The £140million flat
It’s the UK’S most expensive... and will cost £20m more to furnish
IT HAS bullet-proof windows, its own luxury car park and a tunnel to allow 24-hour room service.
And if they do need some supplies, the owners can pop to the local corner shops... Harrods and Harvey Nichols.
This is the £140million property named as Britain’s most expensive flat.
At 16,000 sq ft, the two-floor apartment in Central London is more than 17 times the size of the average new three-bedroom British home.
Bought for £8,750 per sq ft by a buyer believed to be from Russia or the Ukraine, it has floor-to-ceiling windows and access to a host of spas and squash courts.
But inside, it is an unfitted ‘shell’ and the new owner will have to spend an estimated £20million more fitting it out – potentially boosting its value to as much as £175million.
The buyer’s suspected nationality appears to be yet more evidence that super-rich Eastern Europeans and Russians are transferring their money into London.
Yesterday, developer CPC Group confirmed the sale of the apartment, one of four penthouses in the One Hyde Park complex.
Another was bought by Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov for a reported £136million in 2011.
The other two penthouses are owned by Australian actress Holly Valance and former Qatari prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al-Thani.
Designed by Millennium Dome architect Lord Rogers, the development in Knightsbridge sits on a site formerly occupied by a grim 1950s office block.
In case the residents get peckish, there is a tunnel to the neighbouring Mandarin Oriental Hotel to allow them access to 24- hour room service.
As well as bullet-proof windows, the security features include SAS-trained guards, an air purifier to foil poison gas attacks and a ‘panic room’ where the owners can retreat in safety should they be targeted by kidnappers or robbers.
The complex is heated using geothermal bore holes sunk 450ft to extract heat from the Earth’s crust. Fifteen types of stone from Turkey, Italy, France, Belgium, Brazil, China and Egypt were used in its construction.
Developer brothers Christian and Nick Candy bought the site for £150million in 2004.
Their project is a joint venture with Waterknights, the private company of Sheik Hamad.
The complex has become known as a ‘luxury ghetto’ for some of the world’s richest people, including Nigerian oil tycoons who have bought other smaller apartments there.
Wealthy foreigners have been increasingly buying homes in Britain solely as an investment, without ever living in them.
Leading think- tank Civitas warned earlier this year that they were adding to ‘rampant house price inflation’, forcing millions of middle and low UK earners out of the property market.
Its research revealed that 85 per cent of London homes were bought by foreign investors in 2012.
The think-tank proposed that rich foreigners should be restricted from buying houses in Britain and purchasing new-build homes solely as an investment.