A boastful Estate Agent in Paddington & Marylebone

Yesterday’s Housing Committee at the London Assembly dealt with the thorny issue of investment buyers on the market for newly built homes in London.

On the Committee l highlighted the experience of those of us living in Paddington & Marylebone, where we have been aware of the flying visits of buy-to-let-ers as the above advert from a local Estate Agent illustrates well. Their Header ” More than half of our sales come from flying visits ( from Riyadh, Doha, Moscow,Kuala Lumpur ) ” says it all quite honestly. 

Furthermore, Kay & Co go on to state;

” In the last year, 52 per cent of all our sales have come from foreign buyers. They see London as a safe haven and a wonderful place to live and work.These buyers are sophisticated, excellently financed – and we know them well. Give us your property and watch it fly.”

 On the same day Transparency International released their report suggesting that the London Property boom is built on dirty money. It suggest that the flow of corrupt cash has driven up average prices with a widespread ripple effect down the property price chain and beyond London.  As billions of pounds of corruptly gained money has been laundered by criminals and foreign officials buying upmarket London properties through anonymous offshore front companies. Some 36,342 properties in London have been brought through hidden companies in offshore havens and while majority of these will have been kept secret for legitimate privacy purposes, vast numbers are thought to have been bought anonymously to hide stolen money. 

All this kind of explains the flying by nature of this new breed of buy-to-let-ers in Central London.