This week saw the opening of the world's most expensive block of flats in Knightsbridge, overlooking Hyde Park. Some of the richest people in the world gathered next door in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel for a lavish luncheon prepared by Heston Blumenthal to mark the completion of the four glass and steel towers now known as One Hyde Park, in which four penthouses have already been sold for up to £135m each and the price of floor space exceeds all records at £6,000 a square foot.
Their designer, Lord Rogers, calls it "a 21st-century monument". That is what it is - a monument to the ever-widening gap between rich and poor and to the unique ability of the very wealthy to ride out the recession unscathed.
In the residential property market in which each house is worth £5 million and above, Indians now figure as the second biggest foreign buyer group. European buyers top the prime market, while Chinese buyers are third. Indians bought residential property worth £290 million s in the city’s prestige areas of Mayfair, Belgravia, South Kensington, Chelsea and Holland Park during 2010.The properties are reported to be second or third homes for a rising number of wealthy Indians, who now account for 7.3 per cent of all sales in £5 million plus residential property market in London. The super high net worth individuals (global billionaire status) look for very substantial properties at the very top of the price range, probably in the £50 million plus bracket, while high net worth Indian buyers have budgets of £10 million to £20 million
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