an apartment in one of the new builds on Grosvenor Square at a similar level, both to US buyers.