Mega-rich plotting return to London, Sotheby’s housing boss says
Demand has been driven by an influx of American buyers whose interest has helped keep the luxury market afloat with US dollar-driven discounts
[LONDON] Ultra-rich individuals leaving London due to tougher wealth taxes are keeping their homes with the view of returning once the policy environment changes, according to George Azar, the boss of Sotheby’s International Realty’s UK property agency.
While the Labour government’s decision to abolish a two-century-old tax break for non-domiciled residents was “dumb”, it had not led to well-heeled foreigners selling their London homes, Azar said. The former banker, who is based in Dubai where he runs another Sotheby’s agency, said that he would “take a bet on London over Dubai right now”, given the rising popularity of politicians such as Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, who has promised to bring back wealthy foreigners.
“If Labour says tomorrow they will do the same thing Reform is promising, they will do very well,” said Azar, whose Sotheby’s franchise brokers some of London’s most expensive home deals. “We have to bring back the right people, so many hedge funds have relocated from London and the UK is losing so much talent and brains.”
A wave of tax reforms in Britain since early 2024 has prompted a raft of wealthy individuals ranging from Checkout.com founder Guillaume Pousaz to Egypt’s second-richest man Nassef Sawiris to exit the country. The measure that unsettled the richest the most was the scrapping of the preferential tax regime for non-domiciled residents that earlier allowed them to avoid UK taxes on their overseas earnings for as long as 15 years.
A slump in London’s luxury housing market followed those measures. Deals for London homes valued at £5 million (S$8.7 million) or more have fallen 35 per cent in the past year, researcher LonRes said in August, while discounts have deepened.
London’s loss has meant gains for Dubai. Sotheby’s Dubai franchise has brokered about £600 million in home transactions involving former UK non-doms this year in the emirate, according to Azar, contributing to a boom in values.
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“In Dubai, the roads are blocked,” he said. “It used to take me 20 minutes to get to work but now it takes much longer.”
But Azar, who has overseen deals worth more than £80 million in roughly the past year, says London’s luxury house prices will rebound “within three years” if policy changes to lure back the wealthy are introduced around the time of the next election. Non-doms have moved to “cities that do not serve them, such as Milan”, and are eager to return to London for linguistic reasons and the elite education it offers, he added.
Reform’s Farage said this summer that his party would “bring back” wealthy foreigners who have left Britain by giving them a full exemption from taxes on their overseas assets in return for a once-a-decade fee that would fund cash payments to low-income workers. Farage indicated he was particularly targeting those who have moved to Italy, one of the biggest winners to emerge from Britain’s wealth chaos, which has a similar policy and recently increased the fee that it charges in return for granting so-called non-domiciled status.
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While Reform has just five members in parliament currently, it is consistently polling higher than the ruling Labour Party and is aiming to replace the Conservatives as the party of business. The Tories responded last week by promising to scrap stamp duty on main residences, another tax that has caused luxury home sales to tumble in recent years.
Wealth exodus
Frederic de Mevius, a member of brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev’s three founding families, switched his residency to his native Belgium earlier this year after living in the UK for more than a decade. The multimillion-pound Kensington and Chelsea home he purchased after moving to London in 2012 is still under his ownership, according to a property filing seen by Bloomberg News.
German tech investor Christian Angermayer left London last year for the Swiss city of Lugano after about a decade claiming non-dom status, but has kept his London home, filings show. He told Bloomberg News at the time that “every non-dom I know has left or is about to leave”, and called the tax changes a “huge mistake”.
“They are moving out but they are not selling their house because they want to come back,” Azar said, talking more broadly about wealthy foreigners who have left the UK. “Their kids are still in school in London,” he added.
To be sure, even for wealthy foreigners looking to sell their London homes, weak demand is making it difficult to attract buyers. The number of properties for sale at £5 million or more rose to the highest on record this summer, with a 43 per cent year-on-year jump at the end of June, LonRes data show.
About 70 per cent of vendors who sold £15 million-plus homes in London this year have been non-doms moving to locations including Dubai, Milan and Monaco, according to research published this summer by Beauchamp Estates. Still, the luxury broker said that most non-doms had retained property in London to allow for visits to the UK, particularly those owning apartments.
“The idea that Dubai could ever topple London is farcical,” said Antony Antoniou, managing director at London property adviser Robert Irving Burns.
Sotheby’s said that it had exchanged or completed on £721 million worth of London property so far in 2025, and has 12 properties currently under offer at more than £15 million each. Demand has been driven by an influx of American buyers whose interest has helped keep the luxury market afloat with US dollar-driven discounts.
“There are people coming in, it’s not a one-way exit,” Azar said. “The market is good, it’s cheap, it’s a good time to buy.” BLOOMBERG
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