As the growing band of the global super-rich ponders where to park their
super-yachts this summer, they might consider charting a course for
Mallorca. Long a holiday haven for celebrities and European royalty, the
island is making a concerted bid for international big bucks as a local
developer unveils his new creation: a house with a guide price of £34m.
Cielo de Bonaire overlooks both the bay of Pollensa and the bay of Alcudia, to
the north of the island. From the helipad, it’s a short stroll to the
colonnaded neo-Palladian facade and into the 3,500 square metres of living
space, starting with the double-height, marble-floored hall.
It is a thoroughly modern mansion, with vistas through long lines of rooms to
gardens, a 17-metre pool and the sea beyond. When I viewed it, it was
somewhat underdressed, with contemporary furniture marooned in the vast
spaces, giving the feel of an urban penthouse rather than a country retreat.
The ideal buyer, according to the agent, is someone who wants “a holiday
home, but not a palace”.
The two-bedroom master suite is now de rigueur at this level, suggesting that
money doesn’t always buy marital happiness. Another essential feature,
apparently, is that the five guest suites and the staff accommodation are
located so far from the family quarters that you might not know they were
there – not that the rich don’t like their friends, of course. The buyer had
better not be too paranoid about nosey neighbours, either, as the area’s
mere £1m houses are just yards from the walls around the somewhat cramped
3.5acre site.
The estate agent and self-styled Balearic property visionary Matthias Kuhn, a
partner in this speculative-building venture, is convinced its timing is
right, and that the island is becoming irresistible to large numbers of the
world’s super-rich.
“The trend is set: it’s not possible to stop it,” he says. “Where else can you
get to from within Europe in two hours? The Caribbean is nice, but it’s too
far. Rich people historically went to the south of France, Marbella and
Sardinia. Some are here already, but I can smell the indication that more
are coming.”
It’s all part of the evolution of the island from cheap sunshine destination
(think Robert Graves going native in Deia), through mass tourism (with
planes disgorging chavalanches onto the beaches of resorts such as Magaluf,
or “Shagaluf” to aficionados), into a playground for the middle classes and
celebs such as Michael Douglas, Bob Geldof and Clau-dia Schiffer. Now it is
moving inexorably along the continuum and attracting, in the words of one of
Kuhn’s staff, “the international financial elite: billionaires, not
millionaires”.
Kuhn is ready for them, with a “premium” service for prospective buyers of
properties priced at more than £7m. This will involve whisking them around
in his private jet, yacht or helicopter – worth the outlay when the agent’s
fee for a successful sale is 6%.
What do these buyers want? “Everybody wants a good deal,” says Miguel Esteve,
an architect based in Switzerland, who says he has seen billionaires coming
to the island on the low-cost carrier Air Berlin. He points out that his
Mallorcan house, on the market at £3.4m, is worth as much as his home in
Gstaad, but, at 1,000 square metres, is three times the size. So Mallorca is
“cheap” at about £3,400 per square metre, compared to up to £4,800 per
square metre in Marbella. And don’t get him started on the French Riviera,
where wealthy Russians are forking out more than £40m for houses in the best
enclaves. He has even heard a whisper that one oligarch has offered €1
billion for a house on Cap Ferrat.
It’s not just price, of course. Mallorca’s attractions include a low crime
rate and, being an island, enhanced security, mari-nas large enough for huge
yachts, good infrastructure, easy accessibility and year-round life – the
Costa Smeralda, in Sardinia, is dead outside the summer season, Kuhn says.
Charles Weston-Baker, MD of agents Savills International, says that the key
question on the premium buyer’s check list is: “Who is my neighbour?” The
super-rich like to cluster together, he says, which is why there are
reputedly 18 billionaires with properties on the west coast of Barbados, and
why Cuixmala, on Mexico’s Pacific shore, was a hot destination while James
Goldsmith was its dominant alpha male, but has since lost its lustre. “They
want security,” Weston-Baker adds, “and really good watering holes and
restaurants to go to.”
So, on Mallorca, they’d have no problem, one imagines, with bumping into
members of the Bamford (JCB) family at the tapas bar, and might greet with
relief the news that Branson has sold his 4,000-acre estate on the island
for £15.7m to the wealthy Brit Christian Hoare. But they might sigh on
hearing that Schiffer recently offloaded her £7.5m estate in the southwest
to a Russian buyer. A local computer fixer reports plenty more Russians
discreetly tucked away in vast estates beyond the reach of conventional
broadband services.
Patrick Dring, a partner at the agents Knight Frank, says that super-rich
owners fall into two categories: those who like to get out and about; and
those who take their chefs, nannies and friends with them, and never leave
their property. He is marketing an estate in Monte Argen-tario, a peninsula
on the Tuscan coast, that would suit either type, provided they had £13.7m
to spend. Two houses on 600 acres guarantee seclusion, while in the nearby
resort of Porto Ercole, the owner could mingle with summer habitués such as
Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi.
Dring reckons that likely buyers for this kind of spread will have one or two
properties of similar value elsewhere in the world. And that they could go
on to add a few cheaper places to their global property portfolio, “enticed
by other opportunities that are easier to manage and might generate income”.
This trend, he claims, is being led by hotel chains such as Four Seasons,
which has sold all the £1.3m villas in its Marra-kesh development, or the
Banyan Tree in Phuket. They provide hotel services and the proceeds from
hotel-managed rental when you’re not there. And there’s “good old Mustique –
90 houses on an island in a managed environment with good rental business”.
Those houses cost up to £10m.
Back on Mallorca, on Kuhn’s premium list is Boris Becker’s 100-acre, £10m
country estate. And the island’s agents have a selection of properties for
eye-popping prices. One spread that won’t be going on the market is an
estate Kuhn bought for himself near Pollensa. “What has happened in the
south of France has opened my eyes,” he says. “There has been a 650%
increase there in five years. This will happen here, too. There’s a finite
amount of top property available – if I hang on to this house for five
years, I’ll get three times more than I would today.”
Bring on the billionaires.
Kuhn & Partner, 00 34 971 22 82 61, www.kuhn-partner.com
WHERE TO GO
IN
Mallorca Richard Branson has sold up, but more discreet wealth is
buying in
South of France Prices suit only the very richest (Bill Gates, Russian
oligarchs)
Palm Beach, Florida Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel bolt back to their
£17.5m house every weekend after a hard week in court in Chicago
Mozambique and the Seychelles The adventurous are adding serious Indian
Oceanfront estates to their property portfolios
Cap Cana, Dominican Republic An exclusive new enclave – its £10m houses
are popular with Latin-American plutocrats
Barbados Billionaires buy homes handy for the Sandy Lane hotel
OUT
Marbella, Spain Overbuilding, crime and corruption have reached
unacceptable levels
Cuixmala, Mexico Can’t recapture the lustre of the days when James
Goldsmith held sway
South Africa Only attracts buyers who already have links to the country
Costa Smeralda, Sardinia Dead for nine months of the year
MONEY NO OBJECT?
Palm Beach, Florida: Donald Trump’s oceanfront residence has 15
bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, onyx floors and an art gallery.It sits in 6½ acres
and is for sale for £63m with Sotheby’s International Realty; 00 1 561
659 3555, www.sothebysrealty.com
Cap d’Antibes: Villa du Golfe has six bedrooms, with a further
three bedrooms in a cottage in the 0.8acre grounds. With marble terraces, a
swimming pool, a tennis court and views over to Cannes, it is for sale for
£12.5m with Savills International; 020 7016 3740, www.savills.co.uk/abroad
Mallorca: This 10-bedroom estate in Cas Concos has a large outdoor
entertaining area, a sauna, a gym, a stable and a paddock. It is for sale
for £7.4m with Classic Estates; 00 34 971 674 800, www.
classic-estates-mallorca.com
Barbados: Historic Bayleys Plantation, which dates back to 1719 and is
owned by the musician Eddy Grant, has 15 bedrooms, 30 acres, a swimming pool
and a football pitch. It is for sale for £17.5m, with Savills International,
as before
