London's Latest Luxury Turnkey Properties

I’ll never forget his choice of words,” Jon Byers at Anderson Rose estate agency recalls of a recent client from Johannesburg. “He said, ‘I want the flat and everything in it, right down to the peanuts in the jar’.” For Byers, and many other super-prime London estate agents like him, this kind of demand for a turnkey property, where, he says, “you can just move straight in as soon as you’ve landed,” now dominates the highest echelons of the market. Mark Pollack, from Aston Chase estate agents in St John’s Wood, calls them “toothbrush-ready” properties. It’s not enough, he says, just to present buyers with a beautifully renovated home. “You need to stage the property too. Otherwise it’s like giving a present without wrapping it.”

That means furnishings, down to the teaspoons and toiletries; choosing the artwork and books; selecting the perfect aroma to greet you as you walk in; and the right brands of whiskies and gins to stock the reception room bar. It costs buyers up to 30% more than they would pay for a non-turnkey property, says Jo Eccles at Eccord buying agency. But it’s the price of convenience and the super-rich are more than happy to pay. 

The most expensive new property on the London market currently is the £132-million penthouse at The Bryanston, a new Rafael Viñoly-designed development next to Marble Arch. There is only a tiny pool of possible buyers globally with that kind of cash — for what will, undoubtedly, be one of several residences they own. Simply marketing the space — all 14,000 sq ft of it, plus a private 4,000-sq-ft terrace overlooking Hyde Park — to this rarefied audience isn’t enough.

Every minute detail of this beautiful behemoth, named The Townhouse in the Sky, has been painstakingly curated and crafted in the hope, and possibly expectation, the buyer might take the lot (though extras aren’t included in the price). Kathrin Hersel, property director at the scheme’s developers Almacantar, can practically tell you the names of the childhood pets of the many artists whose work is featured here, so hands on is she — along with the penthouse’s interior designer StudioMorey — with the “gallery-level” art on display. Pieces range from a 150kg glass sculpture suspended from the 6.5-metre-high entrance hall ceiling to a discreet arrangement of tiny wooden sculptures  
that represent the sound wave patterns of different bird song in the Royal Park.

In the super-prime market, turnkey property of this sort is all about “instant gratification,” comments Knight Frank’s Rupert des Forges. “You are effectively putting an instant solution in front of buyers. Nine out of 10 times, they’ll buy everything, lock, stock and barrel.” In the most sought-after areas of north-west London, adds Marc Schneiderman at Arlington Residential, 75% of his sales over the past year have been for turnkey homes. This includes £50 million-plus houses sold to Far Eastern clients who want to buy “literally as seen, with all the contents.” 

Elsewhere, in The Bryanston, the £19-million price tag on a 3,000-sq-ft apartment includes everything within, as designed by David Collins Studio and documented in detail in a heavy coffee-table book for the future buyer. There’s the sofa that’s a replica of the one Princess Diana posed on when photographed by Mario Testino, the side tables from Claridge’s, personalised notepaper in the home office embossed with this trophy home’s address… and on it goes. Every piece, big or small, has a story behind it.

With turnkey properties, there are plenty of touches of fun among the sheer decadence, but there’s also a more prosaic reason for buying a home in this way, where you don’t even need to choose your own bedside reading. And that’s to avoid the hell of supply chains. “They are a real problem,” sighs Hersel. “Just importing a table can take 20 weeks.” She recently spent months waiting for a sofa to clear customs because it shared a shipping container with “an illegal substance”. While buyers may not balk at the high costs of renovating a property, despite construction costs having risen by 25-30% in the past two years, they simply don’t have time to do the work and wait for furniture to arrive, says Eccles.

“Attention spans are shorter,” agrees Jess Bishop, an advisor at DDRE Global, which deals exclusively with this level of the market. “It can take at least three years just to do a full basement refurb, so buyers would rather pay a premium for a turnkey home they can move straight into.”

It’s not just new-build trophy properties, however, that are getting the turnkey treatment. 33 Portland Place, an 11-bedroom Regent’s Park mansion on sale for £75 million, is the most lavish example — in price, size and historical name-dropping — of a period property offered for sale in turnkey fashion.

This Grade II* listed 21,000-sq-ft mansion has an illustrious pedigree: built in 1775 by Robert Adam and host, over the centuries, to aristocrats and celebrities (including Colin Firth when filming The King’s Speech here). Despite this, however, it was in a run-down state that didn’t do it justice nor would command a premium price.

“The key to a successful turnkey renovation is embracing the bones of the property,” comments Claire Reynolds, managing partner at UK Sotheby’s International Realty, which is marketing Portland Place. “It’s about embracing the history and grandeur of the building through preserving and enhancing the period features, and seamlessly blending it with modern-day luxury living and tech,” she adds. And the trick is not to “fight against the building” by ripping out the old, but equally not to make the design so “highly personalised” that the buyer will just rip it out and start again.

Design studio 1508 London — which is well versed in designing new turnkey properties, at The OWO and Chelsea Barracks — took on the challenge. “It was about the layering of the different periods in the property’s history,” says Hamish Brown, a partner at 1508 London. “We wanted to retain and restore original features such as the panelling, the chandeliers and the grand staircase, but we also brought in features on the top floor that made it like a standard 21st-century super-prime London home.”

While turnkey period properties — which are still relatively rare — seldom have the hotel-style luxury facilities that their shiny new counterparts show off, Portland Place now boasts an exquisite swimming pool with hot tub, gym, home cinema and wine room in its basement, plus a modern “sky lounge” with a bar and professional-grade kitchen.

Tory Ashby at Oliver Burns Studio agrees that with period turnkey renovations, it’s all about striking a balance. “High ceilings and beautiful architectural details are a must for UHNWIs. It’s then about being thoughtful in the way you weave in modern-day requirements like HVAC, lifts, lighting and sound. The secret is to uncover the property’s history. It’s all about maintaining the gravitas, seamlessly combining historical elements with wrap-around luxe.”

Some designers, such as Studio Vero, take those historic bones and go on a flight of fantasy. Given “a generous budget” by the overseas buyer of a 7,600-sq-ft apartment in a redeveloped 1890s building in Chelsea, Studio Vero’s co-founder Romanos Brihi describes “hopping from gallery to gallery and visiting antique dealers and suppliers all over the world” to give it the turnkey finish the buyer wanted.

The studio created a black-and-white chequered entrance lobby and a raspberry-coloured hallway, hung an Antony Gormley above the fireplace — “We saw it hanging in the Royal Academy,” says Brihi — and watched decorative artist Henry der Vijver spend 16 weeks hand-painting the double-height living room walls to resemble detailed chevron marquetry.

After all, history has to start somewhere — so why not now, by “providing the buyer with a legacy in design that can be passed down through the generations,” says Edo Mapelli Mozzi, the CEO at Banda Property design firm (and husband of Princess Beatrice), who has recently designed a brand-new £42-million Mulberry Square townhouse at Chelsea Barracks.

He always starts with one focal feature in each room. In the townhouse’s formal reception room, it’s a bespoke Pierre Augustin Rose sofa created specifically for this house. “It’s as much about creating the collection of a lifetime as it is about dressing a home,” he comments.

The speed of sales of turnkey show homes in new schemes illustrates just how much buyers value not having to think about taps and tiles, work out how to furnish rooms with super-high ceilings and curving walls, or fill metres of bookshelves. Developer Northacre recently completed on the sale of a £16-million turnkey penthouse at The Broadway in Westminster, a huge new mixed-use scheme on the site of the former New Scotland Yard, in one week. Design studio Morpheus & Co barely had time to switch on the aromatic diffusers before its dressed apartments at Nova in Victoria and Riverwalk in Westminster were snapped up.

“This expectation for ‘hotel living’ has become the norm and clients expect to turn up, quite literally, with their suitcases, and be able to begin effortlessly and seamlessly enjoying their new homes,” comments Morpheus & Co’s founder Andrew Murray.

As for the South African buyer from Johannesburg — well, he got his flat, and his wish. “True to the deal,” reports Byers, “I bought him a glass jar, engraved his name on it and filled it with peanuts.”