What do the Wealthiest Want - Thought Leadership
What do the Wealthiest Want?
32 leading advisors reveal how size and status have made way for trust, time and discretion as the definition of true luxury property ownership.
There was a time when luxury property spoke a simple language: bigger, brighter and more visible, but that language has changed. Talk to anyone advising the world’s wealthiest families today and a different vocabulary emerges: discretion, resilience, optionality and trust. The pandemic didn’t just change where the ultra-wealthy wanted to live; it changed how they think about ownership itself, recalibrating the relationship between money and time.
This report brings together a truly brilliant range of voices and expertise from across the Luxury Property Forum. We’re delighted that the sectors of interior design, wealth management, insurance, architecture, branded residences, project management, law, buying agencies, technology, quantity surveying and financial sectors are all represented in our panel of experts.
Between them, our contributors advise clients across London, New York, the Gulf and beyond, and see first-hand how priorities shift long before they become headlines. To capture this, we asked them four questions: what has changed most in what private clients want; what trust actually looks like, and where it breaks down; how geography, mobility and optionality are being reconsidered; and what will separate the advisors who keep their clients from those who don’t. Their answers, though drawn from very different corners of the industry, converge on a striking consensus.
What follows is a rare, unified view into the evolving psychology and expectations of the world’s wealthiest property owners, as well as a clear-eyed look at what it will take to serve them well into the future.
In this exclusive LPF thought leadership report, The Luxury Property Forum brings together perspectives from across interior design, wealth management, insurance, architecture, branded residences, project management, law, buying agencies, technology, quantity surveying and finance to explore how the priorities of the world's wealthiest property owners are evolving. By examining the growing importance of trust, discretion, resilience and global mobility, this report offers a timely view of the changing expectations shaping luxury property and the advisors best placed to meet them.
THANK YOU TO OUR LPF EXPERTS FOR THEIR VALUABLE INSIGHTS:
Dean Adkins, Owner & Managing Director, Selway Joyce
Richard Barth, Risk & Insurance Advisor, Brown & Brown
Marco Bonini, Director of Private Residences, Six & Six Private Islands
Marcus Bradbury-Ross, Managing Director, Remian Group
Richard Burcow, Associate Partner, Ward Williams
Helen Bygraves, Creative Director and Joint Managing Director, Hill House Interiors
Samantha Davies, Chief Operating Officer, Lumley Insurance
Camilla Dell, Managing Partner, Black Brick
Kerry Gibbs, Partner, Gardiner & Theobald
Robert Herrmann, Principal, Offit Kurman
Jonathan Hopper, CEO, Garrington Property Finders
Dave Huggett, Managing Director, Lucid Foreign Exchange
Harinder Hundle, Managing Partner, Hundle
Wojciech (Voytek) Jackowski, Principal, Offit Kurman
Linda Cirigliano, Founder and CEO, LC Three
Theo Manzaroli, Partner and Head of the Private Residential Sector, Purcell Architecture.
Esra Kumbasar, Senior Design Director, Accouter Group of Companies
Barry Landsberg, Principal, Landsberg Residential Consulting
Margie Lavender, Partner, Kligerman Architecture & Design
Sharon Lillywhite, Founding Partner & Creative Director, Oliver Burns
Adam Marelli, Owner, Adlevise
Helen Marsh, Partner, Residential Property, Forsters
Jonathan Mount, Co-Founder & CEO, Project London
Andrew Paulson, Partner, LA London
Selena Quick, Founder, Aeternum
Gilad Rand, Director, Private Client, Baker Tilly x Anchin
George Seatter, Client Director, Howden
Laura Smith Sweeney, Founder & Principal, LSS Art Advisory
Chris Thorne, Director, Imperium
Jane Wagner, Director, Walton Wagner
Alec Watt, CEO & Co-Founder, Accouter Group of Companies
James Winnister, Founder & Managing Director, J-Tech Systems
CGI Imagery provided by The Boundary
Key Findings
In this report, we asked our experts four key questions:
QUESTION 1
What has shifted most in what private clients prioritise when acquiring, designing or managing luxury property over the last two to three years?
QUESTION 2
What does trust actually look like between a private client and their advisor, and where does it tend to fracture?
QUESTION 3
How are private clients thinking about geography, mobility and optionality when it comes to property decisions right now?
QUESTION 4
In five years, what will separate the advisors and firms that retained their ultra-high-net-worth clients from those that did not?
A message from Priya Rawal, Founder & CEO of the Luxury Property Forum
A few years ago, a client would walk into a house wanting to be dazzled. The double-height hall, the wine wall lit like a jeweller's window, the pool you could glimpse from the street. Today that same client walks in and asks a quieter set of questions. How does the air feel? How quickly can I move in? And who, exactly, is going to look after this when I am in Antigua and it is sitting empty in the rain?
Something has shifted at the very top of the market, and everyone in these pages has felt it. The wealthiest buyers are no longer collecting houses the way they once collected art or cars. They are paring back to a handful of homes that genuinely do something for them, and they care far more about whether a place works than whether it makes an impression on anyone else.
Discretion has replaced display. A house tucked down a private street now carries more cachet than a landmark on a main road.
The other great change is about time. Money, this cohort has in abundance; hours in the day, they do not. We have watched buyers turn down the better apartments because a lesser one was ready a year sooner. That would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when the chase was for the trophy, whatever the wait. Now the prize is simply being able to walk in and use it.
Beneath all of it runs trust, which is harder to come by than any amount of square footage. The people we serve are surrounded by advisors, agents and would-be friends, all of them keen. What they are short of is someone who will tell them the difficult thing early, keep their affairs to themselves, and still be thinking about their interests on the flight home.
I spent years as a construction lawyer on super-prime projects and the lesson that stayed with me is that the deals which go well are almost never really about the building. They are about whether the people around the table trust one another.
That, in a line, is why The Luxury Property Forum exists. This is an industry that runs on reputation and relationships, and it works best when its finest people talk to each other rather than guard their corners. I am grateful to the contributors who have been so candid in the pages that follow. Between them they advise across the globe. Their views are clear on what the wealthiest now want and what it will take to look after them well in the years ahead.
THE LUXURY PROPERTY FORUM
The Luxury Property Forum is the official forum for the luxury property industry, bringing together highly experienced and devoted members handpicked from every discipline. We facilitate the advancement and continuous growth of the luxury property industry, through developing strong business collaborations and cultivating growth opportunities as well as sharing knowledge, experience and contacts. We are more than just a network, but are a forum for the future.
If you would like to speak to any of the interviewees above or to find out more about The Luxury Property Forum please contact:
Priya Rawal, Founder and CEO, at priya@theluxurypropertyforum.com or +44 (0)7719 970747