There’s the famous Kensington Palace Gardens street , owned and leased by the Crown and with gates at either end, it is currently the most expensive road per square foot in London.<\/p>\n
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http:\/\/www.propertyinvestmentproject.co.uk\/blog\/most-expensive-house-in-the-world\/<\/a><\/p>\n However, Bishops Avenue lays claim to the highest concentration of giant, super-expensive houses. It has another distinction: it is here that the Saudi royal family bought seven homes in the early 1990s when they thought that Sadam Hussein would invade their country (see below Times article). All of those houses are now unoccupied as are a huge proportion of the mansions on Bishops Avenue. In fact, they are occupied so rarely that owners sometimes find squatters inhabiting their homes when they stop by once every five years or so.<\/p>\n As a piece in the times points out, these houses are owned not by people for whom money is no object but by those for whom it is the only object (Times). People who have purchased these houses are interested in the status which comes with owning a piece of property whose exact monetary value is frankly beside the point.<\/p>\n When it was purchased in 2004 and renamed the Royal Mansion, the $50 million Toprak Mansion, held the distinct honor of the most expensive new house ever sold in London. It now has giant gold lettering across the top of the columns proclaiming its new name for all to see.<\/p>\n http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/in_pictures\/7208534.stm<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-510744\/The-Chavenue-Inside-expensive-road-London.html<\/a><\/p>\n Britain’s richest man, Lakshmi Mittal, also owns a house here which he has been unable to sell. Instead, he has offered to rent it for the paltry sum of 10,000 pounds-a-week.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.thisislondon.co.uk\/standard\/article-23725446-mittal-rents-out-10000-a-week-palace-he-cant-sell.do<\/a><\/p>\n There are many remarkable, and shocking, things about the culture of\u00a0opulence which these houses represent. I’ll leave you with this from the Times:<\/p>\n “I heard a story, a parable even, about this pocket of north London. It takes place in the plant room of a new-built mansion \u2013 where else? \u2013 and concerns a certain country\u2019s richest man, whose identity I promised to conceal for fear of my informant\u2019s social (and, perhaps, actual) death. This man and his wife had not lived in their house for long \u2013 one of the world\u2019s most expensive \u2013 when the heating systems began to go awry. Now, when you live in a 20,000-square-foot house and the plumbing\u2019s playing up, you call someone fast. The engineer arrived promptly, went down to the plant room and looked at the series of mechanical control panels that monitor the byzantine complex of boilers and water tanks and filters. And they were all to cock. Someone had been messing around with them. He asked around the staff, but nobody knew anything about it. Eventually the owner\u2019s wife admitted, rather sheepishly, that she had been in the room and had tried to adjust the settings. Why, asked the engineer. Her reply tells you everything you need to know about this odd little world. \u201cI was worried about the heating bills,\u201d she said.”<\/p>\n Cited:<\/p>\n http:\/\/property.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/life_and_style\/property\/article4164403.ece<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/files\/2010\/09\/royal-mansion-300x216.jpg\")
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