Billionaire Mansions - The Luxurious Mansions Billionaires!

There's one possession on which billionaires are spending a fortune and making a killing. Property. Penthouses, stately piles, fairytale palaces to leave no one in doubt who's king. They're building fortresses. I like to refer to them as embassies. Fortunes are lavished on their transformation. We walked through a house in the country the other day and it had two swimming pools off the bedrooms on the top floor. Why two? One for each child. Ask a silly question. These people live very peripatetic lifestyles. They'll often have five, six, seven houses. They don't actually live anywhere, which means that they don't make friends with other people because they're never in one place long enough. There's a sense of impermanence in a lot of their houses because they don't invest in their lives in the same way that we do. It's just stuff. It's all tradable. These are the most coveted houses in the world. But to many billionaires, they're not so much homes as appreciating assets. I can think of one client who has multiple properties. One in the country. And every morning the housekeeper makes sure that the flowers are fresh and the water in the vases is clean. And the driver and the handyman make sure that everything's working. And the employer has never slept there. There's one city that attracts the international super rich in their droves. London. London's become the sort of billionaire capital of the world. Their wealth has accelerated at a rate that one simply couldn't believe was possible 15, 20 years ago. The rich are getting richer and certainly that gives them opportunities. They're buying more and more properties around the world. The biggest draw for London to super billionaires is somewhere to park money. Let's invest it in property. It's so buoyant at the moment. London's such a bubble. Today London is a home of sorts to over 100 billionaires. When everyone is moaning about overseas people buying in London, this is not bad. This is a sign of success. Just look at the skyline now with all of these buildings. They weren't here 15 years ago. Waves of excited foreign buyers sashaying into the UK property market have created a whole new class of real estate. It's known as super prime. They're queuing to snap up top end British real estate gems. Like this 25 million pound mega mansion in North London. The gardens are exquisite. It's got a magnificent little lodge as you come in. It's got a guest house. It's got garaging. And of course it's got a nine hole golf course which I don't think many houses have in prime central London. At 20,000 square feet there's enough room to swing a tiger in here. And toy wise, well even the most restless billionaire would be struggling to complain. But then there's no accounting for taste. I can't really see the benefit of the cinema, which means you've got to invite people over to watch a movie. Well, do you really want to do that? I mean you've got people who've got televisions in every single room, including the bathroom. And you wonder how much time you can spend in a bath watching a movie. You know, you end up like an old prune at the end of it all. The type of buyer who's looking for a house like this will want to perhaps replicate what he has in his own country. It's more likely to be somebody who is Eastern European. For example, he's from Moscow, he'll live just outside Moscow. Or it'll be a Middle Eastern family where bedroom count is very important and gardens are very important. They very much want new and they want shiny. Because they're purchasing very much in order to impress their friends. And to some buyers nothing screams unimpressive like a lot of stairs to climb. Clients for the Middle East, stairs are a no-no. And I mean just steps up to the front door. They don't do them. Even a sort of first floor apartment would need to have a lift. So that's their priority. And I know it sounds corny but proximity to Harrods is absolutely what it's all about. London property is an asset class in itself. People are actually buying property just in the same way they buy wine. This money is making money faster than a worker bee can make money. So capital makes more money for itself than somebody working to earn a living. For the showy high-end house hunter, property is all about one-upmanship. Who's the boss? Who has just bought Wittenhurst in Highgate, North London? Once refurbished, it's set to be worth around 200 million pounds. It's the second largest mega-mansion in London after Buckingham Palace. Well, there's always one, isn't there? But size isn't everything for another group of billionaire property buyers. What stokes their argo is location. It's like a four-horse race. If you put a leader table, Dorgradio would be at the top. Then followed by Knightsbridge, Mayfair and Chelsea. Andrew Langton has been selling London's super-prime for nearly half a century. If you are approached by a buyer who says, I want to find a house with scale, volume, important location, you've got to say, well, Belgrave Square is right at the top of the list. I mean, like Seaford House over here. I mean, that is as fine a house as you'll ever see anywhere in this town. Over the last ten years, you've seen a dramatic rise. I mean, I remember selling a house on the south side for no more than about 16, 17 million. That house today is obviously appreciated by at least 50 to 60 million. This gradually will be known as Billionaire Square. Ordinary mortals buy to live in. Billionaires buy to leave alone. I don't think I have ever bought a property for an uber-wealthy person. Four weeks of the year. One of my clients has this as an amazing estate. Huge acreage, stables, full staff all the time. They were in the country 12 days last year. I have a concern that London is going to be an enlarging ghetto of vacant properties. Like these vacant North London houses on what's known as Billionaire's Row. I've seen examples of that, particularly in Hampstead where one owner had about seven houses and there were more butterflies flying around that house than there were people because the amount of buddleia were growing out of the roof. A very rich person once told me when he was explaining his elaborate plans to move around the world. He said, listen Amelia, we don't ****, we travel. I don't think that there is that kind of heart of the home that we have. In my house, everybody gravitates towards the kitchen. To me, that's home. But I don't think that the ultra-rich necessarily have that. Coming up, when property gets extremely expensive, even for the very wealthy. The Venetian Palace is obviously one of the most expensive properties on the planet. Almost 100 million euros is a lot of money even for very, very rich people. And billionaires on the up. A seven-star hotel living in the sky. You live in a fortress of great wealth and you keep out poor people. For billionaires, more property means more bills, more staff and more one-upmanship. And nowhere is this competitive element fiercer than on the French Riviera. So when the super-rich go house hunting, they need the help of Sotheby's own Alexander Croft. Monaco realtor, multimillionaire in his own right and a man who knows first-hand exactly what billionaires are looking for. I think I may be the ultimate estate agent in that I live a lifestyle that's very close to the lifestyle of those clients. I really do understand them. I have five homes in four different countries. I'm certainly not super-rich, but still I have this little collection of homes. I also like cars, which are very nice toys. And I keep them here in the country house to play with. So my English side again, I've got a Bentley, an Aston and an old Jag for the Italian moments, an Alfa Spyder. I think today I'd rather take the Bentley because it's really the most comfortable. So the smoothest ride is always the Bentley. Today, Alexander is day-tripping to Cannes to view a property he's been instructed to sell. The pool of potential buyers, though, is très, très petite. The Venetian Palace is one of the most expensive properties on the planet. It's priced at 95 million euros. And almost 100 million euros is a lot of money, even for very, very rich people. The Venetian Palace is based in one of the best areas of Cannes. You're overlooking the entire coast. You can see the sea. So it's in a very privileged position on the Côte d'Azur. Alexander. In a scene straight out of a Christian Dior advert, Alexander is given the grand tour of the property by Sotheby's colleague Pascal Monti. This is a palais de mission. Pretty amazing, isn't it? How big is it in total? In total, we have like 3,000 square meters of living space. Wow. That's 32,000 square feet, or 34 times bigger than the average British home. So this is a pretty nice plot. So this is the main reception area? Yes, this would be the main reception. On one side, we could have like the living room. On the other side, like a dining room, depending on the need of the client. This vast, wonderful space is silent now, and is likely to remain so even when it's eventually snapped up. What this new class are, is they are sort of super, super beings. They don't actually live anywhere. I call them, you know, cosmocrats or globos, kind of these global citizens, with multiple houses, often multiple nationalities. So they don't actually live anywhere, which means that they don't make friends with other people, because they're never in one place long enough. The socializing that does go on at home is between work clients. So it's clients coming in for dinner, and that's quite a formal occasion. It's very much an entertaining sort of feel to the evening, rather than friends getting together for a curry. Thank you. Wow, what a view. This is pretty amazing. Koi? This is koi, yeah. Yeah. So I have a question for you. Tell me. How do you get over to the island? We get a remote for that. Oh, I love it. You just push it, and here we are. Collective drawbridge. This is the 21st century. You know, a lot of people who are going to love that, I think. I already got some people in mind for that. Oh, that's perfect. That's amazing. A drawbridge. Even out here in the epicenter of one-upmanship, it's an impressive flourish. I think for the super-rich properties, real estate is very important, because real estate is also an outward expression of your success, of your standing in the world. There's quite a lot of competition and rivalry between the super-rich. For many people, it's a question, you know, am I at the best address? Do I have the biggest property on the Cap Ferrat in southern France? Do I have the biggest house on Eaton Square? Do I have the biggest penthouse on Fifth Avenue? As if it would be a perfect property for a Russian buyer, for example. Yeah, I do think so, too. They love always newer properties with all the gadgets, with all the extras. And a lot of space as well. Yes, exactly. Maybe also by like a Middle East investor as well. Middle East, yeah, absolutely. Qatari, perhaps. Well, this property obviously is designed to impress. This is designed to awe. And I think when one arrives here, just, you know, the scale, the proportions, the layout, people will love it. There will also be people who hate it. The cleaner, for starters, and probably the bloke that mows the lawns. Once again, huge property, huge commitment. I do think there's stresses to having several houses. Even if you have 17 PAs and house managers, that ultimately you're going to have to take the call that the hurricane has just swept your island down. The super-rich have problems that no one can understand, except their equally rich social competitors. So it means either you can't talk about the things that you do in your life because a person is going to resent you or say, or worse, they might make fun of you. And the super-rich live in fear of being made fun of. So what do you do? You surround yourself. You go to St. Moritz, where everybody is just like you. And then you talk about the problems. The main conversations amongst the rich is the problem of having to pay tax. Paying high rates of tax is, of course, a high-class problem. But it's one that can be easily swept under the Persian by landing yourself here in Monte Carlo, capital of the Principality of Monaco and the king of tax havens. As a result, it's top of the league for its property prices. Monaco is the second smallest country in the world after the Vatican. So obviously, you know, growth has to be upwards because there's no other way. Square meter prices in Monaco are amongst the highest, if not the highest in the world. They start somewhere at 30,000 euros, but can go up all the way to more than 100,000 euros per square meter. So why would anyone want to swap a palace in Cannes for a mere penthouse in Monte Carlo? Well, the super-rich Monaco really has a unique appeal because obviously you have the tax advantages, but frankly, there are many tax havens around the world. Almost nowhere else in the world you are as safe as you are in Monaco. You can wear your jewelry, your watches, your car without any problem, without thinking twice. Hello, Deborah. How are you? Alexander has recently added this Monaco apartment to Sotheby's books. Wow. So they just completely restored the apartment? Exactly. Okay. This is something rare, you know, a nice contemporary apartment like this. Very nice pieces, very good art. I love the mixture. It's really unique. Wow. That's what I call a view. I mean, this apartment is amazing because you look really in all directions, right? You have Italy over there, you have the sea there, you have the Yacht Club over there. I mean, all the landmarks in one building. So, I mean, I think this is an apartment that appeals almost to everybody, right? It's perfectly renovated. The size is... Yeah, it's huge. It's very large. I mean, for Monaco, 500 square meters. That's just over 5,000 square feet. The kitchen's a little bit special, but there are only three bedrooms. Still, the master bedroom has his and hers dressing rooms and a bathroom that provides the unique platform to show the whole town. But size isn't everything. You see this view? Well, if you take a bath here, it's like swimming in the sky, isn't it? I mean, blue, blue everywhere. It doesn't get much better than that. What do you have here? You have... Concierge, you have. Concierge. You have a pool. Pool. You have a small restaurant next to the pool. All right, okay. And we have shops next to the... Okay, parking spaces. Parking spaces and sellers, of course. Yeah, okay. No, I mean, definitely, I think 40 million easily. Come again? 40 million easily. 40 million euros for a three-bedroom flat is the astonishing price of tax avoidance for the Monaco-bound billionaire. But in this six-zeros world, massive financial hits are simply another cross to bear. The global ghetto of great luxury, which the very rich live in, it's a form of security. It's like a fortress. You live in a fortress of great wealth, and you keep out poor people. They are increasingly living in a bubble. They're very lonely. I mean, that's, I think, one of the key things that we've noticed. I mean, they're in their gilded cages, and they have everything they can possibly want, but they don't exactly have a life. Coming up, billionaires dig deep, for when you run out of space in London, the only way to go is down. You find the leisure centre, the swimming pool, the gymnasium, the cinema. Sauna, steam room, plunge pool, and an art store. I mean, obviously, everybody has to have an art store. About half the road disappeared into an enormous hole. It was like a bomb crater. We were frightened that the house was really unsafe, and that we were going to wake up in a pile of rubble in the morning. Super prime property in central London is mostly old, beautiful, and protected. Even the high rollers can't build high rise, and this vexes them. So they're digging down to create hidden treasures. You know, I was driving down one of the prime West London streets the other day, and the whole square was just a sea of skips and hoardings at ground level, because every other property was digging down. It's the latest form of competition between the super rich. You can hear the drilling all the time, because everybody's creating their iceberg houses, so they can make a £10 million or a £15 million mansion into a £20 million or a £25 million mansion. Bigger is better, and biggest is best of all. Well, I think basements are a bit like comparing penis sizes, you know, in boarding school, that it's basically about the size of your house. They're building fortresses. I like to refer to them as embassies. There is definitely a trend whereby people aspire to basically create a personal embassy. The underground emporiums of the super rich often have facilities that rival the top London health clubs. Standard must-haves for a basement would be the swimming pool, spa, sauna, a cinema, hairdressers, the must-haves. Some of the swimming pools we've done, 8 metres, 24 feet length by, you know, 12, 15 feet wide. So they're not small swimming pools. One that always springs to mind is the one that has a 10 metre high diving board into a swimming pool in the basement, and that's in a very central location in London. That's a dive through two floors of the average London home. And if you're swimming in cash, you can raise or lower the depth at will. We had one client whose children were majorly into water polo, so you need the pool at a different height so the floor goes up and down. That way the children can play around almost as a paddle pool, or the floor can go all the way down and they can use it as a full swing pool. I've seen lots of cinemas in basements. It's a common thing. Media rooms. They're not called cinemas. Media rooms. An ice room, sauna, massage rooms, changing rooms. Bowling alley, squash court. You know, the basement was 5,000 square foot, and it was exclusively to be able to display their artwork. We put disco dancing room. We put a few of those in, actually. Staff quarters. Don't ever underestimate staff quarters. That's seriously important. Garages are very important because you can't park in London, so people like to have eight car garages, if they can get it, with lifts going down into them. One of our clients jokingly said it would be quite handy if he could have his own entrance onto the platform of a district line. They've got everything. You tend to think, well, it's sort of now totally out of control and ridiculous. Soaring property prices mean that mega-basements are worth a fortune to the super-rich. But the price, sometimes paid by their neighbours, the merely wealthy, is immeasurable. Claire Latimer has lived for 22 years in London's celebrity-rich Primrose Hill. She became a victim of iceberg housing when her next-door neighbour began digging down in May 2012. People want extra bedrooms, family expanding, and they don't want to move. I'm all for that. But gyms and swimming pools, and odeons. Why not go to the local odeon? Why not go to a swimming pool? Why do you have to have it in your house? Of which most of these owners seem to be very fat, and I don't think they use any of these things anyway. Three months after the work began, the house next door fell down. Suddenly on August the 15th in 2012, in the night, a pier crashed down and went into a void with water. We still don't know what's happened. It was incredibly scary because the whole of my house just shifted, and you really thought the house was going to come down. And it cracked every room in the house. There isn't a house there apart from the roof, that's the only thing that's left. I've had two years now with just one brick out into the elements of the air on the whole of one side of my house, which is my main room and my bedroom. So it's been freezing cold, the damp comes in, my clothes have got mould, my shoes have got mould, the heating bill's been drastically more. The other thing which is really sad is once this is done in possibly a year's time, which will be four years, then we'll have to move out to have our house repaired. So it's going to be a five or six year hassle I think. You know, I can't move, I can't rent the place, I can't, you just have to wait. Oh God, they are your worst nightmare. One single household can inconvenience an entire neighbourhood for up to two or three years. If he had come to me at the beginning and said, I have wrecked your life, I'm really, really sorry, we'll put this right, blah, blah, blah, I would have had a very different attitude, I must say. In neighbouring Leafy Hampstead, where house prices average around two million pounds, a support group has been formed to lobby against Iceberg Homes. I bought my flat 25 years ago for a pittance. I am property rich. And cash poor. In Peter Simmons Street, there are five mega basements in a row. They're like boys' toys. Yes. And everybody, you've got a swimming pool, oh I want a swimming pool. No Ellie, I want a bigger swimming pool. Only I want a bigger swimming pool. I'm looking at a mock-up here, a fascinating mock-up of an Iceberg house, and it goes down 50 feet, four levels. That's amazing. We have a ballroom, a 45 foot swimming pool, a hot tub, massage room, sauna, steam room, plunge pool, and an art store. I mean, obviously, everybody has to have an art store. Even if there are 4,000 letters of objection from every single house around him, and three roads will be closed for two years, and so on and so on, there is nothing in current planning law that enables the planning committee to say, no, you can't dig your double basement. It's beyond beyond. In 2013, the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea received 450 planning applications for basements, almost a 1,000% increase in just over a decade. This street in prized Belgravia has been the home of the Hugh Williams family for 17 years. A house here will cost you around £5 million, but not perhaps this one. Every night I was waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning worried that the house was going to collapse. In October 2009, Michael and Ali Hugh Williams learned that there were plans to almost double the size of the house next door by building underground. One night, it really sank in. The skid was on the road here, parked on the residents' parking bay, which had for weeks and months been used by the builders. It drops right through the road. About half the road disappeared into an enormous hole, like a bomb crater. And then the last quantities of water started to pour uncontrollably into number five and into the well down in front of our house and ultimately into our kitchen. The skip was soon retrieved, but the water damage it caused has spread up through the house, dampening everyone's spirits en route. We were frightened that the house was really unsafe and that we were going to wake up in a pile of rubble in the morning. And if at all, I've had a couple of emergency engineers to visit in the night at the beginning when the ceiling started to bow and the floor dropped, but they've reassured me that it's OK. But at every step, we've been experimenting, so we didn't know if it was OK and whether or not we were going to be killed in the night. The estimated cost of repairs is £350,000, but there's another problem. Next door has been sold. The offshore company that used to own it has been liquidated. It seems absolutely ludicrous to me that the house itself or the original owner cannot be traced. He's just walked away. The people who are building double and triple basements do not live in London and do not plan to live in London long enough for you to throw things at them when you see them. I don't think any of them ever use them. I think they know that they're like trolls lurking in caves down there. So they only really do it because they can and because it means their house will be worth more money. Coming up, how billionaires are replicating the world's most luxurious hotel suites in their own properties. They're really like five-star hotels which are serviced all the time. They want it to be unlike what they see in anybody else's house. Oh, my gosh, I'm spending £1,500 for one place setting. Excellence is what they want more of. They want it to be an Uber hotel. From the outside, prime London real estate looks much the same as ever. But behind these facades, the super-rich are transforming their property on an epic scale. What the super-rich have been doing is trying to turn London townhouses into mansions. One by one, every single house is growing by a third or doubling up. Or the recent trend is you buy two houses next to each other and you knock them through and create one larger house. I think in Regent's Park recently, it knocked seven houses together. Constantly around here, you'll see perfectly nice kitchens being torn out. It's no different to buying a house and seeing that the colour of the wall is wrong. So you elevate that somewhat to a billionaire. They can rip everything out and start again. When somebody is throwing something out that's worth a lot of money, it can be quite challenging and the kind of moral side of that. The wife of a hedge funder will rip out what was last year a very fashionable, provencal, rugged kind of country kitchen and install enough stainless steel so that you could disembowel a corpse in there. Billionaires are having to spend more money to buy their trophy homes. And the more they spend on the trophy home, the more they're prepared to invest in it to make it the most beautiful. Everyone's busy choosing things to buy. Also, it's a sort of raison d'etre thing. I have a client who had five staircases commissioned, five beautiful, beautiful staircases. And then it was thrown out because she'd been travelling, she'd seen a different one. She came back, we've got to change it, this is what I want now. So they're just ripped out and they're cast away. For top end architects and designers, the billionaire's desire to gut the old and install the completely new is opening up fantastic opportunities to be creative. We were worried that if it was any longer, it's just going to look like a swimming pool sized bed. That's the size of the bed on his yacht, that's why he keeps asking. We can look at fantastic materials that we could never work with before. We can work with real craftsmen and skill and trades to create one-off beautiful collector's pieces that will become the antiques of the future. They're prepared to spend significant sums of money, eye-watering sums of money, sums of money that we can't even imagine. I do have to sometimes hold back or pinch myself and go, Oh my gosh, I'm spending £1,500 for one place setting of a beautiful hand-crafted cutlery set. They're putting in some of the finest marbles in the world, they're putting in the most up-to-date, state-of-the-art technology, etc. These things cost money. I mean, you know the Medici's are back in town. The top floors of this unassuming block of flats on Park Lane are being ripped apart to create a 7,000 square foot triplex apartment. With views over Hyde Park and the City of London, this will be the largest and most luxurious penthouse in town. The top end of the market now, the phenomenon at the moment is the branded property. You have the Armani flats or you have other big names. One of the biggest names in the property game is that of interior designer Nicky Haslam. He's no stranger to extraordinary requests. We walked through a house in the country the other day, and it had two swimming pools off the bedrooms on the top floor. Why two? One for each child. Beyond the three or four swimming pools and the huge kitchen, I think people now practically want a private airfield. They want to be able to land their jets on their own property. Wouldn't that be wonderful? No jet set flight of fantasy is impossible. And here's going to be the famous staircase. I love it going up and then back. The brief was to make it as luxurious as possible. They can walk in straight off the plane, the private plane. The whole point is to sort of come in and say, wow, isn't this magic? This is what we want. It is a wonderful space, but to keep seeing it all before billionaires parting with their money, well, you need to throw in a few tricks. So the bookcases will swivel and then just gently move back. So you've got one, two, three, four motors to swivel, and then everyone just moves across, revealing the come in Mr. Bond into the studio. Yeah, excellent. People love it when you press a button and suddenly the walls fly apart and you've got an enormous room behind you. And if you can't physically add more space, paint it in instead. Each side of the bath. Reflecting the view of the park, sort of. That's right. We're going to do some scenes from Hyde Park, A Serpentine. Wonderful. Painted in a stylised manner. And television there. There aren't that many super-rich that have a wonderful taste. The super-rich really want British, actually, standard stuff. They quite like it looking like a very good hotel, it must be said, because hotels have that kind of very new, up-to-date quality that makes them feel secure. Have you got anybody in mind? We have. Good. There's somebody who always stays at the Connaught, loves the Connaught, but wants to have something a little bit more long-term. And instead of sort of whizzing in, whizzing out, staying in the apartment there, they're thinking of taking this more for a long-term basis. On the lower part of the triplex, they can use as their office and for meetings. Up here will be more for the wives and the families. So I've probably given it away that it's Middle East. And what we're all dying to know is how much is our Middle Eastern billionaire going to have to stump up to keep hers indoors happy? We'll be quoting over £30,000 a week. And plenty of room for staff. Yeah. Always on the move, billionaires just can't get enough of their faux hotel rooms. It's got to be the Rolls-Royce of machines for living in. You see an absence of patina or sort of depth and personality in them. They're like five-star hotels which are serviced all the time, but they have that hotel feeling when you're in them. And the reason for that is because they don't invest emotionally in their properties. Individual taste, in the sense that taste means an idiosyncratic way of articulating your beliefs and values through the things you wear or the things you acquire, this has no meaning in this world. The taste is homogenised. But sometimes, if it looks like a hotel and feels like a hotel, there really is a hotel attached. Number one, Hyde Park, the most expensive block in the world, is serviced by the five-star Mandarin Oriental. What the super-rich want is a concierge service. They want to be waited on. And that's what you're going to get. So if you want a lobster at four o'clock in the morning, then you just call room service, basically. It's that crossover between having the convenience of your own apartment, but also the convenience of being in a hotel. Some billionaires are happy to borrow room service. Others want to install it permanently. But to house your own live-in concierge team, you need a mega-mansion. A nine-storey block is a start. The same space next door houses 41 apartments. Here, the 18,000 square feet is being made over into a home for just one family, by celebrated designer Karen Howes. So, Leroy, I just wanted to, while we're on site, chat to you and Helena about the ceilings here, because I know how much work's gone in restoring them. I just think we can make some of the detail pop a bit more. So you say 18,000 square feet, but what that doesn't deal is with the sheer volume of the space that we're looking at here. And a lot of our clients are looking for really fabulous ceiling heights. You know, that is another sign of luxury and, I suppose, wealth. So, family room, which has just got fantastic ceiling height. This is going to be our glass panelling here, isn't it? We're doing another project for him overseas, and we're also talking to him about a yacht. So this will form part of a portfolio of six or seven properties for him. And then I know we wanted to have a look at something in his dressing room through here. Oh, it looks fantastic. And that'll be uplit all the way along the sides, chandelier in the middle. So we were thinking of adding these freestanding display units, watch winders, glass tops. He'll definitely want that. A lot of our clients have a collection of watches. They don't just have one. They work on a system where they need to be rotated. So what we will do is incorporate a tumbler that actually gently moves the watch and makes sure that when they want to put the watch on, it's ready to wear. This is very much an upstairs-downstairs house. So we're going to have, obviously, staff in the basement, but also an accommodation on the top floors. We're talking about a household staff of about ten when they're in residence. So this is family room, cinema room, and then kitchen and staff, isn't it, through here. It is a family home, so we are incorporating things for the children as well as the adults when we're doing the design here. We're talking to him about putting fish tank in in the basement. His son is looking at miniature sharks. We're just talking to experts about that. And then through to the cinema room here, which is where we're going to put the popcorn machine, isn't it? I suppose the biggest challenge for us is how we incorporate all of the technology without anybody seeing it. So televisions are hidden behind walls, behind paintings, sliding doors, moving mirrors, but still keeping that classical elegance. That's the real challenge. It's not just hiding the technology that's a challenge. It's making sure they can operate it. Some clients, when we first meet them, tell us about the disaster that they've had in their previous project, where after they've installed all this amazing technology, the thing didn't work the way they expected it to, and they became very anti-technology. They want to get back to simple buttons where you press a button and a light comes on. We've got clients who will have their own audio-visual team who will be installing all of their televisions and their sound systems in all of their homes. So they will travel around the world doing that to make sure that it's the same system. So when they land overnight in their private jet at one particular property and they go into the bedroom, they don't have to worry how they operate the various switches to switch on the different lights around the house. Just get a dimmer switch. It's crazy. This is going to be our gym, and then this is going to be our hammam sauna or sauna and hammam. And you thought they'd forgotten, but no, of course. There's a pool down here too. We've got our glass wall back here. And then all of this is dark, rich blue mosaic. We've got these little fiber-optic lights, and we've seen a layout that the light specialists did where they've actually decided on each location of all the fiber optics. So it's going to kind of sparkle at night as well. I think that'll be fantastic. Another incredible top-end property takes shape, and you have to wonder if our billionaires are getting any kind of enduring pleasure from all the effort. I suppose it takes the edge off it when they see someone else has got the bigger, newer thing. And so the super-rich are always on high alert for getting rid of their old stuff and buying the new stuff. Quite often, I've seen situations where somebody has spent, say, £100,000 on marble for the master bathroom. They walk in and they don't like it, and so it has to be ripped out and start again and spend another £100,000 on a slightly different color. If you design something properly and well, it will stand the test of time. It still will be there in 20 years' time. It will not be being ripped out. The super-rich certainly know the price of everything, but all too often, the value is fleeting. When you go to stay with these people, you know, there's a sense of impermanence in a lot of their houses. I think a lot of the time, there isn't really a home. I've never been asked to buy a home because there is no such animal. There is no one such thing in their lives. They merely have property.