. . . Meanwhile Jon Hunt says no to £300m for his house

Monday 19th March 2012

We don't know what Jon Hunt, who famously sold Foxtons for £390 million in May 2007 at the peak of the housing market boom, thinks of what has happened to his creation since. One of Britain's richest men, he is famously tight-lipped.

But according to the London Evening Standard, he has turned down an offer not far short of that figure for his property in Billionaires’ Row, at Kensington Palace Gardens.

Had he sold for the £300m offered, he’d have turned a more than tidy profit on the house he bought for a mere £14m in 2005, and where he plans to install a mammoth sports hall and car museum below ground.

However, Hunt apparently wasn’t tempted when neighbour Lakshmi Mittal, the billionaire steel magnate, made the offer.

It was, says the Standard, politely declined, as according to a friend of Hunt: “He said there is no point selling at the bottom of the cycle.”