Who owns London

5 April 2012

The question who owns London used to be easy to answer: Royals and aristocrats. But, as new research reveals, a modern breed of entrepreneur has discovered that there is gold in bricks and mortar. They have been busy buying up London regardless of recession, understanding the long-term gain to be had in purchasing valuable freeholds and becoming multi-millionaires in the process.

These new players now collectively own more than 250 acres of our city, worth more than £2 billion, says Kevin Cahill, whose book Who Owns Britain is he says, "the first detailed look at land ownership in modern times".

Here, we look at the top three Establishment landowners as well as the richest of the self-made property barons.

So far the newcomers have failed to shake the richest of London's landowners off the top of the wealth table. The Duke of Westminster, the Queen and the Earl of Cadogan are still London's top landowners, holding nearly 700 acres of central-London land between them.

DUKE OF WESTMINSTER

Number one

What he owns: 300 acres of Mayfair and Belgravia, worth £10 billion by Cahill's calculation.

Lowdown: Gerald Grosvenor, the sixth Duke of Westminster and the current head of the Grosvenor family, is the richest man in Britain, according to Forbes Global magazine's list of the world's billionaires.

Grosvenor's London holdings include Eaton Square in Belgravia, which is one of the city's smartest addresses. The estate still owns the freeholds of most of its Mayfair and Belgravia properties, despite legislation passed in 1993 giving residents of blocks of flats the right to buy their freeholds. The Duke of Westminster resigned from the Conservative Party over this law change.

To date, Grosvenor has sold only 185 freeholds, although it says its approach to requests to enfranchise has changed. "We just get on with it," says a spokesman.

CROWN ESTATE

Number two

What it owns: around 265 acres across London, including Regent Street, Regent's Park, much of clubland around St James's and Pall Mall, and holdings in Kensington, Holborn and the City.

According to Cahill it is worth £6 billion. However, the Crown Estate says its London holdings have an open-market value of £2.5 billion, arguing that Cahill's figure ignores variations on leases, low ground rents and other factors that reduce the value of property to the estate.

Lowdown: the Crown Estate is part of the Queen's hereditary possessions, but profits go to the Exchequer. Its freeholds include properties in Kensington Palace Gardens, the exclusive street leading up to Kensington Palace where, currently, a property is on the market for £85 million.

The estate can and has sold off freeholds to residents, with the exception of properties near the Royal parks and palaces. This includes properties overlooking Regent's Park, Richmond Green and around Eltham Palace. Anthony Bickmore, director of the Estate's urban estates division, says: "If properties are part of the form of a park or palace, we won't sell them off."

CADOGAN ESTATE

Number three

What it owns: 90 acres of Chelsea and Knightsbridge worth £3 billion, according to Cahill. Cadogan says its holdings had a book value of £1.54 billion in December 2001 and that Cahill ignores the impact of long leases and low ground rents in reducing property values.

Lowdown: the eighth Earl Cadogan succeeded to the title and inherited the estate in 1997. Cadogan is freeholder of both Peter Jones (which pays a fixed rent of just £6,000 a year) and Harvey Nichols (which pays £3.5 million a year in rent on its 30-year lease).

The estate has also bought the 10 acres of the former Duke of York's territorial army barracks in the King's Road for £94 million and is planning a mixed development of shops, offices and flats. Half the estate is residential, says chief executive Stuart Corbyn, and so far residents of 250 flats and houses have bought their freeholds. Another 100 or so residents are sitting tight on secure tenancies, paying tiny rents.

PAUL RAYMOND

Number seven

What he owns: Soho stretches across approximately 140 acres and Raymond owns almost half of them. This pushes his wealth past the £1 billion mark.

Lowdown: Paul Raymond, 75, is the biggest new player on the landowning scene since the 1950s. He started his career washing dishes for £1 a week before opening the Raymond Revue Bar in 1958 and creating a soft-porn empire. "Raymond is a big figure at public auctions," says Cahill. "He owns more than 330 freeholds and he's one of the most successful men in modern London who isn't an aristocrat."

Raymond generates a large income from rents on commercial property in Soho, says Marc Thorne of Sunrise Publishers, which specialises in publishing details of the wealth of individuals and companies.

MARK PEARS AND FAMILY

Number nine

What they own: Fifty acres across London worth an estimated £750 million, through William Pears Family Holdings, as well as a network of subsidiaries.

Lowdown: Mark Pears is one of three brothers who run a firm started by their mother. They are understood to own 20,000 freeholds (houses and blocks of flats), collecting ground rents from long leaseholders and rents from short-term and protected tenants.

Six years ago a Pears company, St Ermin, hit the headlines when it tried to increase the rent of low-income tenants in Graham Mansions, Hackney, by 300 per cent in return for installing modern bathrooms. Thorne says: "The family is quite private, but they give a lot to charity."

CHRIS LAZARI

Number 12

What he owns: Forty-five acres across London, worth £450 million, through a network of property companies.

Lowdown: Chris Lazari is a Greek Cypriot who arrived in Britain in the 1970s. He started work in a sweatshop in Finsbury Park before buying his first property. "He bought one house, then the house next door, then the whole street," says Cahill.

He now owns commercial and residential property in Mayfair and Baker Street, as well as two acres along Tottenham Court Road.

BENZION FRESHWATER

Number 16

What he owns: 35 acres across London worth £350 million through a complex web of 156 companies.

Lowdown: the Freshwaters, who are Orthodox Jews, came to Britain in the 1920s. Benzion, 53, is the current head of the dynasty; his father, Osias, made his fortune in the post-war housing boom after building up a successful textile business. The family has a reputation for being secretive; and is generous to Jewish charities.

Owners of leasehold flats in blocks owned by Freshwater have clashed over service charges and management, while problems in one block were raised in Parliament in 1997.

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