London’s luxury empty houses: why are so many not lived in?

T here’s a serene garden square in Notting Hill surrounded by majestic three-storey double-fronted homes. The driveways are as bare as the trees on a cold wintry morning, and many of the windows shuttered. “It started to empty out just before Christmas and it’s getting emptier by the day,” says one of the homeowners.

Of 15 houses she suspects only three of them are occupied. “You can get a parking space on the street easily these days whereas you couldn’t before. It’s very noticeable.

The lights are on in all the houses because they’ve shut it up but left their housekeepers and live-in staff to look after it,” she says. “It’s not just Notting Hill,” she insists. “It’s large parts of Kensington as well.

We know quite a lot of people in the area who have left. It’s all about taxation.” To underline her point, she says one of her friends has just bought a house in Kensington from a couple who are off to low-tax Dubai.

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