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‘Jesuits close to £100 mil deal to sell Kensington plot’

By Jack Sidders

/ Bloomberg |

March 6, 2017 8:00 AM SGT

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Johnny Sandelson, the property entrepreneur developing a luxury- home project for seniors in London’s Chelsea district, is in talks to buy a £100 million ($174 million) plot of land in Kensington from a Jesuits group, two people familiar with the plan say.

Sandelson and a group of South African investors have agreed to a deal to buy the 1.1ha King’s Gardens site from Jesuits in Britain, the people say, asking not to be identified because the deal is not yet complete. The developer is considering luxury retirement homes, private apartments and other commercial buildings for the plot, which is about 600m south of Kensington Palace, they add.

Spokesmen for Sandelson and broker CBRE Group, which is advising on the sale of the plot, declined to comment. Nobody from Jesuits in Britain was available for comment.

Britain faces a severe shortage of housing specifically targeted at older people, according to an October 2016 report published by broker Knight Frank. One in 12 people will be 80 or more by 2039 while just 3% of new homes planned or under construction are for the elderly, the report says. Those aged from 65 to 74 now hold more wealth than the entire population aged under 45, a group more than twice their size, according to Resolution Foundation, a non-partisan think tank.

Sandelson announced plans for Auriens, a luxury development in London’s Chelsea district with chauffeur service and a bar called Zimmer, last year. The project will open in 2019.

He founded GuestInvest, the hotel chain that allowed investors to buy and lease individual rooms, in 2003. The company, which was backed by HBOS, was placed into administration in 2008.

The King’s Gardens plot is next to Heythrop College, which helps educate aspiring Catholic priests. The college, originally founded in Belgium in 1614, is due to close in 2018 because of losses, a spokesman told the London Evening Standard last September, when the newspaper reported the plan to sell the site.

Residential land values in London’s best districts fell 11.5% in 2016, according to Knight Frank. The rate of decline slowed in the final quarter and there are early signs that some investors will soon return to the market in anticipation that prices are close to the bottom, the broker says. — Bloomberg LP

This article appeared in The Edge Property Pullout, Issue 769 (Mar 6, 2017) of The Edge Singapore.

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