Property Guru predicts ‘Roaring 2020s’ boom for London’s richest

The estate agent known to his thousands of followers on Twitter as Mayfair Guru is predicting a ‘Roaring 2020s’ for the exclusive London area. 

Peter Wetherell says Mayfair’s ultra-prime residential property market is booming with the sale of homes valued above £10m rising by 30 per cent last year, and top values hitting an eye watering £9,000 per square foot. 

His new report - Mayfair: The Return of the Roaring 1920s - compares 2021 Mayfair sales figures with those for 2020 using LonRes data, sales information from the Wetherell agency, plus other local market intelligence. 

The survey found that Mayfair homes priced above £10m now accounts for 10 per cent of the area’s market, and that over 2020 and 2021 Mayfair had more luxury home sales valued above £15m - a total of 10 deals - than any other postcode in Prime Central London.

Mayfair sales now average £2,077 per square foot, significantly above the average of £1,460 achieved for the rest of Prime Central London, with the highest Mayfair sales for 2021 now hitting £9,000 psf at No 1 Grosvenor Square.

Wetherell says that historically London’s highest pound per square feet values have been achieved in Knightsbridge along the southern boundary of Hyde Park, but the record figures in Mayfair and Whitehall during 2021 underline how the focus for super prime deals has now shifted to the eastern boundary of Hyde Park and beyond with Mayfair and Whitehall now being the hub for the capital’s top psf figures. 

He says the biggest buyers by country of origin currently in Mayfair are Indian, American, Middle East and domestic UK purchasers with the ultra-high-net-worth purchasers wanting homes that are over 2,000 square feet in size and ideally either houses with gardens or terraces, or three or four bedroom apartments or penthouses.

The agency also draws comparisons between the wealth creation and surge in real estate and luxury spending during the early 1920s and what is happening in 2021 and 2022. 

Like now, the early 1920s saw the world emerging from a global pandemic (the Spanish flu of 1918 to 1920) yet the Edwardian-era railroad, shipping and steel tycoons had made record amounts of money and spent it on penthouses, mansions, private yachts, artwork and jewellery.

Likewise currently, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the world’s super-rich have made record amounts of wealth with a boom in on-line retailing, virtual meetings and transactions and computer games/video. Over the last 12 months the UK now has a record 171 UK billionaires, 24 more than in 2020, the biggest jump in 22 years. 

Peter Wetherell says: “During the early 1920s the luxury property market in Mayfair boomed as the Edwardian super-rich enjoyed huge wealth accumulation and wanted to enjoy their earnings and celebrate life after the constraints of WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic. Now in 2021 and 2022 we are seeing a similar boom in billionaire wealth and emergence from a pandemic and like the 1920s we are seeing penthouses and mansions in Mayfair selling well and rising dramatically in value.”