Billionaires Row London Home Offered for More Than $158 Million

By Chris Spillane - Jan 31, 2012 5:19 PM GMT+0700

A luxury home in the U.K.’s most expensive neighborhood is being offered for more than 100 million pounds ($158 million), according to Aylesford International, the broker that’s handling the sale.

The neo-classical house at 6 Palace Green in Kensington is on one of the city’s few private roads where no passing traffic can enter, Managing Director Louise Hewlett said. The 16,000- square-foot (1,486-square-meter) home is owned by Tamzen Ltd., a closely held company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, according to the U.K. Land Registry.

“This is considered the best address in Europe, not just London,” Hewlett said in an e-mail. While Hewlett declined to disclose the value of the property or the owner, she said it would be sold for more than 100 million pounds.

Palace Green is on the southern section of Kensington Palace Gardens, one of two West London streets known as Billionaires Row. Luxury-home prices in the neighborhood have gained about 110 percent since 2004, said Grainne Gilmore, head of U.K. residential research at Knight Frank LLP.

Noam Gottesman, chairman of hedge-fund manager GLG Partners Inc., is listed in the Land Registry as a previous owner of 6 Palace Green. Gottesman sold a property on Palace Green to Lakshmi Mittal, chief executive officer of steelmaker ArcelorMittal, the London Evening Standard reported in 2008. The price was 117 million pounds, the newspaper said.

Mittal bought 18-19 Kensington Palace Gardens in 2004 for 57.1 million pounds, according to the Land Registry. The property is on the same street as the Russian and Nepalese embassies.

An unidentified Russian buyer purchased the U.K.’s most expensive home for about 140 million pounds, the Financial Times reported in August, without saying where it got the information.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Spillane in London at cspillane3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Blackman at ablackman@bloomberg.net.