Nigella sells luxury f lat at a £21m profit
... but she had to cut price by £11m
AS would-be home- sellers across the country could tell her, shifting property in today’s market is a tough task.
Even when the property concerned is a fabulously luxurious flat – and even when the seller is Nigella Lawson.
Miss Lawson and husband Charles Saatchi have, however, at last managed to sell the Belgravia apartment they initially put up for sale at £36million in October 2010.
To do so, they bowed to the demands of the market and knocked £11million off the asking price.
But any fears that the television chef and her art collector husband will be left out of pocket on the deal can be allayed.
The £25million sale has still netted the couple an astonishing £21million profit.
Mr Saatchi bought the apartment for just £3.8million in 2001, two years before the couple married.
Miss Lawson, 52, and chef and her 68-yearold husband have now exchanged contracts
‘Make a go of their lives’
on the home with their buyer, developer Christian Candy and his CMC investment group.
It is believed that Mr Candy – who with his younger brother Nick is one of the UK’S most high-profile property tycoons – is buying the flat as an investment through his Guernsey-based company CPC Group.
Miss Lawson and her husband – who together are worth an estimated £128million – lived in the huge Belgravia apartment for nine years but moved out in 2010 following a spat with neighbours.
Mr Saatchi clashed with neighbours who erected scaffolding outside the building and planned a basement excavation. Police were called after he told workmen to remove the scaffolding, allegedly causing £50,000 of damage to some Italian marble tiles.
The couple then reportedly spent £100,000 moving their priceless art collection less than a mile to their new home, a £12million, 18th-century former factory in Chelsea.
That home boasts seven bedrooms, a wine cellar, a gym and an underground swimming pool.
Miss Lawson, who has sold more than three million books, most notably her 2000 bestseller How To Be A Domestic Goddess, also spent £500,000 renovating the kitchen so it would double as a television studio for her cookery programmes.
Mr Saatchi, who has been married twice before, made his fortune with his brother Maurice after they founded advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi in 1976.
Last month the art collector revealed that he enjoys having his famous wife ‘coveted’ by other men. Writing in his latest book Be The Worst You Can Be: Life’s Too Long For Patience And Virtue, he said: ‘Coveting is all everyone does, all the time, every day. It’s what drives the world economy, pushes people to make a go of their lives.
‘Who would want to be married to someone who nobody coveted?’ The Candy brothers have become Britain’s most famous property developers who have a £9billion global portfolio.
They jointly own property firm Candy & Candy and run luxury development One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge, which boasts the country’s most expensive flat, a £136million penthouse.