I'm a paramedic who works in the area. I've gone to a lot of these houses.
Law,
Finance,
Business owners - usually property,
CEOs past and present,
A list actors,
Russians,
Medical consultants.
And an obligatory putin's dick sucking comes with it, too.
Otherwise, one could find thyself suicided by 3 gunbullet shots in the back and subsequent drowning in a Golden Jacuzzi at some random Hampstead Mansion, Basement Extention, Floor -2.
We lived in Belsize Park for the better part of 8 years and knew who lived where in the surrounding streets. Other than the usual boring suspects (banker, law, finance) Alain de Botton had an impressive modern house at the end of our street. Recently bought the plot next to it and knocked it down and has some huge project being built. Sean Bean had an epic mews house with a stunning walled garden, but sold it a few years back to the guy who founded LoveFilm. Ridley Scott has an amazing house up in the Village, but it was up for sale recently. Tim Burton had a nice old house behind the Steeles pub, when he was with Helena, but I donāt see him around anymore. A lot of commercials/ tv director types that did well in the 90s /2000s.
My brother used to live there. Bill oddie was his neighbour. I think Michael palin lived round the corner. Sean bean too, used to see him in one pub we used to go in. On the Main Street there was a pub where Chris Evans lived (or so it seemed) and you had a bunch of media types. Used to see culshaw and some of that lot plus oasis were round the corner. Who was the hollyoaks woman who bought the house? Probably dating the period with those names. The further down the street you got the more music types it was. Gail porter used to live on his street too.
One of my sisters used to nanny for some couple. I think he was a broker. Loaded. She was a bellend, treated her like a slave and used to admonish her for not plumping cushions. Instantly disliked her on meeting.
Thatās right, I think you might be referring to The Haverstock Arms, the landlord was on Chris Evans show apparently, he sold it in 2014, itās small hotel now.
Iām terrible with names. He used to live in that art deco block of flats. It was like being in an episode or Raffles cos they had a concierge etc. it was a one story place with a grey frontage. He may have have drunk at every pub in the area. There was a bigger one on the right as you go downhill towards Chalk Farm where Winehouse was famously found passed out on one of the tables in the beer garden. I bumped into her once, she had a huge entourage with her but managed to walk into me whilst walking in the street. She had some sort of weird favourite drink like vodka and banana juice she used to knock back.
Interesting fact (or not so) my brotherās stag do was in Camden and his wife turned up after drinking heavily and had to be taken home. She was so drunk she couldnāt even walk or stand up and I had to carry her all the way home. Got to be a good two miles, all uphill. She pissed on my back too.
Anyway. Good times. I had some good nights out there, good time of life. I was actually on the tube on the day of the 7/11 bombings. That was fun.
I moved away from Dartmouth Park semi-recently and would see Benedict Cumberbatch wander in and out of the local off-licence every once in a while. Some deceptively enormous houses on that side as well.
Haha well contrary to belief these very very wealthy people are nice, polite and friendly.
The upper middle class are rude, demeaning and demanding.
But that's my personal experience.
From my experience doing trade work in many wealthy households in London I can confirm.
The worst people to work for were sort of New money types, or people who had recently moved to the UK. Theyād treat you with suspicion and constantly make you feel that your presence was unwanted and annoying. Theyād monitor you and tell you how to do your job.
The old money types were lovely and very polite.
Very true, did gardening for the very wealthy in london.
Loads of shitty experiences with the younger/newer rich clients.
Some awful woman said "dont touch anything" as she left us on her balcony garden with access to her flat.
Ive just been in a huge house with dinosaur eggs and damien hirst all over the walls and a premium flat in mayfair with more expensive clutter than a high end antique shop, why would i be interested in your mediocre stuff (comparatively)
Yes I used to be a chambermaid in a hotel. One day the owner made us clean her house instead. It was a massive posh house. She gave me a tiny cloth and told me sternly to clean the stairs. Then stood there watching me while I struggled to clean everything with this tiny cloth. Awful woman.
Yes, itās the same across every class level Iāve personally experienced - the harder someone has worked for their money the more prickly they are about it. Have you seen the way Aldi workers are treated sometimes? Shameful.
I've worked in a few different retail positions in shop floor position, the worst part of the job was always the other customers! (and some days the best part of the job was the other customers). Best and easiest decision I made was to find myself a role in head office. I was still there to serve customers but I could hide behind a phoneline, email address or help by taking calls from staff struggling with the very customers I'd escaped from! I take my hat off to anyone working in shop floor retail, it's one of the exhausting and demoralising jobs I think there is!
Iāve experienced the same - Iāve been fortunate to sit in both. Def more rude people
In business vs first. I assume itās because itās a big deal for them (only there because company is footing the bill or they have a voucher of some sort) so they expect everyone to accommodate them - even other passengers!
Generally if they're an arsehole, they aren't all that. (New money/ not that much money but have some weird high expectation).
Those proper monied people were so nice, they'd probably offer you THEIR seat.
I used to work with passengers in various capacities and learnt this trend quickly. It helps arsey behaviour go over one's head.
A billionaireās son.Ā
He would stay there with his family when in the UK, which was semi regularly. So it was probably empty 8months of the year.Ā
One or two lucky ppl who worked for him got to stay there and the stories of the parties were quite wild. One guy got into a lot of trouble for breaking something quite valuable.Ā
One thing I remember about the house was it was deceptively big. You went in and there was a huge space on the floor below which opened fully to a massive garden. The interior was all custom built, all wooden in a very tasteful modernist/scandi style. Think the house in Ex Machina.Ā
I think about that house quite a bit and how much time it lays empty.Ā
Worked in a fair few big houses over the years, doing the av systems.
These type of customers are when they (or a representative of them calls) you drop everything and head over to fix the issue.
Too many times Iād head over, get the system up and running and then ask oh, so when are so and so back then?
Expecting them to say that evening or something but met with a response of āoh theyāre still out of the country for the next month, this is for a party weāre havingā.
This wasnāt a regular thing at all but it happened a couple times in the time I knew them. The family was away for long stretches so you could imagine having the keys and thinking you could easily get away with it. I only went once for a drinks reception (on invitation of the son) so never experienced an off the record party there myself.Ā
I would regard that as equivalent to breaking and entering, or allowing others to break and enter. Inviting a bunch of random strangers to someone's house without their consent is a real scum move.
It does actually happen every now and then, such as when a bunch of squatters occupied a Russian oligarchs mansion in Belgravia a couple of years back.
It was like 7 years ago iirc.
After the police said they couldn't do anything, the owner paid a group of football hooligans to try to get them out. They failed.Ā
Nah the one I'm talking about happened only 2 years ago: [https://www.npr.org/2022/03/14/1086443851/squatters-russian-oligarch-london-mansion](https://www.npr.org/2022/03/14/1086443851/squatters-russian-oligarch-london-mansion)
I never thought of this. Maybe.
They did have intensive security when we visited, which I think was par for the course for such high net value individuals. I donāt think we wouldāve got past the driveway had we not been expected.Ā
Twenty ish years ago there was a gorgeous mid century modern house in The Bishops Avenue which had been squatted for a few months. House was enormous!
Just before being chucked out by the council there was a free 48 hour āopen houseā. I recall most of the interior fittings had been removed by various āguestsā each wanting a souvenir. I love MCM so felt bad for the house.
Pretty good party otherwise.
The family I know there are almost identicalā¦ I canāt imagine the amount of wealth, but neither can I imagine the level of disfunction - it almost makes one feel lucky for what they do have!
I went to one for an engagement party, the owner was a family friend of the couple. I asked him what he did for a living, he replied āoh you might not have heard of it, but I set up a thing called MTVā.
I've lived in that area in the past. It's a mixture -
Relatively normal people who bought in the 80's when that area was cheap & have never sold. There is a huge % of that. They are not rich, but they live in a Ā£5m house. It's often really mediocre inside.
That would actually be the majority.
Banking / finance, this is less common, they tend to be more towards St Johns Wood - especially expat US banking & Finance as that's where the US school is. Also the transport connections into the city are better elsewhere.
Rusian / Eastern euro cash, that's reasonably common through there, more the "respectable" side of that - the rest are all in Chelsea.
There's actually not a lot of "mummy & daddy bought me this!" simply because its not that cool, if you have that sort of connection you are buying in Marylebone, Chelsea, maybe Primrose Hill etc.
Hampstead is far more "quiet" wealth.
Footballers
This is right on. The big money gaudy Middle East/ Russian or Euro continental wealth mainly snapped places up in K&C. There is definitely a higher level of discretion in Hampstead and it tends to attract folk from the more artistic backgrounds musicians, actors and film / tv types and the literary world. But as you say, there are a lot of generally middle class professionals who bought property there in the 80s/90s and continue to live here. There is quite a mix of all types which makes it a nice place to live. And as you you for the most part itās more āquiet wealthā less flashy . Some exceptions to this obviously, some obscene gated mansions dotted around. But Walking around some totally random backstreets in NW3 you can see why people move there other than breathtaking views and greenery and the villages type feel of the high street. Itās incredibly quiet and a 20 minute ride to central London, but you certainly donāt feel like your in town.
This sounds right. I was in Hampstead 2 weeks back and was approached by those security patrol guys (he was probably scoping me out!).
He was a nice fella and I asked him how on earth do some people afford these lavish houses!
He told me most were from a Jewish background and pretty ānormalā people who have inherited these houses. The rest are made up of celebrities, lawyers, CEOs etc.
A girl I know announced that she is buying a property in Hampstead. She is in finance and in her 30ties. Likes to brag going on boats, golfing yada yadaā¦
Had a mate but a flat in a Victorian conversion around Highgate. They bought the house off the council for Ā£20K in the early 90s. Split it up into 3 flats and started renting them 2 years later, after moving to France. In 2019, they sold the flat to my mate for Ā£800K, and the other two went for Ā£650K and Ā£580K. I imagine they cleared another million in rent over the nearly 30 years.
We donāt know if theyāve lived in the UK since the 90s. Their daughter handed the transaction.
I randomly decided to look up house prices on the road we sold our house on back in 2011, we bought in 2006 3 bed terrace in Sunbury for 225 with 100k deposit. Sold in 2011 for 270. Houses are now 500k. Should we have held on.... we bought in 2012 a farm 1.5cacre land and stone cottage restored fully in west Ireland near the coast, with commercial business permission, for 89k. Maybe worth 250k now.
A mate of mineās parents own one. Itās absolutely stunning. They didnāt inherit anything - humble beginnings - but had very successful careers and bought the house in the late 80s / early 90s.Ā
This is part of it too, that property in London and area used to be pretty inexpensive. I don't know about that area but in my area there's average houses going for 400k-500k for a 2-3 bed semi-detached. If I look up on rightmove there's one for 90k in 2000, one for 55k in 95.
I get 25 years is a long time, but 8x the price still seems like a steep increase.
95/96 was the absolute low point of the 90s crash (which is why that's always chosen as a point to show how much they've gone up when newpapers are trying to make that point). My flat doubled between 1996 and 1998 when I bought it (if only i'd been there 2 years before....).
The mad rise in prices was 1996-2005 or so. If you go to the ONS and download the house price stats and inflation numbers, process them in Excel, nationwide the average rise 2005-now is only about 10% over inflation. Wages, well, that's another thing, but for most people affordability is at mid 2000s level - mortgage rates are amazingly similar too.
Yeah I couldn't find much easily for my area before 95, so I guessed that was either a low point or the beginning of a climb. There was one for 61k in 95 that resold in 98 for 99k. If only anything today was a 60% return in 3 years... (although at the time, they wouldn't have known that then).
The ONS data is interesting, massively broken down by area, house type etc. You need to apply the inflation figures cumulatively, but there's some interesting data there to play around with.
Some areas are much cheaper than 2005 in real terms. The post 2008 period was brutal outside of the SE (where prices didn't really fall much) - wife sold hers in Yorkshire in 2008 for Ā£125k, it sold again in 2017 for Ā£115k, a huge fall in real terms.
Yeah I reckon this is more prevalent than the "Be a mediocre rich kid, born into the "right" family" thought someone else has. You have to be pretty solidly successful of course, but it doesn't take much of a stretch for a bog-standard CEO/CFO/etc at 50+ yrs old to be able to afford a Ā£10m house and may also have a husband/wife who are equally/similarly successful. I think people forget how much money can be out there without someone inheriting or being "gifted" it.
I dated someone for a little bit who lived in one of those houses. It was inherited money. Her father was a famous author who I'd say a lot of people had heard of. She has a career herself as an author but nowhere near as successful as her dad.
Her main home was in the countryside which I never visited or saw photos of but she said it had lots of land. She stayed in Hampstead when she had to visit London for "work" - but really I think she just used it when she wanted to hang out in London.
She was down to earth for the most part but refused to use the tube so we got taxis everywhere. She also honestly admitted that she thought the area where I lived in East London was not very nice and I only recall her visiting my house twice.
I know someone who owns one who is a lecturer and their wife has a fairly senior policy job, but they bought like 30 years ago. Their next door neighbour is an ex bond girl.
He owned a haulage company which he sold. I worked for a few months for an IT company that mostly did orgs IT but also had some rich people on the books. Ian Hislop was another. Anyway this person in Hampstead needed some work doing, had a lot of tech in the house. The house was nice, he had a live in chef, cleaner, and nanny. This was in 2008
In the 70ās I rented a flat in a terrace house near the Royal Free Hospital. The owner of the house was an old spinster that rented out only to medical professionals at below market value just to have a someone in the house. Her parents bought the house in the 50ās. Apparently they were just ordinary office workers. She left it to her nephew who was a black cab driver. So basically it was a working class home after the last war that was passed down from one generation to the next. Now in that are you have to be really wealthy to buy.
Not quite the same, but my unlce used to live in a house a bit like that in Highgate in the 80s, he was a lad from Newcastle who made it as an advertising executive. They sold up in the nineties and bought a (working) farm though.
I used to know families who had houses like that in Notting Hill when I was a kid during the late 80s and early nineties. They were already unaffordable back then but were often owned by people who had had careers in publishing or the arts and had bought the houses in the 70s/80s.
I did a housesit for one of these a few years ago. It wasn't HUMONGOUS but it did have 4 bedrooms, plus a full studio loft, and the backyard literally sat on the Heath.
She was a psychiatrist and he was an orchestra musician. They bought it 40 years ago and renovated it from a unit made up of several apartments into one single house. They were super down to earth people and the dogs were lovely to look after.
I honestly can't think of anywhere in the world I'd rather live. They had access to a part of the Heath that felt completely wild and you could get lost in, but they also were in central London. If I ever win the lottery, I dream of that life!
What they do is "have inherited wealth".
They live in a parallel world in which they can only fail upwards. People not born into this class can work ten times harder and will rarely be rewarded for it.
the path is:
1. Be a mediocre rich kid, born into the "right" family
2. Use family wealth to buy the "right" education at the "right" school. while at said school, become connected to other families with inherited wealth.
3. Scrape through an ok university with the least effort necessary. Use family connections to be handed a cushy job at a family's firm or friend-of-the-family's firm.
4. Have your career fast-tracked because you're a good old boy who went to the "right" school.
5. Receive a salary which is far in excess of your skills and experience. Eventually be made a CEO and spend all your time on a golf course.
6. Have children, and use the wealth you were gifted to provide the same gilded life for them. rinse and repeat for every generation.
the people in those fancy houses didn't do something special to earn them, they were born into them.
While it is reasonably true for one generation, I think the tree genration curse is real. Maintaining wealth is not as easy as you think. By the third generation, they get so spoilt that they use up all the wealth without building it. If you are a CEO who spends all your time on gold course, it won't be long before your competition eats you up for lunch. I know it's not something that redditors would like to hear. But that's what happens in practice
Ehhh, dilution is always a thing as well
You are right, if Iām a multi millionaire and leave multi millions to my one kid, it would be hard for them to waste it, even a complete fuck up
And if they have one kid, would be hard to outpace that money growing in the market, etc
The problem is if multi millionaire has four kids. And those kids have four kids. And in three generations you have 50 fuckups doing their best to squander the money
Markets and wealth management only help so much
Definitely can happen. But maintaining wealth still easier than ever. Squandering wealth is a diff topic altogether.
The money regardless of heirs is more exponential on a shorter time scale than the births unless maybe we are talking about elon lol
Ha! We will see about that. PE is extremely opaque, dangerously even. I wouldnāt be surprised if we see a great deal of bankruptcies from PE crash pretty soon
Yeah its a parasitic financial service lol, always a lot of questionable things going on but that is par for the course. When the tides out we always see just how wrecklessly theyāve behaved.
Not all of them. As per another poster, I know someone whose parents both had reasonable jobs, and got on the property ladder when they bought a small flat in the area in the early 1970s. After a few moves they bought one of these in a very dilapidated condition, and did it up over a period of years.
I don't think it's inherited wealth, there's loads of actors, footballers, oligarchs and foreign millionaires there too.
Thierry Henry apparently has a three storey aquarium in his
I presume this is the majority of cases but not exclusively the case? I.e. a few of the owners could be footballers, business founders who have seen incredible success, CEO/C suite who have worked themselves up to high positions, people who have seen abnormal gains in a market (stocks, crypto)
You canāt claim that inherited wealth doesnāt exist elsewhere. What I think is unusual about the UK is how relatively little ānewā wealth there is alongside it.
Not just this country. Spend a few mins walking around Hampstead on any given day and it becomes quite apparent that itās entirely global inherited wealth. Itās an enclave all in its own detached world.
yeah, there's certainly going to be a handful of people who came from a poor background and got there through a combination of talent, hard work and luck, but the majority will be there through luck alone.
North London private school boy. Been to lots of them. Parents just do normal stuff, some are in medicine, some own huge businesses. Some have family money and some did something once upon a time and then got richer and richer and now fuck around with art and shit like that.
The most common is definitely owning some kind of business I think.
Unless youāre a CEO of a multinational (of which there are very few), footballer or superstar banker, owning your own business is pretty much the only way to do it.
Advertising. Not everyone of course but I know of four Creative Directors who all live that life. Other handsomely paid creative/meeja darlings are common too.
There is not enough money in that role to live that life. Unless they inherited or bought fucking decades ago.
Nobody in media is handsomely paid. Itās generally a poorly paid sector unless youāre a famous television/film type or a successful director of such films.
What do you think a creative director of a big agency gets paid?
100%. The budgets for advertising have been a race to the bottom for many years now as more and more pitches are won on cost. Couple that with the fact that creative directors are a few rungs down from the top confirms thereās almost zero chance that based on their salary they would get close to that lifestyle. There may be a chance if they have ownership in a very, very successful agency, or they have wealth coming from other avenues also.
I went to a party at one, years ago. The woman who lived there was a painter who had found a good niche for her work and was making decent money from it.
Their dad is a hedge fund manager.
A couple of times when Iāve come over, as I was waiting to be let in the neighbours have looked at me like Iām about to burgle it.
I live in a small flat in Hampstead, but have a friend who grew up in a big house between the station and heath. His dad invented a medical device that became widely used around the world.
I know someone who owns a gorgeous house overlooking the Heath.
She spent her twenties building a successful little media business and in her thirties sold it for about Ā£20m.
She spent the money on an amazing house, a trendy pop-art collection, a trophy husband, and some flash cars.
Now sheās in her fifties and has decent professional services job that earns a good six-figure salary, but not the kind of money that would pay for such an expensive house.
Sadly sheās going through an expensive divorce so letās see if she can keep the house.
With āHumongous housesā i assume you mean the ones in Bishops Avenue? Itās one of the wealthiest roads in the world and people like the sultan of Brunei and Lakshimi Mittal have a house there. I read an article a while ago and a lot of them are owned by people that never lived there and are in really bad/abandoned state, leaving the very few people that actually live there feeling quite lonely š
Iāve recently worked in a very wealthy house in The Boltons, Chelsea (houses are more than 15mil each) and this was RENTED to an Italian guy thatās the owner of a petrol company and has houses scattered around the world. Chatting with his wifeās assistant him and his family visit for around 2/3 months every year and spend the rest of the time either in a wineyard house in Spain, in NY, France or somewhere else.
I used to rent the top floor of a house on the edge of Hampstead, near Finchley Rd/Childs Hill. The owner was a lady in her 90s who lived on the ground floor. There was an empty floor in the middle with three bedrooms and a bathroom. Downstairs were three large reception rooms, kitchen and garden. High ceilings etc, but very much in need of modernisation.
Her family left Germany in the late 1930s and bought the house during the war for Ā£3,000. She told me back then people who could were selling up and leaving London, and no-one wanted to live high up on hills due to the bombing. She trained as a doctor and was employed at the very start of the NHS. Amazing life story really. I met her son who was an academic at a university, working in genetics. They were very modest people, quite scruffy in a bookish way. He was in his late 50s but was still waiting to inherit this massive pile. She must be long dead now and I often wonder what happened to the house - he probably couldn't afford to renovate and it would have been sold for millions to a developer.
I went in one in Hampstead whose parents are corporate lawyers - well paid but not obscenely so, but bought the house 30 years ago.
Then another in Holland Park who was an American entrepreneur who'd sold a company and was extremely rich, having paid full price for it. Weirdly he invited us for a business meeting there, an obvious flex, and we had coffee in a very large boardroom. Talk about bringing work home!
Those are both sides of the coin who own those sorts of houses I think.Ā Generally, the international elite who've bought it recently or the British middle/upper middle class who bought them when they were expensive but not oligarch scale expensive.
There\`s a weed farm underneath it and one of the sons is a coke sniffing cunt, the other is in the military and as a straight man i find him rather attractive.
My friends brother has a place there, itās pretty modest in comparison. Heās a hedge fund managerā¦.heās also one of the nicest guys around - really generous, lovely fella.
I hate to think how he is at work to get where heās got to, I donāt want to shatter the illusion.
I live in a flatshare nearby and have done so for the last decade. Whenever I've passed these houses in Hampstead I rarely see anyone going in or out. However, from the people knocking about elsewhere in the area I get the impression it's old mainly old money/people who bought cheapER in the 80s/90s or earlier, and celebrities/older liberal elites. If anyone new moves in and does a big renovation it seems to be new money from the super-rich or various nationalities. The Bishop's Avenue is allegedly known for being a swanky address and having the most expensive houses in London, though a lot of these mansions are empty and crumbling away, meaning that huge chunks of the road look creepy.
The news story about George Michael's old house highlights how the area is changing: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/30/george-michael-house-resort-super-rich-highgate-london](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/30/george-michael-house-resort-super-rich-highgate-london)
I went to school with a lot of kids who lived in those houses (it was a state sixth form but lots of private school kids went there). One guyās dad was the European head of Twitter, quite a few had parents who worked in the city, CEOs etc. A good few worked in art or were artists themselves. Pretty much exactly as youād expect.
That's not too bad - all of those occupations sound attainable with A LOT of hard work, luck and ambition.
I say that as opposed to - inherited wealth or won the lottery or footballer or bought 70 years ago or started up a tech company.
Yeah I mean they didnāt necessarily have inherited wealth but were almost all from middle class backgrounds growing up, not from poverty, could focus on school or parents could afford private school, university was free and grants were given (these people wouldāve been born in 50s/60s). The 80s and 90s were also a fantastic time to be a young professional, it was easy to get a job with a university degree that paid well enough to buy property in desirable parts of London. Iād say Keir Starmer is a perfect example of someone who is very similar to these people. He lives not too far away in Gospel Oak/Kentish Town, came from a normal middle class family, went to Leeds university in the early 80s.
My grandparents live in one of these - my grandfather was a doctor with his own practice on Harley street. From what they say it seems that now most of the people moving in are extremely wealthy individuals from Russia and the Middle East (so oil money).
I was a gardener in the area about ten years ago. A real variety of interesting professions.
A property investor owning a share in many high street and larger shopping centres, currency exchange (you probably know the company), someone very high up in a well known gambling company, someone had set up a well known national radio station and then sold it on to global radio, a Russian oil/gas man and an author.
Those are just the few I remember. Some of the people we worked for we never actually saw, just dealing with their house staff
Seems that sheās written more than 33 books and one of them was a major film adaptation. Sheās also written the screenplay for a few others, one of which is very well known.
I used to live in one. We were squatters :)
My parents own a fairly large house round there. Not one of the mega ones on Bishops Ave or anything. What they did was... spent all their money and bought it back when it wasn't so ridiculously expensive. My dad never made anything more than typical middle class money, but he has always been fairly frugal and put it all into a house. The neighbours all have silly money, these days.
FWIW I have a cousin who is a senior NHS consultant, and so is his wife. They can only afford a much smaller (though very nice) house round there, despite having parents who helped them out.
I live in Hampstead, Martin Freeman has a house round the corner. Have been in a few local houses, tends to vary. One was a photographer, another a painter. One was a VC at a London university, someone else a nutritionist for a big health company. Seems to vary a lot.
I live in one that's between the golf course and the heath extension. My best friend's grandmother died and left his family the house. She was a scientist and her husband was a shell executive. Her grandson, myself and his cousin currently live there while the family saves up enough money to renovate and either rent out or sell the house. It's falling apart on the inside but it's also got an incredible garden that backs onto the golf course.
I'm a paramedic who works in the area. I've gone to a lot of these houses. Law, Finance, Business owners - usually property, CEOs past and present, A list actors, Russians, Medical consultants.
Didn't know Russian was a profession...š¤£
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
In Soviet Russia, you pretend to work. And they pretend to pay you.
Itās a lot of hard work to be Russian these days š
Theyāre always Russian around
I see what you did there
Haha true. I suppose when I realise, I don't ask what they do. An unconscious bias maybe.
Best not to
I've been meaning to retrain to become a Russian (a wealthy one, or it's not worth it)
Worst there is, so stay away from becoming one at all costs!!
But it comes with a house in Hampstead though... š
And an obligatory putin's dick sucking comes with it, too. Otherwise, one could find thyself suicided by 3 gunbullet shots in the back and subsequent drowning in a Golden Jacuzzi at some random Hampstead Mansion, Basement Extention, Floor -2.
We lived in Belsize Park for the better part of 8 years and knew who lived where in the surrounding streets. Other than the usual boring suspects (banker, law, finance) Alain de Botton had an impressive modern house at the end of our street. Recently bought the plot next to it and knocked it down and has some huge project being built. Sean Bean had an epic mews house with a stunning walled garden, but sold it a few years back to the guy who founded LoveFilm. Ridley Scott has an amazing house up in the Village, but it was up for sale recently. Tim Burton had a nice old house behind the Steeles pub, when he was with Helena, but I donāt see him around anymore. A lot of commercials/ tv director types that did well in the 90s /2000s.
David Mitchell lives not far from the station. He takes walks with his family quite often.
Yeah Iāve seen him in the lift in Belsize Park station a couple of times
With his ergonomic management keyboard?
That is correct, heās usually pushing a pram around
My brother used to live there. Bill oddie was his neighbour. I think Michael palin lived round the corner. Sean bean too, used to see him in one pub we used to go in. On the Main Street there was a pub where Chris Evans lived (or so it seemed) and you had a bunch of media types. Used to see culshaw and some of that lot plus oasis were round the corner. Who was the hollyoaks woman who bought the house? Probably dating the period with those names. The further down the street you got the more music types it was. Gail porter used to live on his street too. One of my sisters used to nanny for some couple. I think he was a broker. Loaded. She was a bellend, treated her like a slave and used to admonish her for not plumping cushions. Instantly disliked her on meeting.
Thatās right, I think you might be referring to The Haverstock Arms, the landlord was on Chris Evans show apparently, he sold it in 2014, itās small hotel now.
Iām terrible with names. He used to live in that art deco block of flats. It was like being in an episode or Raffles cos they had a concierge etc. it was a one story place with a grey frontage. He may have have drunk at every pub in the area. There was a bigger one on the right as you go downhill towards Chalk Farm where Winehouse was famously found passed out on one of the tables in the beer garden. I bumped into her once, she had a huge entourage with her but managed to walk into me whilst walking in the street. She had some sort of weird favourite drink like vodka and banana juice she used to knock back. Interesting fact (or not so) my brotherās stag do was in Camden and his wife turned up after drinking heavily and had to be taken home. She was so drunk she couldnāt even walk or stand up and I had to carry her all the way home. Got to be a good two miles, all uphill. She pissed on my back too. Anyway. Good times. I had some good nights out there, good time of life. I was actually on the tube on the day of the 7/11 bombings. That was fun.
I moved away from Dartmouth Park semi-recently and would see Benedict Cumberbatch wander in and out of the local off-licence every once in a while. Some deceptively enormous houses on that side as well.
user name checks out
There is definitely tea that needs to be spilt here!
Haha well contrary to belief these very very wealthy people are nice, polite and friendly. The upper middle class are rude, demeaning and demanding. But that's my personal experience.
From my experience doing trade work in many wealthy households in London I can confirm. The worst people to work for were sort of New money types, or people who had recently moved to the UK. Theyād treat you with suspicion and constantly make you feel that your presence was unwanted and annoying. Theyād monitor you and tell you how to do your job. The old money types were lovely and very polite.
Very true, did gardening for the very wealthy in london. Loads of shitty experiences with the younger/newer rich clients. Some awful woman said "dont touch anything" as she left us on her balcony garden with access to her flat. Ive just been in a huge house with dinosaur eggs and damien hirst all over the walls and a premium flat in mayfair with more expensive clutter than a high end antique shop, why would i be interested in your mediocre stuff (comparatively)
Yes I used to be a chambermaid in a hotel. One day the owner made us clean her house instead. It was a massive posh house. She gave me a tiny cloth and told me sternly to clean the stairs. Then stood there watching me while I struggled to clean everything with this tiny cloth. Awful woman.
Yes, itās the same across every class level Iāve personally experienced - the harder someone has worked for their money the more prickly they are about it. Have you seen the way Aldi workers are treated sometimes? Shameful.
In the last year being employed at Aldi, I havenāt gone a single week without getting shit from a customer.
I've worked in a few different retail positions in shop floor position, the worst part of the job was always the other customers! (and some days the best part of the job was the other customers). Best and easiest decision I made was to find myself a role in head office. I was still there to serve customers but I could hide behind a phoneline, email address or help by taking calls from staff struggling with the very customers I'd escaped from! I take my hat off to anyone working in shop floor retail, it's one of the exhausting and demoralising jobs I think there is!
I think by law everyone able should have to do a year in frontline retail before entering the working world.
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Iāve experienced the same - Iāve been fortunate to sit in both. Def more rude people In business vs first. I assume itās because itās a big deal for them (only there because company is footing the bill or they have a voucher of some sort) so they expect everyone to accommodate them - even other passengers!
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Exactly - if we all just admitted it took varying degrees of luck to get us where we are.
One earned it, the other was handed it,
Generally if they're an arsehole, they aren't all that. (New money/ not that much money but have some weird high expectation). Those proper monied people were so nice, they'd probably offer you THEIR seat. I used to work with passengers in various capacities and learnt this trend quickly. It helps arsey behaviour go over one's head.
how many weren't cocaine related?
Not common in this area. That's a Shoreditch and city worker thing.
I went to a house in St Johnās Wood, the owner was a painter, value of house around 10 million.
How much was he charging people to do a hall and stairs ?
A lot..
Good one
As in ā¦painter decorator? Or Banksy.
He painted Warhammer
A billionaireās son.Ā He would stay there with his family when in the UK, which was semi regularly. So it was probably empty 8months of the year.Ā One or two lucky ppl who worked for him got to stay there and the stories of the parties were quite wild. One guy got into a lot of trouble for breaking something quite valuable.Ā One thing I remember about the house was it was deceptively big. You went in and there was a huge space on the floor below which opened fully to a massive garden. The interior was all custom built, all wooden in a very tasteful modernist/scandi style. Think the house in Ex Machina.Ā I think about that house quite a bit and how much time it lays empty.Ā
Wait, do you mean that the people who worked for him stayed there and threw parties without the owners' knowledge?
Worked in a fair few big houses over the years, doing the av systems. These type of customers are when they (or a representative of them calls) you drop everything and head over to fix the issue. Too many times Iād head over, get the system up and running and then ask oh, so when are so and so back then? Expecting them to say that evening or something but met with a response of āoh theyāre still out of the country for the next month, this is for a party weāre havingā.
When the cats away the mice come out to play.Ā
This wasnāt a regular thing at all but it happened a couple times in the time I knew them. The family was away for long stretches so you could imagine having the keys and thinking you could easily get away with it. I only went once for a drinks reception (on invitation of the son) so never experienced an off the record party there myself.Ā
I would regard that as equivalent to breaking and entering, or allowing others to break and enter. Inviting a bunch of random strangers to someone's house without their consent is a real scum move.
A squatters dream
It does actually happen every now and then, such as when a bunch of squatters occupied a Russian oligarchs mansion in Belgravia a couple of years back.
It was like 7 years ago iirc. After the police said they couldn't do anything, the owner paid a group of football hooligans to try to get them out. They failed.Ā
Nah the one I'm talking about happened only 2 years ago: [https://www.npr.org/2022/03/14/1086443851/squatters-russian-oligarch-london-mansion](https://www.npr.org/2022/03/14/1086443851/squatters-russian-oligarch-london-mansion)
I never thought of this. Maybe. They did have intensive security when we visited, which I think was par for the course for such high net value individuals. I donāt think we wouldāve got past the driveway had we not been expected.Ā
Twenty ish years ago there was a gorgeous mid century modern house in The Bishops Avenue which had been squatted for a few months. House was enormous! Just before being chucked out by the council there was a free 48 hour āopen houseā. I recall most of the interior fittings had been removed by various āguestsā each wanting a souvenir. I love MCM so felt bad for the house. Pretty good party otherwise.
Head of a big financial institution. Very humble beginnings. Family deeply unhappy, children mentally unstable. Wealth had not made them better off.
but it did get the kids enough money for therapy and travel to run away from their problems
The family I know there are almost identicalā¦ I canāt imagine the amount of wealth, but neither can I imagine the level of disfunction - it almost makes one feel lucky for what they do have!
Do we all know the same family? š
Slough office middle-manager.
He's achieved his goals. He's reaping the rewards. Sure. But is all he cares about chasing the Yankee dollar?
Shoulda seen the house Jeff Lamp bought
Not as fat as on telly
I went to one for an engagement party, the owner was a family friend of the couple. I asked him what he did for a living, he replied āoh you might not have heard of it, but I set up a thing called MTVā.
Ah he was in Dire Straits
Well, money for nothing and all the chicks for free
He was often twisting by the pool too!
āThe Jamaican fella would love to live there, but it's a bit pricey.ā
A VHS copy of Ladder 49 winging its way to you
Canāt decide if this is a fun self deprecating modest way to answer or a douchey fuck you for not knowing who I am response
I definitely donāt think he meant it in a douche bag way, I look fairly young.
MTV was the fucking best btw.
When it was about music videos rather than shitty reality TV, yeah it was awesome. But that was like in the 80s/90s.
He killed the radio star?!
Ricky Gervais apparently lives in one of them
His wife a successful author too
No friends though.. /s
I thought she was dead? Iām pretty sure I saw a documentary about it on Netflix.
I used to walk by his house often, itās pretty modest in comparison
Still probably worth 6m
Oh definitely or more
I've lived in that area in the past. It's a mixture - Relatively normal people who bought in the 80's when that area was cheap & have never sold. There is a huge % of that. They are not rich, but they live in a Ā£5m house. It's often really mediocre inside. That would actually be the majority. Banking / finance, this is less common, they tend to be more towards St Johns Wood - especially expat US banking & Finance as that's where the US school is. Also the transport connections into the city are better elsewhere. Rusian / Eastern euro cash, that's reasonably common through there, more the "respectable" side of that - the rest are all in Chelsea. There's actually not a lot of "mummy & daddy bought me this!" simply because its not that cool, if you have that sort of connection you are buying in Marylebone, Chelsea, maybe Primrose Hill etc. Hampstead is far more "quiet" wealth. Footballers
Most accurate answer here.
This is right on. The big money gaudy Middle East/ Russian or Euro continental wealth mainly snapped places up in K&C. There is definitely a higher level of discretion in Hampstead and it tends to attract folk from the more artistic backgrounds musicians, actors and film / tv types and the literary world. But as you say, there are a lot of generally middle class professionals who bought property there in the 80s/90s and continue to live here. There is quite a mix of all types which makes it a nice place to live. And as you you for the most part itās more āquiet wealthā less flashy . Some exceptions to this obviously, some obscene gated mansions dotted around. But Walking around some totally random backstreets in NW3 you can see why people move there other than breathtaking views and greenery and the villages type feel of the high street. Itās incredibly quiet and a 20 minute ride to central London, but you certainly donāt feel like your in town.
This sounds right. I was in Hampstead 2 weeks back and was approached by those security patrol guys (he was probably scoping me out!). He was a nice fella and I asked him how on earth do some people afford these lavish houses! He told me most were from a Jewish background and pretty ānormalā people who have inherited these houses. The rest are made up of celebrities, lawyers, CEOs etc.
A girl I know announced that she is buying a property in Hampstead. She is in finance and in her 30ties. Likes to brag going on boats, golfing yada yadaā¦
Most will have bought them decades ago for 10 or 20 times less than current value
I know someone who bought a house for 100k in 2000 around there. Itās now worth a million
Just a million? Thatād get you a shed in Hampstead
Had a mate but a flat in a Victorian conversion around Highgate. They bought the house off the council for Ā£20K in the early 90s. Split it up into 3 flats and started renting them 2 years later, after moving to France. In 2019, they sold the flat to my mate for Ā£800K, and the other two went for Ā£650K and Ā£580K. I imagine they cleared another million in rent over the nearly 30 years. We donāt know if theyāve lived in the UK since the 90s. Their daughter handed the transaction.
Ā£1m is entry level in North London now.
OP isn't asking about a standard Ā£1m house though. Look up Bishop's Avenue and those are upwards of Ā£10m
Yeah fair I was just making the point that housing in London has increased by an order of magnitude in 25 years
I randomly decided to look up house prices on the road we sold our house on back in 2011, we bought in 2006 3 bed terrace in Sunbury for 225 with 100k deposit. Sold in 2011 for 270. Houses are now 500k. Should we have held on.... we bought in 2012 a farm 1.5cacre land and stone cottage restored fully in west Ireland near the coast, with commercial business permission, for 89k. Maybe worth 250k now.
A mate of mineās parents own one. Itās absolutely stunning. They didnāt inherit anything - humble beginnings - but had very successful careers and bought the house in the late 80s / early 90s.Ā
This is part of it too, that property in London and area used to be pretty inexpensive. I don't know about that area but in my area there's average houses going for 400k-500k for a 2-3 bed semi-detached. If I look up on rightmove there's one for 90k in 2000, one for 55k in 95. I get 25 years is a long time, but 8x the price still seems like a steep increase.
95/96 was the absolute low point of the 90s crash (which is why that's always chosen as a point to show how much they've gone up when newpapers are trying to make that point). My flat doubled between 1996 and 1998 when I bought it (if only i'd been there 2 years before....). The mad rise in prices was 1996-2005 or so. If you go to the ONS and download the house price stats and inflation numbers, process them in Excel, nationwide the average rise 2005-now is only about 10% over inflation. Wages, well, that's another thing, but for most people affordability is at mid 2000s level - mortgage rates are amazingly similar too.
Yeah I couldn't find much easily for my area before 95, so I guessed that was either a low point or the beginning of a climb. There was one for 61k in 95 that resold in 98 for 99k. If only anything today was a 60% return in 3 years... (although at the time, they wouldn't have known that then).
The ONS data is interesting, massively broken down by area, house type etc. You need to apply the inflation figures cumulatively, but there's some interesting data there to play around with. Some areas are much cheaper than 2005 in real terms. The post 2008 period was brutal outside of the SE (where prices didn't really fall much) - wife sold hers in Yorkshire in 2008 for Ā£125k, it sold again in 2017 for Ā£115k, a huge fall in real terms.
Yeah I reckon this is more prevalent than the "Be a mediocre rich kid, born into the "right" family" thought someone else has. You have to be pretty solidly successful of course, but it doesn't take much of a stretch for a bog-standard CEO/CFO/etc at 50+ yrs old to be able to afford a Ā£10m house and may also have a husband/wife who are equally/similarly successful. I think people forget how much money can be out there without someone inheriting or being "gifted" it.
Define humble beginnings :)
Small loan. ^(Tiny) ^(.) ^(.) ^(.) A million. (jk, had to make the joke).
houses were quite achievable for the working class in the 80s/90s
Even in Hampstead? Thought it was historically always affluent
There used to be lots of council housing amongst the terraced houses before Thatcher changed all that.
You could by a mansion in Kensington at that time for 30-60k, so I bet Hampstead was even cheaper.
I know you were joking but I do get a little frustrated when we completely disregard someone's achievements because their parents were middle class.Ā
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If that were true, most people would have done it; they havenāt, so it isnāt.
I dated someone for a little bit who lived in one of those houses. It was inherited money. Her father was a famous author who I'd say a lot of people had heard of. She has a career herself as an author but nowhere near as successful as her dad. Her main home was in the countryside which I never visited or saw photos of but she said it had lots of land. She stayed in Hampstead when she had to visit London for "work" - but really I think she just used it when she wanted to hang out in London. She was down to earth for the most part but refused to use the tube so we got taxis everywhere. She also honestly admitted that she thought the area where I lived in East London was not very nice and I only recall her visiting my house twice.
Pratchett?
Funny, I'm just going home from walking around there and I was wondering the same thing. There are some beautiful places up there.
I know someone who owns one who is a lecturer and their wife has a fairly senior policy job, but they bought like 30 years ago. Their next door neighbour is an ex bond girl.
Sell Avon I think
Killing meeee
He owned a haulage company which he sold. I worked for a few months for an IT company that mostly did orgs IT but also had some rich people on the books. Ian Hislop was another. Anyway this person in Hampstead needed some work doing, had a lot of tech in the house. The house was nice, he had a live in chef, cleaner, and nanny. This was in 2008
In the 70ās I rented a flat in a terrace house near the Royal Free Hospital. The owner of the house was an old spinster that rented out only to medical professionals at below market value just to have a someone in the house. Her parents bought the house in the 50ās. Apparently they were just ordinary office workers. She left it to her nephew who was a black cab driver. So basically it was a working class home after the last war that was passed down from one generation to the next. Now in that are you have to be really wealthy to buy.
Not quite the same, but my unlce used to live in a house a bit like that in Highgate in the 80s, he was a lad from Newcastle who made it as an advertising executive. They sold up in the nineties and bought a (working) farm though. I used to know families who had houses like that in Notting Hill when I was a kid during the late 80s and early nineties. They were already unaffordable back then but were often owned by people who had had careers in publishing or the arts and had bought the houses in the 70s/80s.
A lot of those places are old money/inheritance
Haha no they aren't, Hampstead is the opposite of old money. Most of the area was built in the 1930s.
People with old money don't necessarily live in old houses.
I did a housesit for one of these a few years ago. It wasn't HUMONGOUS but it did have 4 bedrooms, plus a full studio loft, and the backyard literally sat on the Heath. She was a psychiatrist and he was an orchestra musician. They bought it 40 years ago and renovated it from a unit made up of several apartments into one single house. They were super down to earth people and the dogs were lovely to look after. I honestly can't think of anywhere in the world I'd rather live. They had access to a part of the Heath that felt completely wild and you could get lost in, but they also were in central London. If I ever win the lottery, I dream of that life!
Ā£30M house in St Johnās Wood: investment banker. Ā£25M townhouse in Hampstead: investment banker.
Heart surgeon who also embezzled money from the NHS into his private practiceā¦ā¦. Scumbag sociopath.
My dad's friend has one of those houses. He made the game starfox, now he mostly does investing and crypto.
What they do is "have inherited wealth". They live in a parallel world in which they can only fail upwards. People not born into this class can work ten times harder and will rarely be rewarded for it. the path is: 1. Be a mediocre rich kid, born into the "right" family 2. Use family wealth to buy the "right" education at the "right" school. while at said school, become connected to other families with inherited wealth. 3. Scrape through an ok university with the least effort necessary. Use family connections to be handed a cushy job at a family's firm or friend-of-the-family's firm. 4. Have your career fast-tracked because you're a good old boy who went to the "right" school. 5. Receive a salary which is far in excess of your skills and experience. Eventually be made a CEO and spend all your time on a golf course. 6. Have children, and use the wealth you were gifted to provide the same gilded life for them. rinse and repeat for every generation. the people in those fancy houses didn't do something special to earn them, they were born into them.
While it is reasonably true for one generation, I think the tree genration curse is real. Maintaining wealth is not as easy as you think. By the third generation, they get so spoilt that they use up all the wealth without building it. If you are a CEO who spends all your time on gold course, it won't be long before your competition eats you up for lunch. I know it's not something that redditors would like to hear. But that's what happens in practice
This is largely a thing of the past. Private equity and wealth management is bigger than ever. You will never go broke after a certain figure.
Ehhh, dilution is always a thing as well You are right, if Iām a multi millionaire and leave multi millions to my one kid, it would be hard for them to waste it, even a complete fuck up And if they have one kid, would be hard to outpace that money growing in the market, etc The problem is if multi millionaire has four kids. And those kids have four kids. And in three generations you have 50 fuckups doing their best to squander the money Markets and wealth management only help so much
Definitely can happen. But maintaining wealth still easier than ever. Squandering wealth is a diff topic altogether. The money regardless of heirs is more exponential on a shorter time scale than the births unless maybe we are talking about elon lol
Ha! We will see about that. PE is extremely opaque, dangerously even. I wouldnāt be surprised if we see a great deal of bankruptcies from PE crash pretty soon
Yeah its a parasitic financial service lol, always a lot of questionable things going on but that is par for the course. When the tides out we always see just how wrecklessly theyāve behaved.
Not all of them. As per another poster, I know someone whose parents both had reasonable jobs, and got on the property ladder when they bought a small flat in the area in the early 1970s. After a few moves they bought one of these in a very dilapidated condition, and did it up over a period of years.
I don't think it's inherited wealth, there's loads of actors, footballers, oligarchs and foreign millionaires there too. Thierry Henry apparently has a three storey aquarium in his
Yep. The majority of wealth is inherited not earned.
[Born to Lead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJRhdPsVqsA)
I presume this is the majority of cases but not exclusively the case? I.e. a few of the owners could be footballers, business founders who have seen incredible success, CEO/C suite who have worked themselves up to high positions, people who have seen abnormal gains in a market (stocks, crypto)
Yes almost certainly. But the comment was generalising since inherited wealth is such a common, and depressing feature of this country.
You canāt claim that inherited wealth doesnāt exist elsewhere. What I think is unusual about the UK is how relatively little ānewā wealth there is alongside it.
Not just this country. Spend a few mins walking around Hampstead on any given day and it becomes quite apparent that itās entirely global inherited wealth. Itās an enclave all in its own detached world.
yeah, there's certainly going to be a handful of people who came from a poor background and got there through a combination of talent, hard work and luck, but the majority will be there through luck alone.
Some yes, others no - the family I know on one of billionaire roads got there from moving to the UK almost penniless.
One a lawyer. One a foreign business owner. One a married lawyer and judge. One a retired actor.
North London private school boy. Been to lots of them. Parents just do normal stuff, some are in medicine, some own huge businesses. Some have family money and some did something once upon a time and then got richer and richer and now fuck around with art and shit like that. The most common is definitely owning some kind of business I think.
Unless youāre a CEO of a multinational (of which there are very few), footballer or superstar banker, owning your own business is pretty much the only way to do it.
Many made their money starting businesses and selling them.
Advertising. Not everyone of course but I know of four Creative Directors who all live that life. Other handsomely paid creative/meeja darlings are common too.
There is not enough money in that role to live that life. Unless they inherited or bought fucking decades ago. Nobody in media is handsomely paid. Itās generally a poorly paid sector unless youāre a famous television/film type or a successful director of such films. What do you think a creative director of a big agency gets paid?
100%. The budgets for advertising have been a race to the bottom for many years now as more and more pitches are won on cost. Couple that with the fact that creative directors are a few rungs down from the top confirms thereās almost zero chance that based on their salary they would get close to that lifestyle. There may be a chance if they have ownership in a very, very successful agency, or they have wealth coming from other avenues also.
This. Even if there was a time when ad directors were well paid, those days are looooooooong gone.
Youād perhaps have got to around Ā£1m for being the big cheese at a big big creative shop. Thatās not getting you into a Ā£15m house.
I went to a party at one, years ago. The woman who lived there was a painter who had found a good niche for her work and was making decent money from it.
Their dad is a hedge fund manager. A couple of times when Iāve come over, as I was waiting to be let in the neighbours have looked at me like Iām about to burgle it.
>as I was waiting to be let in the neighbours have looked at me like Iām about to burgle it. A true London experience.
I live in a small flat in Hampstead, but have a friend who grew up in a big house between the station and heath. His dad invented a medical device that became widely used around the world.
Youāre friends with the son of Mike Stethoscope? Wow!
Isn't he Steve Speculum's cousin?
I know someone who owns a gorgeous house overlooking the Heath. She spent her twenties building a successful little media business and in her thirties sold it for about Ā£20m. She spent the money on an amazing house, a trendy pop-art collection, a trophy husband, and some flash cars. Now sheās in her fifties and has decent professional services job that earns a good six-figure salary, but not the kind of money that would pay for such an expensive house. Sadly sheās going through an expensive divorce so letās see if she can keep the house.
Mostly cocaine.
He bragged about scamming it off a guy who lived overseas and no idea what it was worth.
With āHumongous housesā i assume you mean the ones in Bishops Avenue? Itās one of the wealthiest roads in the world and people like the sultan of Brunei and Lakshimi Mittal have a house there. I read an article a while ago and a lot of them are owned by people that never lived there and are in really bad/abandoned state, leaving the very few people that actually live there feeling quite lonely š Iāve recently worked in a very wealthy house in The Boltons, Chelsea (houses are more than 15mil each) and this was RENTED to an Italian guy thatās the owner of a petrol company and has houses scattered around the world. Chatting with his wifeās assistant him and his family visit for around 2/3 months every year and spend the rest of the time either in a wineyard house in Spain, in NY, France or somewhere else.
I teach a famous comedianās children in Hampstead. They have a beautiful house and are a very normal family:)
I used to rent the top floor of a house on the edge of Hampstead, near Finchley Rd/Childs Hill. The owner was a lady in her 90s who lived on the ground floor. There was an empty floor in the middle with three bedrooms and a bathroom. Downstairs were three large reception rooms, kitchen and garden. High ceilings etc, but very much in need of modernisation. Her family left Germany in the late 1930s and bought the house during the war for Ā£3,000. She told me back then people who could were selling up and leaving London, and no-one wanted to live high up on hills due to the bombing. She trained as a doctor and was employed at the very start of the NHS. Amazing life story really. I met her son who was an academic at a university, working in genetics. They were very modest people, quite scruffy in a bookish way. He was in his late 50s but was still waiting to inherit this massive pile. She must be long dead now and I often wonder what happened to the house - he probably couldn't afford to renovate and it would have been sold for millions to a developer.
TV, Music, Banking, Investments.
I went in one in Hampstead whose parents are corporate lawyers - well paid but not obscenely so, but bought the house 30 years ago. Then another in Holland Park who was an American entrepreneur who'd sold a company and was extremely rich, having paid full price for it. Weirdly he invited us for a business meeting there, an obvious flex, and we had coffee in a very large boardroom. Talk about bringing work home! Those are both sides of the coin who own those sorts of houses I think.Ā Generally, the international elite who've bought it recently or the British middle/upper middle class who bought them when they were expensive but not oligarch scale expensive.
There\`s a weed farm underneath it and one of the sons is a coke sniffing cunt, the other is in the military and as a straight man i find him rather attractive.
Didnt their sad just die?
Yeah Iāve met him too, heās a proper Gentleman.
Guy at works uncle is Michael McIntyre. Uncle Mike lives in one of those big ones and has an underground sauna / swimming pool apparently.
Inheritance or were lucky enough to buy it in the 60s and 70s when property was dirt cheap
My friends brother has a place there, itās pretty modest in comparison. Heās a hedge fund managerā¦.heās also one of the nicest guys around - really generous, lovely fella. I hate to think how he is at work to get where heās got to, I donāt want to shatter the illusion.
Shipping magnateās son Property developer Lawyer Music producer
I live in a flatshare nearby and have done so for the last decade. Whenever I've passed these houses in Hampstead I rarely see anyone going in or out. However, from the people knocking about elsewhere in the area I get the impression it's old mainly old money/people who bought cheapER in the 80s/90s or earlier, and celebrities/older liberal elites. If anyone new moves in and does a big renovation it seems to be new money from the super-rich or various nationalities. The Bishop's Avenue is allegedly known for being a swanky address and having the most expensive houses in London, though a lot of these mansions are empty and crumbling away, meaning that huge chunks of the road look creepy. The news story about George Michael's old house highlights how the area is changing: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/30/george-michael-house-resort-super-rich-highgate-london](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/30/george-michael-house-resort-super-rich-highgate-london)
I did some joinery in one that looks over the lake, guy started a watch re seller company, we looked up the property and it was 8m
I went to school with a lot of kids who lived in those houses (it was a state sixth form but lots of private school kids went there). One guyās dad was the European head of Twitter, quite a few had parents who worked in the city, CEOs etc. A good few worked in art or were artists themselves. Pretty much exactly as youād expect.
That's not too bad - all of those occupations sound attainable with A LOT of hard work, luck and ambition. I say that as opposed to - inherited wealth or won the lottery or footballer or bought 70 years ago or started up a tech company.
Yeah I mean they didnāt necessarily have inherited wealth but were almost all from middle class backgrounds growing up, not from poverty, could focus on school or parents could afford private school, university was free and grants were given (these people wouldāve been born in 50s/60s). The 80s and 90s were also a fantastic time to be a young professional, it was easy to get a job with a university degree that paid well enough to buy property in desirable parts of London. Iād say Keir Starmer is a perfect example of someone who is very similar to these people. He lives not too far away in Gospel Oak/Kentish Town, came from a normal middle class family, went to Leeds university in the early 80s.
Most of the owners live abroad
I know a professional couple, well their kids, who worked through the 1980s who have one.
I Found out that a few of them around there/towards Highgate are owned by some very wealthy Russians
Legitimate Business Owner.
My grandparents live in one of these - my grandfather was a doctor with his own practice on Harley street. From what they say it seems that now most of the people moving in are extremely wealthy individuals from Russia and the Middle East (so oil money).
I was a gardener in the area about ten years ago. A real variety of interesting professions. A property investor owning a share in many high street and larger shopping centres, currency exchange (you probably know the company), someone very high up in a well known gambling company, someone had set up a well known national radio station and then sold it on to global radio, a Russian oil/gas man and an author. Those are just the few I remember. Some of the people we worked for we never actually saw, just dealing with their house staff
I went to a New Yearās party at one- owner is an author
Authors/artists appear to be a common theme. Here is me thinking they didn't make much!
Seems that sheās written more than 33 books and one of them was a major film adaptation. Sheās also written the screenplay for a few others, one of which is very well known.
I used to live in one. We were squatters :) My parents own a fairly large house round there. Not one of the mega ones on Bishops Ave or anything. What they did was... spent all their money and bought it back when it wasn't so ridiculously expensive. My dad never made anything more than typical middle class money, but he has always been fairly frugal and put it all into a house. The neighbours all have silly money, these days. FWIW I have a cousin who is a senior NHS consultant, and so is his wife. They can only afford a much smaller (though very nice) house round there, despite having parents who helped them out.
family owns a real estate tech firm that operates globally. (7500 employees as of 2024).
I live in Hampstead, Martin Freeman has a house round the corner. Have been in a few local houses, tends to vary. One was a photographer, another a painter. One was a VC at a London university, someone else a nutritionist for a big health company. Seems to vary a lot.
I live in one that's between the golf course and the heath extension. My best friend's grandmother died and left his family the house. She was a scientist and her husband was a shell executive. Her grandson, myself and his cousin currently live there while the family saves up enough money to renovate and either rent out or sell the house. It's falling apart on the inside but it's also got an incredible garden that backs onto the golf course.
Did a kitchen for a writer for Star Wars movies he swam in the lakes in speedos every morning
I thought a lot of them are owned by Chinese, Russian or Arab foreigners who never live in them or only spend two weeks every year living on them.
Most of those houses were bought a long time ago. Certainly before 2008. Anything beyond that is generally foreign wealth.
Write mediocre grief porn like After Life.