Mid-Week Pick Up Sticks: One Hyde Park

Brace yourselves, butter beans, because word on the international property gossip grapevine is that a prodigious penthouse pad atop London's famously (and preposterously) pricey One Hyde Park complex sold to an otherwise unidentified "Eastern European buyer" for a record breaking and—let's be real—gasp worthy £140,000,000. (The ABC/Reuters report shows the £140 million sale price equals 255 million U.S. dollars but Your Mama's handy-dandy currency conversion contraption indicates it's $237,016,000 at today's rates.)

The globally renown One Hyde Park project, in Knightsbridge directly across from Hyde Park, was developed by maverick and sometimes polarizing top-end property developers Nick and Christian Candy. Nick Candy apparently declined to comment on the price or the buyer but did confirm the sale and his brother suggested the 1,500 square meter penthouse—that's just about 16,145 square feet for all us Americans—could be worth as much as 160- or 175-million pounds when furnished.

We'd scoff and stamp our feet with righteous property indignation at the suggestion that the penthouse could be worth twenty or even 35 million pounds more when furnished. (For us Americans, that's $33,859,400 to $59,254,000 at today's rates.) However, if this property gossip knows anything at all about The Brothers Candy it's that they have an innate knack and—more importantly—a proven track record for unloading their swank, high-profile projects at sky-high numbers that will give even a lower-end billionaire a wicked case of Financial Vertigo.

If the reported, record busting £140 million purchase price is accurate, it's a wee bit more than the £136 million that Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhemtov spent for a penthouse and an adjacent apartment at One Hyde Park that he planned to combine into a single, mansion-sized aerie.

exterior photo: OneHydePark.com