The average billionaire is married, worth ￡1.79 billion (US$2.97 billion) and would never spend less than ￡10 million on a property, unless it was for the staff, research published on Sunday shows.
There are more than 2,170 billionaires worldwide who have a combined net worth of ￡3.88 trillion, up from ￡1.85 trillion in 2009, according to the analysis of high-end real-estate agency Beauchamp Estates and Dataloft.
Of these 2,170 billionaires, the agency said 60 percent were self-made, 20 percent had inherited their wealth and the rest had a combination of partially inherited, partially made fortunes.
Alongside soccer clubs and fine art, London property was found to be high on the list of must-haves for those with many millions of pounds in the bank, with the research showing that 67 billionaires live in the English capital, making it the most popular of Western Europe’s major cities among the ultra-wealthy, ahead of Paris with 25 and Geneva with 18.
The typical billionaire holds ￡50 million or more in real estate and has four homes, the research indicates, while their property portfolio would typically include a ￡22.3 million mansion in London; an ￡18.6 million holiday home on the French Riviera; a ￡12.1 million estate in Tuscany, Italy; and another luxury pad, perhaps somewhere more far-flung.
The researchers claim that a billionaire would “never spend less than ￡10 million on a London property [unless it is for a servant].”
Such a property might be in London’s posh Chelsea neighborhood, but that area is not favored by billionaires themselves, who instead prefer a mansion in the “platinum triangle,” formed by the Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Belgravia districts, the research showed.
With an average of 2.1 children each, billionaires were found to favor family homes — the bigger, the better, with six bedrooms as standard — and to rank state-of-the-art security above lifestyle facilities. Features like iris-recognition technology, his and hers panic rooms and bullet-proof doors are not unusual in luxury developments in the English capital.
“We advise UHNWIs [ultra-high net-worth individuals] buying homes in London and around the Mediterranean to set aside budgets of typically ￡50 million to acquire the right properties,” Gary Hersham of Beauchamp Estates said. “Most UHNWIs buying in Western Europe see having an ultra-prime home in prime central London and on the French Riviera as ‘must-have badges.’”
The research found that the world’s wealthiest individuals hold an average of 42 percent of their wealth (￡750 million) in private holdings; 35 percent (￡626 million) in publicly held companies; 18 percent (￡322 million) in cash; 3 percent (￡54 million) in residential real estate and 2 percent (￡35 million) in luxury assets such as artwork, yachts and private jet travel.
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