A Regent’s Park mega-mansion has sold for £138.9 million after almost two years on the market, making it the second-most expensive property transaction recorded in the UK.
The 40-bedroom Georgian property known as The Holme was first listed for £250 million in March 2023.
According to Land Registry records, the property’s official buyer is a UK subsidiary of the Luxembourg-based company Zedra, which provides wealth management advice to wealthy families, entrepreneurs and businesses.
However, The Times reports that the beneficiary is an American tech billionaire who bought it for £111 million less than its original asking price. The buyer has not been named.
Despite its enormous price cut, the property is thought to have attracted several bidders in recent months. “He’s an American billionaire with tech money. It will be his London home and HQ base,” a source told The Times. “There were several bidders on the house over the last few months. The American got it after long and hard negotiations and drove the price down from the £250 million — so a huge £110 million price discount.”
The Holme was sold by the Saudi Arabian prince Abdullah bin Khalid bin Sultan al-Saud after it fell into the hands of receivers, as first reported by the Financial Times. A loan of around £150 million, secured against the property and other assets, had not been repaid, forcing the sale of the mansion.
The prince was one of The Holme’s beneficial owners, along with other family members, and has owned the property since the 1980s. Land Registry documents show that the lease was extended by more than 130 years in 2020. The property’s freehold is owned by the Crown Estate.
The listing was handled jointly by Knight Frank and Beauchamp Estates, who both declined to comment on the sale.
When The Holme was put on the market, it was thought that it could become the most expensive residential property to sell in the UK. However, with the discount, this title remains with 2-8 Rutland Gate, a 20-room mega-mansion overlooking Hyde Park which sold for a record £210 million in 2020. It was put back on the market in October 2022.
The Holme has narrowly beaten the sale of Mayfair’s Aberconway House to second place. The neo-Georgian mansion reportedly sold to Indian billionaire and heir to a vaccine fortune Adar Poonawalla for £138 million in late 2023.
Dubbed “the White House in Regent’s Park” by a source with knowledge of the sale, The Holme is set in four acres of land within the park. With 29,000 square feet of space, it has eight garages, a tennis court, sauna, whirlpool, grand dining room and library.
“It’s very special, because you’ve got the ornamental lake, sweeping lawns and this magnificent rear façade which looks like the rear façade of the White House,” the source said when the house was listed. “It’s the most incredible property.”
The Holme is one of a number of London mansions to receive a price cut in recent months. Factors like unrealistic pricing, high interest rates and greater supply have combined to bring down prices in prime central London in what Becky Fatemi, partner at Sotheby’s International Realty, calls “the biggest ‘January sale’ the real estate market has seen in a long time”.
Fatemi says she is “extremely busy” with US buyers at the moment, as the strength of the dollar against the pound is giving Americans greater purchasing power.
Indeed, American buyers accounted for 25 per cent of London’s super prime sales last year —up from 18 per cent in 2023— according to Beauchamp Estates’ annual Billionaire Buyers report. This is followed by buyers from the Middle East, who represented 20 per cent of all sales.
“Since June 2024 onwards we noticed a 30 per cent rise in overseas clients enquiring about suitable homes in the capital that they could purchase, and the largest group of buyers have been Americans,” said Beauchamp Estates’ managing director Jeremy Gee in response to the report.
“Over the next four years the wave of American buyers into London looks set to increase further. Last time Donald Trump was in power we saw a significant 20 per cent upturn in wealthy democrats buying £15 million plus homes in London to live out the first Trump administration.”
