The sale of new-build homes popular with Gulf buyers drove the prime housing market in London’s Mayfair in 2025, but the days of the trophy penthouse are numbered, according to specialist estate agent Wetherell.
About 91 per cent of sales in Mayfair last year were for apartments or penthouses as grand developments were completed, its annual survey Mayfair in Minutes found.
However, conservation and planning rule changes mean there are no more mega-projects in the pipeline beyond those already well under way, such as the £2 billion One Mayfair development by billionaire developer John Caudwell. It has a “substantial” waiting list as demand for new builds is outstripping supply.
“We have run out,” said Peter Wetherell, executive chairman of Wetherell. Postwar buildings that had been erected on bomb sites came to the end of their shelf lives at the turn of the millennium, and were replaced by apartment blocks often linked to hotels.
As Westminster Council aims to create more than 20,000 homes by 2040, new rules limiting the size of apartments to 200 square metres – roughly equivalent to a prime three-bedroom home – mean the super-apartments that often made a development profitable are no longer permitted.
“If you see that trophy penthouse you should buy it, because no new development is going to be able to have it,” Mr Wetherell told The National.
Wetherell says apartments in the new developments around Grosvenor Square, including 1 and 20 Grosvenor Square, have been highly sought-after. So too are apartments in new-build schemes Clarges Mayfair, 60 Curzon Street and One Carrington, the latter two projects both completed and launched during 2025.
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Adjoining twin mansions on South Audley Street in Mayfair are up for sale, creating the opportunity to develop a mega-mansion in the heart of London. All photos: Wetherell / Casa E Progetti -
They are together priced at £35 million. The sellers believe they could be redeveloped to create a single home with five or six bedrooms and five grand reception rooms, worth £65 million ($86.5 million) -
A living area in one of the mansions, which were built in the 1730s -
A dining room in one of the mansions. They have played host to four British prime ministers - Henry Pelham, William Pitt, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain -
A bedroom in one of the mansions. For most of the past century they were used as offices, with a single owner -
The 'secret' garden providing a private green space in the heart of London -
A seating area outdoors. Together, the properties make up 15,993 square feet of mixed-residential and commercial accommodation -
A view of the street. The mansions were built in 1736-37 in the Palladian architectural style by Mayfair builder and carpenter Roger Blagrave -
A view of the garden. Historically, both houses were connected at lower ground and ground floor level
Who's buying?
Middle East buyers have become the most dominant international group purchasing in the neighbourhood. Over the past 12 months, Mayfair sales have been dominated by wealthy buyers from only five countries – the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, America, India and domestic UK buyers.
Wetherell says that Mayfair has overtaken Knightsbridge as the most fashionable address for Middle East buyers. Four out of every five Middle Eastern clients now only want to live in Mayfair.
Analysing Mayfair sales and lettings data, in-house intelligence and using information from property network LonRes, Wetherell believes that the district hit the bottom of the market in the last quarter of 2025. It predicts that Mayfair's prices will rise between 1 per cent and 2.5 per cent in 2026-28.
Buyers focusing on newly built or newly refurbished stock led to a rise in sales during 2025 of immaculate condition one-bedroom and smaller two-bedroom flats priced between £2 million to £5 million. Four in 10 homes sold in Mayfair were in this price range, up from 29 per cent in 2024, and have a premium of up to 42 per cent compared with other prime central London areas.
End users
Despite the premium, the days of buying a flat as an investment to “flip” in a few years are over, according to Wetherell. Instead, the majority of buyers in Mayfair aim to keep homes for a generation or more.
The change in strategy has been caused by the introduction in 2023 of a 19 per cent rate of stamp duty for overseas or second home buyers, it said.
The survey found buyers are now “end users”, living in their properties for the permitted 90 days a year and less concerned with the short-term travails of the housing market.
Purchasers are also younger, 28 to 45 years old, rather than the 50 to 70-year-old demographic who traditionally bought in one of London’s prime neighbourhoods.
The wealthy who have made their money quicker than ever are deciding to “take a bit of the table and put it into lifestyle”, said Mr Wetherell.
It has also caused Mayfair to become polarised, with sales focused on either new homes or unmodernised period properties ripe for refurbishment. This is leaving liveable second-hand properties in the estate agent’s window.
“You’re not buying for three or five years, you’re buying for a generation,” he said. “So you’re looking at a 20-year purchase.”
With the knowledge that a building will need to be refurbished during that time, people are not willing to pay “a good condition price”.
Some “liveable” houses spend up to three years on the market before finally selling, with almost 60 per cent needing price reductions to close a sale, the report found. Transactions for these kinds of homes were down almost 30 per cent on 2024.
In 2025, only 69 second-hand homes sold across Mayfair, down from 96 in 2024 and 81 deals in 2023. In the latter months of 2025 this resulted in more than 10 per cent of second-hand properties being withdrawn from the market in the district, with “sellable supply” now at a 10-year low.
Mayfair resurgence
Ten years ago, wealthy buyers from the Gulf all wanted to live within five minutes’ walk of Harrods and to purchase luxury apartments in Knightsbridge buildings such as One Hyde Park, Wetherell reported. Now, Mayfair is the destination of choice due to the amount of investment in the area’s amenities, notably around Grosvenor and Berkeley squares, whereas Knightsbridge has stood still.
This is the product of a four-decade turning circle, with landowners and developers in the 1990s beginning to “reclaim” the area as residential.
Edwardian buildings that had been used as offices began reverting to single homes.
Currently, three trophy mansion buildings which were recently offices are for sale. Each of them is being marketed as unmodernised, and is reverting to their original single family home status.
The Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor property company has listed for £25 million 26 Upper Brook Street, the former base of the Bank of Africa that was also the London home of the American Auchincloss family, and summer home of future US first lady Jackie Bouvier. It is estimated that the property, with offices in a neighbouring mews, could be worth £55 million upon completion.
Brothers David and Simon Reuben have listed for sale a £29.95 million mansion at 139 Piccadilly overlooking Green Park, formerly the London home of Lord Byron and later French banking heiress Baroness Catherine d’Erlanger, which could be worth up to £70 million upon completion.
The private family office of an Asian billionaire family has listed for sale two adjoining freehold Grade II-listed Georgian town houses, 13 and 14 South Audley Street, for £35 million, with the potential to reach £65 million after refurbishment. They were previously the headquarters of the Royal Photographic Society.
