Billionaire's Row Documentary 2019

there's one possession on which billionaires are spending a fortune and making a killing property penthouses stately piles fairytale palaces to leave no one in doubt whose King they're building fortresses I like to refer to them as embassies for tunes are lavished on their transformation we've asked to a host encounter the other day but it had two swimming pools off the bedrooms on the top floor why - one for each child ask a silly question these people did very peripatetic lifestyles they'll often have five six seven houses they don't actually live anywhere which means that they don't make friends with other people because they're never in one place long enough there's a sense of impermanence in a lot of their houses because they don't invest in their lives in the same way that we do bed it's just stuff it's all tradable these are the most coveted houses in the world but too many billionaires they're not so much homes as appreciating assets I can think of one client who has multiple properties one in the country and every morning the housekeeper makes sure that the flowers are fresh and the water in the visors is clean and the driver and the handyman makes sure that everything's working and the employer has never slept there there's one city that attracts the International super-rich in their droves London the London's becomes a billionaire capital of the world their wealth is accelerated at a rate that one simply couldn't believe was possible 15-20 years ago the rich are getting richer and certainly that gives them opportunities they're buying more and more properties around the world the biggest draw for London - super billionaires is somewhere to park money let's invest it in property it's so buoyant at the moment London's such a bubble today London is a home of sorts to over 100 billionaires when everyone is mainly about overseas people buy in London this is not bad this is a sign of success just look at the skyline now with all all of these buildings they weren't here 15 years ago waves of excited foreign buyers rushing into the UK property market have created a whole new class of real estate it's known as super Prime they're queuing to snap our top-end British real estate gems like this 25 million pound mega mansion in North London the gardens are exquisite it's got a magnificent little Lodge to come in it's got a guest house it's got garage inge and of course it's got a nine hole golf course which I don't think many houses have in prime central London a 20,000 square feet there's enough room to swing a tiger in here and toy wise well even the most restless billionaire would be struggling to complain but then there's no accounting for taste I can't really see the benefit of the cinema which means you've got to invite people over to watch a movie well do you really want to do that I mean you've got people who have got televisions in every single room including the bathroom and you wonder how much time you can spend in a bath watching a movie you know you end up like an old prune at the end of it all type of buyer who's looking for the house like this will want to have to replicate what he has in his own country it's more likely to be somebody who is Eastern European for example from Moscow you live just outside Moscow or it'll be a middle-eastern family where bedroom count is very important and Gardens are very important they very much want new and they want shiny because they're purchasing very much in order to impress their friends and to some buyers nothing screams unimpressive like a lot of stairs to climb the clients the Middle East stairs are a no-no and I mean just steps up to the front door they don't do even though for the first floor apartment would need to have lift so that's their priority and I know it sounds corny but proximity to Harrods is absolutely what it's all about London property is an asset class in itself people are actually buying property just the same way they buy wine this money is making money faster than a worker bee can can make money so capital makes more money for itself than somebody working to earn a living but the Sharia high-end house hunter property is all about one-upmanship who's the boss who has just bought Witten Hearst in Highgate North London once refurbished it's set to be worth around 200 million pounds it's the second largest mega mansion in London after Buckingham Palace well as always one isn't there but size isn't everything for another group of billionaire property buyers what Stokes their argA is location it's like a four horse race if you put a leader table of dog gravy would be at the top then followed by Knightsbridge Mayfair and Chelsea Andrew Langton has been selling London super prime for nearly half a century if you are approached by a buyer who says I want to find a house for scale volume important location you've got to say well Belgrave square is right at the top of the list I mean like Seaford house over here I mean that just because finer houses you will ever see anywhere in this town over the last 10 years you've seen a dramatic rise I mean I remember selling a house on the south side for no more than about 1617 million in that house today has obviously appreciated by at least 50 to 60 million this gradually will be known as billionaire square ordinary mortals buy to live in billionaires buy to leave alone I don't think I have ever bought a property for an uber wealthy person four weeks of the year one of my clients has this as an amazing estate with huge acreage stables full staff all the time there in the country 12 days last year I have a concern that London is going to be an enlarging ghetto of vacant properties like these vacant North London houses on what's known as billionaires row I've seen examples of that particularly in Hampstead one owner had about seven houses and there were more butterflies flying around that house and there were people because the amount of bodily are growing out of the roof a very rich person once told me when he was explaining his his little elaborate plans to move around the world he's having this Melia we don't we traveled I don't think that there is that kind of heart of the home that we have in my house everybody gravitates towards the kitchen to me that's home but I don't think that the ultra-rich necessarily have that coming up when property gets extremely expensive even for the very wealthy the Venetian Palace is obviously one of the most expensive properties on the planet almost a hundred million euros is a lot of money even for very very rich people and billionaires on the up to seven star hotel living in the scum you live in a fortress of great wealth and you keep out poor people [Music] for billionaires more property means more bills more staff and more one-upmanship and nowhere is this competitive element fiercer than on the French Riviera so when the super-rich go house-hunting they need the help of Sotheby's owned Alexander Croft Monaco realtor multi-millionaire in his own right and a man who knows firsthand exactly what billionaires are looking for I think I may be the ultimate estate agent in that I live a lifestyle that's very close to the lifestyle of those clients I really do understand them I've five homes in four different countries I'm certainly not super-rich but still I have this little collection of homes I also like cars which are very nice toys and I keep them here in the country house to play with so my English side again I've got a Bentley and Aston and old Jack for the Italian moments in Alfa spider think today I'd rather take the Bentley because it's really the most comfortable so the smoothest ride is always a Bentley today Alexandra's day-tripping to can to view a property he's been instructed to sell the pool of potential buyers though is Trey Trey Mathilde and the Venetian Palace is one of the most expensive properties on the planet it's priced at 95 million euros and you know almost a hundred million euros is a lot of money even for very very rich people [Music] the Venetian Palace is based in one of the best areas of can you are overlooking the entire coast you can see the sea so it's in a very privileged position on the Cote d'Azur in a scene straight out of a Christian Dior advert Alexandre has given the Grand Tour of the property by Sotheby's colleague Pascal Monti how big is it in total in total we have like three thousand square meters of living space that's 32,000 square feet or 34 times bigger than the average British home this would be on one side we could live like mr. living room on the outside like a dining room this vast wonderful space is silent now and is likely to remain so even when it's eventually snapped up what this new class are is they are sort of super super beings they don't actually live anywhere I call them in cosmocrats or globo's kind of these global citizens with multiple houses often multiple nationalities so they don't actually live anywhere which means that they don't make friends with other people because they're never in one place long enough the socialising that does go on at home is it's between work clients so that's its clients coming in for dinner and that's quite a formal occasion it's very much an entertaining it sort of feels the evening rather than friends getting together for a curry thank you wow what a view this is pretty amazing coin is this a score yeah yeah so I have a question for you tell me how do you get over to the island we get the remote polarize 21st century you know a lot of people who are gonna love that I think I already got some people in mind for that that's a drawbridge even out here in the epicenter of one-upmanship it's an impressive flourish I think for for the super-rich property's real estate is very important because real estate is also an outward expression of your success of your standing in the world there's quite a lot of you know competition and rivalry between the super-rich for many people it's a question you know am i at the best address do I have the biggest property on the Kupfer and southern France do I have the biggest house on Eaton square do I have the biggest penthouse on Fifth Avenue as if it would be perfect property for Russian buyer for example yeah it does seem so - they love always new properties with all the gadgets with all the extras and and a lot of space well this property obviously is designed to impress this is designed to all and I think when one arrives here just you know the scale the proportions they layout people who will love it there will also be people who hate it the cleaner for starters and probably the bloke that mows the lawn once again huge property huge commitment I do think there's stresses to having several houses even if you have 17 pas and house managers that ultimately you're gonna have to take the call that the hurricane has just swept your eyelid down the super-rich have problems that no one can understand except they're equally rich social competitors so it means either you can't talk about the things that you do in your life because a person is going to resent you or say so or worse they might make fun of you and the super-rich live in fear of being made fun of so what do you do you see you you surround yourself you go to San Morris where everybody is just like you and then you talk about the problems that the main conversations amongst the rich is the problem of having to pay tax paying high rates of tax is of course a high-class problem but it's one that can be easily swept under the person by landing yourself here in Monte Carlo capital of the Principality of Monaco and the king of tax havens as a result it's top of the league for its property prices Monaco is the second smallest country in the world after the Vatican so obviously you know growth has to be upwards because there's no other way square metre crisis and Monaco are amongst the highest if not the highest in the world they start somewhere at 30,000 euros that can go up all the way to more than one hundred thousand euros per square meter so why would anyone want to swap a palace in can for a mere penthouse in Monte Carlo well the super-rich Monaco really has a unique appeal because obviously you have the tax advantages but frankly there are many tax havens around the world almost nowhere else in the world you are as safe as you are Monaco you can wear your jewelry your watches your car without any problem without thinking twice Alexander has recently added this Monaco apartment just south of his books Wow so they just completely restored the apartment that's attacking okay this is something rare you know a nice contemporary apartment like this very nice pieces very good art I love the mixture it's really unique wow that's what I call it you I mean this apartment is amazing because you look really in all directions right you have Italy over there you have to see there you have the Yacht Club over there I mean all the landmarks in one building so I mean I think this is an apartment that appears almost to everybody right it's perfectly renovated sighs yeah it's usual Monaco 500 square meters that's just over 5,000 square feet the kitchen's a little bit special but there are only three bedrooms still the master bedroom as his and hers dressing rooms and a bathroom that provides the unique platform to show the whole town but size isn't everything you should take a bath here it's like swimming in the sky isn't it I mean blue blue everywhere doesn't get much better than that what do you have here you have concierge you have a pool next to the pool all right okay we have shops next today okay parking space in size of course yeah okay no I mean definitely I think 40 million easily come again 40 million 40 million euros for a three-bedroom flat is the astonishing price of tax avoidance for the Monaco bound billionaire but in this six zeroes world massive financial hits are simply another cross to bear the global ghetto a great luxury which the very rich live in it's a form of security it's like a fortress we live in a fortress of great wealth and you keep out poor people they are increasingly living in a bubble they're great lately you know that's I think one of the key things that we've noticed [Music] I mean they're in their gilded cages and they have everything they can possibly want but they don't exactly have a life coming up billionaires dig deep for when you run out of space in London the only way to go is down you find the leisure center the swimming pool the gymnasium the cinema sauna steam room plunge pool and an art store I mean obviously everybody has to have an art store about half the road disappeared into an enormous hole like a bomb crater we were frightened that the house was really unsafe and then we were gonna wake up in a pile of rubble in the morning super prime property in central London is mostly old beautiful and protected even the high rollers can't build high rise and this Beck system so they're digging down to create hidden treasures you know I was driving down one of the prime West London streets the other day and the whole square was just a sea of skips and hoardings at ground level because every other property was digging down it's the latest form of competition between the super-rich you can hear the drilling all the time because everybody's creating their iceberg houses so they can make a ten million or 15 million per mansion into a 20 million or 25 million pound mansion bigger is better and biggest is best of all well I think basements are a bit like comparing penis sizes you know in in boarding school that it's basically about the size of your house they're building fortresses I like to refer to them as embassies there is definitely a trend whereby people aspire to basically create personal embassy the underground emporiums of the super-rich often have facilities that rival the top London health clubs standard must-haves for a basement would be the swimming pool spa the sauna a cinema hairdressers the must-haves some of the swimming pool trees on eight meters 24 feet length by you know 1215 feet wide so they're not swimming pools one that always springs to mind is the one that has a 10 meter high diving board in so soon pool in the basement and that's in a very central location in London that's a dive through two floors of the average London home and if you're swimming in cash you can raise or lower the depth at will we had one client whose children were majorly into water polo so you need the pool at a different height so the floor goes up and down that way the children can play around all this is a paddle pool or the floor can go all the way down and they can use it as a full swing pool I've seen lots of senators in basements it's a common thing media rooms they're not core cinemas media rooms a nice room sauna massage rooms changing rooms bowling alley squash court you know the basement was 5,000 square foot and it was exclusively to be able to display their artwork we put disco dancing room we put a few of those in actually staff quarters their ever underestimate staff courses that seriously important our garage is very important because you can't park it in London so people like to have eight car garages if they can get it with lifts going down into them one of our clients jokingly said it would be quite handy if he could have his own entrance onto the platform of the District Line they've got everything you tend to think well it's sort of now totally out of control and ridiculous [Music] soaring property prices mean that mega basements are worth a fortune to the super-rich but the price sometimes paid by their neighbors the merely wealthy is immeasurable Claire Latimer has lived for 22 years in London celebrity rich Primrose Hill she became a victim of iceberg housing when her next-door neighbour began digging down in May 2012 people want extra bedrooms family expanding and they don't want to move and all for that but gyms and swimming pools and audience why not go to the local idiom why not go to the swimming pool why do you have to have it in your house of which most of these things seem to be very fat and I don't think they use any of these things anyway three months after the work began the house next door fell down suddenly on August the 15th in 2012 in the night a pier crashed down and went into a void with water we don't know what we still don't know what's happened it was incredibly scary because the whole of my house too shifted and you really thought the house is going to come down and it cracked every woman in the house there isn't the house there apart from the roof that's the only thing that's left I've had two years now with this one brick out into the elements of the air on the whole of one side of my house which is my main room in my bedroom so it's been freezing cold the damp comes in my clothes have got mold my shoes have got mold the heating bills been drastically more the other thing which is really sad is once this is done in possibly a year's time which will be four years then we'll have to move out to have our house repaired so it's it's going to be a five or six year hustle I think you know I can't move I can't rent the place I can't you just have to wait Oh God they are your worst nightmare one single household can inconvenience an entire neighborhood for up to two or three years if he had come to me at the beginning and said I have wrecked your life I'm really really sorry we'll put this right blah blah blah I would have had a very different attitude I must say in neighboring leafy Hampstead where house prices average around two million pounds a support group has been formed to lobby against iceberg homes I bought my flat 25 years ago for a pittance in Peter Simmons Street there are five mega basements in a row they're like boys toys everybody you've got a swimming pool oh I'm on two swimming pool they're only I want two biggest only I want to pick a swimming pool I'm looking at a mock-up here fascinating mock-up of an iceberg house and it goes down fifty feet four levels that's amazing we have a ballroom a 45 foot swimming pool a hot tub massage room sauna steam room plunge pool and an art store I mean obviously everybody has to have an art store even if there are four thousand letters of objection from every single house around him and three rows will be closed for two years and so on and so on there is nothing in current planning law that enables the planning committee to say no you can't dig your double basement it's beyond beyond in 2013 the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea received 450 planning applications for basements almost a 1000% increase in just over a decade this street in prized Belgravia has been the home of the coup Williams family for 17 years a house here will cost you around five million pounds but not perhaps this one every night I was waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning worried that the house was gonna collapse in October 2009 Michael and Ally Hugh Williams learned that there were plans to almost double the size of the house next door by building underground one night it really sank in the skit was on the road here parked on the residents parking bay which had for weeks and months been used by the builders it drops right through the road about half the road disappeared into an enormous hole like a bomb crater and then the last quantities of water started to pour uncontrollably into number five and into the well down in front of our house and ultimately into our kitchen the skip was soon retreated but the water damaged it caused to spread up through the house dampening everyone's spirits enroute we were frightened that the house was really unsafe and we were gonna wake up in the morning of emergency engineers to visit in the night when at the beginning when the ceiling started to bow and the floor dropped but they've reassured me that it's okay but at every step we've been experimenting so we didn't know if it was okay and whether or not we were going to be killed in the night the estimated cost of repairs is 350,000 pounds but there's another problem next door has been solved the offshore company that used to own it has been liquidated seems actually ludicrous to me that the house itself or the original owner cannot be traced he's just walked away the people who are building double and triple basements do not live in London and do not plan to live in London long enough for you to throw things out them when you see them I don't think any of them ever use them I think they know that they're like trolls lurking in caves down there so they only really do it because they can and because it means their house will be worth more money coming up how billionaires are replicating the world's most luxurious hotel suites in their own properties they're really like five-star hotels which are serviced all the time no they want it to be unlike what they see in anybody else's house oh my gosh I'm spending the thousand five hundred for one place setting excellence is what they want more of they want the uber hotel from the outside prime London real estate looks much the same as ever but behind these facades the super-rich of transforming their property on an epic scale what the super-rich have been doing is trying to turn london town houses into mansions one by one every single house is growing by a third or doubling up or the recent friends you buy two houses next to each other you knock them through and create one larger house I think in regions for recently and knock seven houses together constantly right here you'll see perfectly nice kitchens being torn out it's the difference of buying a house and seeing that the color of the wall is wrong so you elevate that someone's to a billionaire they can rip everything out and start again when somebody is throwing something out that's worth a lot of money it can be quite challenging and the kind of moral side of that the wife of a hedge funder will rip out what was last year a very fashionable Provencal rugged kind of country kitchen and installed enough stainless steel so that you could like disembowel a corpse in there billionaires are having to spend more money to buy their trophy homes and the more they spend on the trophy home the more they're prepared to invest in it to make it the most beautiful you know everyone's busy choosing things to buy do see it's a sort of resident Dutch thing I have the client who had five staircases commissioned five beautiful beautiful staircases and then it was it was thrown out because she'd been traveling she'd seen a different one but he came back we've got to change it this is what I want now I said they're just ripped out and they're cast away for top-end architects and designers the billionaire's desire to gut the old and install the completely new is opening up fantastic opportunities to be creative we were worried that if it's any longer we can look at fantastic materials that we could never work with before we can work with real craftsmen and skill and trades to create one-off beautiful collectors pieces that will become the antiques of the future they're prepared to spend significant sums of money by watering sums of money some of the money that we can't even imagine I do have to sometimes sort of hold back or pinch myself into oh my gosh I'm spending the thousand five hundred for one place setting of a beautiful handcrafted cutlery set they're putting in some of the finest marbles in the world they're putting in the rose up up-to-date state-of-the-art technology etc these things cost money I mean you know the Medicis back in town the top floors of this unassuming block of flats on Park Lane are being ripped apart to create a 7,000 square foot xxx apartment with views over Hyde Park and the City of London this will be the largest and most luxurious penthouse in town the top end of the market now the phenomena at the moment is the branded prophecy you have the amani flats or you have other big names one of the biggest names in the property game is that of interior designer Nikki Haslam he's no stranger to extraordinary requests we've asked to host encounter the other day but it had to swing fools off the bedrooms on the top floor why - one for each child beyond the three or four swimming pools and a huge kitchen I think people now are practive on a private airfield they want to be able to land their jets on their own property wouldn't that be wonderful no jet set flight of fantasy is impossible it's gonna be the famous circus lovely I love it going up and then back yes the brief was to make it as luxurious as possible they can walk it straight off the plane the private plane the whole point is to sort of come in and say wow isn't this magic this is what we want it is a wonderful space but to keep seen it all before billionaires parting with their money well you need to throw in a few tricks so the bookcases will swivel and then just gently move back say you've got one two three four motors to swivel and a neighbor in just moves across revealing the common Mr Bond in studio yeah excellent you've got no mind you and if you can't physically add more space paint it in instead that's right going to do some scenes from high park the second time painted in a stylized manner many super-rich that have a wonderful taste that the very the super-rich really want one British actually standard stuff they quite like you look you like a very good hotel unless we said because there tells have that kind of very new up-to-date quality with it with that makes them feel secure have you got anybody in mind we have yes there's somebody who always stays at the court loves the Connaught but once that I've something a little bit more long-term and instead of set up sort of whizzing in whizzing out staying in the apartment they're they're thinking thinking this more for a long-term basis on the lower the lower part of the xxx they can use as their office and for meetings up here will be for more for the wives and the families so I've probably given it away that it's Middle East yeah and what we're all dying to know is how much is our Middle East and billionaire going to have to stump up to keep pers indoors happy will be questioning over 30,000 pounds a week and legend Rufus laughs yeah always on the move billionaires just can't get enough of their pho hotel rooms there's got to be the rolls-royce of machines for living in you see an absence of pattern ER or sort of depth and personality in them they're like five-star hotels which are serviced all the time but they have that Hotel feeling when you're in them and the reason for that is because they don't invest emotionally in their properties individual taste in the sense that taste means an idiosyncratic way of articulating your beliefs and values through the things you wear all the things you know you acquire this has no meaning in this world meditate the taste is homogenized but sometimes if it looks like a hotel and feels like a hotel the really is a hotel attached number one Hyde Park the most expensive blot in the world is serviced by the five-star Mandarin Oriental the super-rich want is a concierge service they want to be waited on and that's what you're going to get so if you want a lobster at four o'clock in the morning then you just call room service basically it's that crossover between having the convenience of your own apartment but also the convenience of being in a hotel some billionaires are happy to borrow room service others want to install it permanently but to house your own live-in concierge team you need a mega mansion a nine-story block is a start the same space next door houses 41 apartments here the 18,000 square feet is being made over into a home for just one family my celebrated designer Karen house silly boy I just wanted to while we're on site chat to you and Helena about the ceilings here because I know how much worse than in restoring them I just think we can make some of the detail pop a bit more so you say 18,000 square feet but what that doesn't deal is with the sheer volume of the space that we're looking at here and a lot of our clients are looking for really fabulous ceiling heights you know that is another sign of luxury and I suppose wealth so family room which just got fantastic ceiling height this is gonna be our glass paneling here we're doing another project for him overseas and we're also talking to him battle yacht so this this will form part of a portfolio of six or seven properties for him and then I know we wanted to have a look at something in his dressing room through here looks fantastic another be outlet yeah so we were thinking of adding these freestanding display units watch winders gas top he'll definitely want that a lot of our clients have a collection of watches they don't just have one they work on on a system where they need to be rotated so what we will do is incorporate a tumbler that actually moves the watch and make sure that when they want to put the watch on it's ready to wear [Music] this is very much an upstairs Downstairs house so we're gonna have obviously staff in the basement but also in accommodation on the top floors we're talking about a household staff of about ten when they're in residence so this is family room cinema room and then kitchen and staff yeah it is a family home so we are incorporating things for the children as well as the adults when we're doing the design here we're talking to him about putting fish tank in in the basement his son has a kind of is looking at miniature sharks we're just talking to experts about that and then through the cinema room here which is where we're going to put the popcorn machine isn't it I suppose the biggest challenge for us is how we incorporate all of the technology without anybody seeing it so televisions are hidden behind walls behind paintings sliding doors moving mirrors but still keeping that classical elegance that's the real challenge it's not just hiding the technology that's a challenge it's making sure they can operate it sometimes when we first meet them tell us about the disaster that they've had in their previous project where after they've installed all this amazing technology the thing didn't work the way they expected it to and they become very anti technology and they want to get back to simple buttons where you press a button and the light comes on we've got clients who will have their own audio-visual team who will be installing all of their televisions and their sound systems in all of their homes so they will travel around the world doing that to make sure that it's the same system so when they land overnight in their private jet at one particular property and they go into the bedroom they don't have to worry how they operate the various switches to switch on the different lights around the house just get a dimmer switch it's crazy this is gonna be our gym and then this is gonna be our hanim sauna or sauna and hammer and you thought they'd forgotten but no of course there's a pool down here too we've got our glass wall back here yeah and then all of this is a dark rich blue mosaic we've got these little fiber-optic lights and we've we've seen a layout that the life specialist did that they've actually they've decided on each location of all the five rot so it's gonna kind of sparkle it nice as well and I think that'd be fantastic [Music] another incredible top-end property takes shape and you have to wonder if our billionaires are getting any kind of enduring pleasure from all the effort I suppose it takes the edge off it when they see someone else has got the bigger newer thing and so the super-rich are always on high alert for getting rid of their old stuff and buying the new stuff quite often I mean I've seen situations where somebody has been say a hundred thousand pounds on marble for the master bathroom they walk in and they don't like it and say it has to be ripped out and start again it's been another hundred thousand pounds on a slightly different color if you design something properly and well it will stand the test of time it still will be there in 20 years time it will not be being ripped out the super-rich certainly know the price of everything but all too often the value is fleeting when you go to stay with these people you know there's a sense of impermanence in a lot of their houses I think a loss of the time there isn't really a home I've never been asked to buy a home because there is no such animal there is no one such thing in their lives they merely have property

Channel: TradingCoachUK

Views: 967,348

Rating: 4.5185328 out of 5

Keywords: Wall street, forex, stocks, commodities, gold, oil, trader, warren buffet, million dollar traders, traders by the millions, market, trading, analysis, stock, technical, investment, futures, options, finance, day, currency, markets, news, euro, financial, bloomberg, system, stock market, hedge fund, education, dow, business, charts, top 10, top 50, youngest, billionaire, trillionaire, crypto, bitcoin, trump, life hack, 2019, documentary, rich list, super rich, secret, custom, bespoke, supercars, mid term

Id: saomEOvLW1w

Length: 41min 40sec (2500 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 12 2018