Mayfair is probably the most exclusive and valuable area of London. There are many top quality homes and many Offices bounded by Park Lane, Oxford Street, Piccadilly and Regent Street. Property names which to many which are more at home on the Monopoly board than homes in real life.
Many years ago, the area now known as Mayfair was the location of a 100 plus acres of poorly drained swampy ground through which the River Tyburn once flowed on its route from Hampstead Heath to the River Thames.
This land was the site of the original May Fair which was allowed to take place by King James 2nd in 1686. This was held over two weeks in May and this event was walking distance from the majority of London’s population. It soon became very popular for music, dancing and general merriment and drinking. After a few years, the authorities thought the behaviour comprised “Lewd and disorderly practicesâ€
Via marriage to a 12 year old heiress, (Mary Davies), the Grosvenor family acquired Mayfair and started developing the land around Hanover Square and enabling other squares and locations to be developed by the gentry. Indeed, by the time 277 properties had been built, 117 of the occupiers were titled.
By the time the market had moved to Bow in east London (so it did not disturb the upper class of Mayfair) in 1764, the area was established as one of the central London areas to live or in the lives of the upper class, to have a town house.
Whilst cyclical as all areas of the property market usually are, the area generally blossomed and bloomed until the First World War which along with the 1919 / 1920 Spanish Flue epidemic bankrupted and /or killed many families.
The area was financially bolstered by the number of office occupiers that took over residential properties at this time and by 1939 and the outbreak of the Second World War, three quarters of properties in Mayfair were occupied by businesses, primarily as office premises.
Today, the Mayfair area generally has business premises being converted back to the original residential use, with top end updates and large sums spent on the properties to make them suitable for the multi millionaires, many of whom are international in their nationalities, lifestyles and their budgets.
Mayfair has an average property sale price of in excess of £4 million, and in some areas of Mayfair of between £2.5 to £3 million pounds for unassuming flats and with high end prestigious properties being many tens of millions, confirm that Mayfair is still as popular as ever with the international clientele despite the local differences.
According to the Chartered Surveyors of Right Surveyors, “These buyers include not just Middle Eastern, Chinese and Russian buyers, but buyers from many countries around the world as well as the UK.â€
For further advice and property information, contact www.mayfairsurveyors.co.uk
LCB 02/17