This is what stamp duty actually costs at £42 million
Curated by OB Private, Crafted for You
When Balfour House last changed hands for £42 million, the stamp duty alone was reported to be close to £5 million.
Read that again. Not the house. Not the renovation. Not the furniture. The tax bill.
£5 million is more than most people will spend on a property in their lifetime. It is enough for a substantial family house in Notting Hill, a lateral apartment overlooking a private garden square in Belgravia, or two of the £1 million flats we wrote about last week, with change left over.
It is, in other words, an entire London life – paid simply for the privilege of buying the house, before a single brick of it belonged to the new owner.
This is the part of prime central London that rarely gets discussed. The headline number gets the attention. The tax bill underneath it tells you just as much about what it actually costs to buy at this level.
