House of Secrets
May 29, 2015 7:31 PM   Subscribe

When the refurbishment is complete, Witanhurst will have about ninety thousand square feet of interior space, making it the second-largest mansion in the city, after Buckingham Palace. It will likely become the most expensive house in London. In 2006, the Qatari royal family bought Dudley House, on Park Lane, for about forty million pounds; after a renovation, its estimated resale value is two hundred and fifty million pounds. Real-estate agents expect that the completed Witanhurst will be worth three hundred million pounds—about four hundred and fifty million dollars.

And no one knows who owns it.
posted by Chrysostom (36 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Sorry, it's me. I should have mentioned it, but after the pushback on that Scalzi fellow mowing his lawn, I didn't want to seem pretentious.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:36 PM on May 29, 2015 [20 favorites]


Uh, the article makes it very clear who owns it. Russian oligarch, duh.
posted by rikschell at 7:40 PM on May 29, 2015


Apparently, it was used as a filming location for Tipping the Velvet, according to Wikipedia. So, y'know, that's hot.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:41 PM on May 29, 2015


Mefi IRL squat festival?
posted by oceanjesse at 8:02 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


That much would buy my whole neighborhood, the one next to it and the one on the other side.
posted by octothorpe at 8:06 PM on May 29, 2015




Gurieva carefully guards her public profile—her Instagram account, which is protected, has the handle @t_o_p_s_e_c_r_e_t

You're doing it wrong.
posted by miyabo at 8:18 PM on May 29, 2015 [5 favorites]


This is not my beautiful house.
posted by parki at 8:30 PM on May 29, 2015 [11 favorites]


No, but Google Maps will totally tell you where that highway goes to.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:49 PM on May 29, 2015 [3 favorites]


The old couple next door seem like fun.
posted by maggiemaggie at 9:07 PM on May 29, 2015 [6 favorites]


Yes, but Scalzi's place in Ohio has a larger yard...
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:17 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


"London is to the billionaire as the jungles of Sumatra are to the orangutan,” Johnson said. “We’re proud of that.”

Critically endangered due to corruption and illegal overdevelopment? Let's hope so.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:18 PM on May 29, 2015 [29 favorites]


Maybe some day, it'll be a museum, like this family's mansion.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:28 PM on May 29, 2015


I hear it's going to be some sort of school for gifted youngsters.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:30 PM on May 29, 2015 [25 favorites]


You know something is wrong when there are multiple replicas of Versailles In the world being developed simultaneously by the uberwealthy.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:36 PM on May 29, 2015 [8 favorites]


I see no shark tank for the deposit box.
posted by clavdivs at 9:50 PM on May 29, 2015


Yay! London uses market value assessment to set their property taxes. Right?
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:30 PM on May 29, 2015


Of course we do. These guys will be shelling out nearly £3,000 per year!
posted by doiheartwentyone at 10:49 PM on May 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


And just a few hours ago, I was sharing mid-70s loft pictures from Tumblr with a friend of mine and thinking "it would be nice to live here".

Then again, I'd rather live on a somewhat spacious loft than on something this size.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:59 AM on May 30, 2015


if Witanhurst is sold for three hundred million pounds, the buyer will owe about thirty-six million in taxes

The buyer will almost certainly pay nothing in tax at all. Is this journalist 10 years old?
posted by colie at 3:49 AM on May 30, 2015 [10 favorites]


The thing is, London and Manhattan are making themselves unliveable places. I guess, that's their choice, but it seems very shortsighted to me.
posted by newdaddy at 5:52 AM on May 30, 2015


"London is to the billionaire as the jungles of Sumatra are to the orangutan,” Johnson said. “We’re proud of that.”

Eaten by the locals when times get tough?
posted by Joe Chip at 7:52 AM on May 30, 2015 [11 favorites]


Whoa, they did a film of Tipping the Velvet???
posted by sfkiddo at 9:06 AM on May 30, 2015


Eaten by the locals when times get tough?

Oh good lord no. Organic, free-range millionaires are far tastier. Cage-raised billionaires are mostly flavourless.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:11 AM on May 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


Which way to the Batcave?
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:52 AM on May 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


Even if I were rich enough, I like to think I would refuse to live anyplace where you need either shopping-mall-style directory maps or a GPS to find your way around..... it'd be embarrassing to keep getting lost, day after day, in your own home.
posted by easily confused at 11:24 AM on May 30, 2015


The buyer will almost certainly pay nothing in tax at all. Is this journalist 10 years old?

Well, they did say that the buyer will *owe* 36 million... nothing about how much they'll actually pay.

Although, of course, their property tax will magically be almost nothing at all, because rich.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 11:49 AM on May 30, 2015


if Witanhurst is sold for three hundred million pounds, the buyer will owe about thirty-six million in taxes

The buyer will almost certainly pay nothing in tax at all. Is this journalist 10 years old?


How so? The house sale is subject to Stamp Duty, which presumably is what this is referring to.

stamp duty calculator
posted by C.A.S. at 12:42 PM on May 30, 2015


betweenthebars: "direct link to DM illustration of the underground complex

It's something.
"

Hikikomori's dream.

Like - I'm not a hikikomori, but I am an introvert with social anxieties. My excuse for not exercising as much is that I have to do it in public and that causes anxiety. Of course I realize now how much bullshit that really is, because imagining this palace where I literally COULD exercise without anyone watching, let's admit it, I wouldn't.

But if there WERE people who truly had that problem, this could be a boon for them.

Somehow, though, I have a feeling that if you're a hikikomori, you don't quite have the social connections that would enable something like this to happen for you. I mean, unless your parents were super rich Russian Oligarchs.

Was Jean des Esseintes the first fictional hikikomori?
posted by symbioid at 1:42 PM on May 30, 2015


The article implies that Guryev and his family are naturally private people. (A trait that is reinforced, no doubt, by the security implications of being wealthy in Russia, where you could be kidnapped at any time.) And then there's Guryev's history of being almost, but not quite, in Putin's crosshairs, and you can see why he might be interested in building a private underground kingdom.
posted by Kevin Street at 1:59 PM on May 30, 2015


This is totally where I would hang out during a zombie apocalypse.
posted by Jalliah at 2:04 PM on May 30, 2015


London and Manhattan are making themselves unliveable places.
But better for them once they build the enclosed domes (fully air conditioned, of course; they know Global Warming is real, it's just not for them - plus, as sea levels rise, they get a natural moat). They obviously saw "Elysium", thought "why bother to invest in a space program to build it in orbit when we can put it all in already-prestigious addresses on Earth"?
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:02 PM on May 30, 2015


I recently made a small splurge purchase of a 12-week subscription to The New Yorker for $12, for the following reasons:
(1) to give them a small tip for providing more good MetaFilter posts than the NYTimes.
(2) to not have to work to bypass the "you've read X articles, shouldn't you be paying us?" messages on the website
(3) to have something non-electronic to read on the john
(4) to impress the heck out of my mail carrier

I got the latest issue with the Republican Candidates Locker Room on the cover and "House of Secrets" right in the front, after the "Talk of the Town" section which consists of "Art and Money" about the ever-more obscene prices of the most valuable works of art, "Air Bus" about 'Blade' a "uber for helicopters", "D.I.Y. School" about the Malibu school James Cameron sends his kids to, "It's My Party" about a man who hired Nicky Minaj to perform at his son's bar mitzvah, and "Life Without Audience" about Vin Scelsa's retirement from his long running radio show 'Idiot's Delight', the only one of the five that did not give me cramps from extreme eye-rolling. Only the last of the five had any interest to me other than confirming my suspicions about the Pure Evil of the "1%ers". But there was also this cartoon which emitted a solid 'New Yorker chuckle' from me and this 'Shouts and Murmers' piece about Conservative/Liberal stereotypes showing that I have NOTHING in common with either of them... at least with The New Yorker's versions. So I am quite undecided whether I will renew after the 12 weeks end...

But I digress...
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:46 PM on May 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


How so? The house sale is subject to Stamp Duty, which presumably is what this is referring to.

Stamp duty doesn't apply to assets transferred to trusts. Really big London houses like this are never bought in the way you or I might 'buy' something... there will be trusts dealing with trusts within tax havens. The owner will also be a non-UK resident and will lease the house out to another company, whether or not he lives there much (the rules on this are very lax).

We are long past the point where the UK govt could collect these kind of taxes on the super rich without spending more on the collection process than the revenue would amount to. For non-super rich people, of course it's a different story and you simply go to jail immediately for not paying tax.
posted by colie at 2:46 AM on May 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


This is totally where I would hang out during a zombie apocalypse.

This is totally the kind of compound I would want to put a large number of billionaires into, and then release zombies inside. While watching the action via webcam. And siccing dogs on any escapees.
posted by FatherDagon at 2:51 AM on May 31, 2015


The thing is, London and Manhattan are making themselves unliveable places

I don't know about London, but I've been hearing that about Manhattan my whole life, and I'm in my late 40s.
posted by Gelatin at 7:00 AM on June 1, 2015


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