£135.4m Apartment, One Hyde Park

The UK’s most expensive flat has been sold at the One Hyde Park development in London for more than £135m, according to official Land Registry documents filed on Friday.

The top three floors in the Richard Rogers-designed complex next to Knightsbridge, built by a development group led by the Candy brothers, the upmarket property investors, are set to be turned into the UK’s most expensive penthouse.

The new owner is thought to be spending up to £60m on interior work after receiving the apartment, acquired for £135.4m, with bare walls and no amenities.

The private purchaser is understood to be from Ukraine and to have paid for the penthouse in cash at the tail-end of the property boom in 2007.

The purchase was made through an offshore vehicle called Water Property Holdings, although the law firm used in the purchase is based in Russia and Ukraine. There is no mortgage linked to the property.

The identity of the buyer is covered by confidentiality clauses with Project Grande (Guernsey) Limited, the developer. The sale is the largest to be made at the One Hyde Park development in London, which has become the most expensive residential development with almost £1bn of sales transacted across 45 apartments.

The complex of more than 80 flats was launched with a lavish party at the next-door Mandarin Oriental hotel, attended by Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One commercial supremo, and catered for by Heston Blumenthal. Owners are treated as guests of the Mandarin.

Land Registry provides details of the prices being paid at the development. The details have slowly emerged after the scheme completed in January, with another 12 flats registered at the end of this week including the penthouse. Almost all apartments have been bought through offshore trusts. One has been sold to a company called Vamespark Investments Corporation, incorporated in the Republic of Liberia.

SJ Berwin, the law firm, confirmed that 45 apartments had been sold at an aggregate price of £963.5m. It said there were also sales of more than £125m which had not yet exchanged or completed. Most of the £1bn of debt borrowed from Eurohypo Bank to finance the development has now been repaid.

Project Grande (Guernsey) Limited confirmed that all penthouses were sold “shell & core”, meaning that they were delivered to buyers stripped to bare walls. It is thought that Candy & Candy, the interior design company led by Nick Candy, has been employed to fit out the penthouse at a cost of close to £60m.

Nick Candy said: “The London prime market has remained very hot, with interest coming from a range of regions but in particular India, China and the Middle Eastern states such as Saudi, Bahrain and Egypt.”

On the Land Registry, the sale shows up as flat A. 8.1 on the eighth and ninth floor, sold for £86.2m, and A. 7.1 on the seventh floor, sold for £50.2m. The two flats have been combined to create a single penthouse of 25,000 sq ft.

By Daniel Thomas, Property Correspondent
Published: April 15 2011 19:25 | Last updated: April 15 2011 19:25