
Why are so many luxury homes in London lying empty? Sam Wollaston reports
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Lucy Half
This is the Guardian. Today, the abandoned 210 million pound mansion and the rough sleeper who's made it his home.
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Sam Wollaston
It has 45 rooms, four lifts, a swimming pool. One of my favorite things about it is it has 116 windows, 68 of which overlook Hyde Park. And they're also said to be bulletproof, although I didn't get the chance to check that. 24 Italian marble bathrooms decorated.
Lucy Half
Guardian writer Sam Wollaston has spent time outside one of the most expensive houses in the country. A vast terrace mansion in Knightsbridge.
Sam Wollaston
Very nice. Buckingham palace is not too far away. Kensington palace is probably a bit closer. Albert hall just down the road. Don't ask me if there's a garden or not. There isn't a garden.
Lucy Half
So there isn't a garden.
Sam Wollaston
You'd think. You'd think for £210 million there would be a garden.
Lucy Half
But surprisingly, this magnificent place has stood empty for more than a decade. The ornate interior may lie vacant, but outside someone's made it his home. A Swedish man called Anders, who's arranged so many flowers, scraps and bicycles you can no longer see the property's entrance.
Sam Wollaston
So I just went along and said, hello, Anders, because I knew his name. And this gray bearded head appeared remarkably cheerful for having just been woken up. But his story probably more interesting than the house itself.
Anders Fernstadt
I have lived here for three years and every day I think surely tomorrow I'll be rescued. But rescue never comes. So it's now with talking to him, it makes me realize that you know, how strange it all is.
Lucy Half
So who is the rough sleeper sleeping on the porch of this 210 million pound house? And why is this huge mansion empty? And what does it tell us about the housing crisis we live in? From the Guardian, I'm Lucy Half today in focus life on the porch of an empty mansion. Sam Woolaston, you're a Guardian feature writer who spent the last few months delving into some magnificent abandoned buildings across the country. One of them being a house in London, right next to Hyde park, which also happens to be one of the most expensive properties in the country. And the mansion, as we understand, is locked and its fate remains unclear. But there is, as you've discovered, one man settled on its porch, a man who I think we can safely say is the antithesis of all the wealth he sleeps in in front of. Tell me about him.
Sam Wollaston
So his name's Anders, Anders Fernstadt. He's Swedish, and he has lived here in the porch of this London mansion for the last three years. But his story goes back a long way before that. He's now in his late 50s. He was brought up in Sweden by his mum, who's a librarian and his dad is Spanish. Actually, he became a journalist. He had no training as a journalist, but he wrote about tech for business mags in Sweden and went to, like, tech conferences and things like that.
Lucy Half
And this is in the 1980s, so quite.
Sam Wollaston
This was in the 1980s, so whatever. Whatever the tech was in those days. But then he got interested in gardening, and not just interested, but he decided to learn all about it. So he took himself to Edinburgh.
Anders Fernstadt
I'm jumping the narrative, but it doesn't matter. But I came in 2009. Make long story short, I came to this country as a mature student at
Sam Wollaston
Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, really studying horticulture or something.
Anders Fernstadt
Seriously, horticulture and plantsmanship is such a sweet little word.
Sam Wollaston
Are you into. Are you into gardens and stuff?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anders Fernstadt
I mean, that's why I'm. I'm. You know, I.
Lucy Half
And then did he stay in Edinburgh in the UK after that point?
Sam Wollaston
So he didn't finish his course and it's. There's a bit of a pattern there. He quite often starts things and doesn't finish, but he didn't finish his course. And he went to America and in California he met John Markoff, who was a New York Times tech writer, and he started doing some work for him. While he was there, he met the Economist's correspondent in California, who told him that there were some jobs going in London. And he came to London and ended up getting a job as a fact checker at the Economist.
Lucy Half
Does that stay steady for him?
Sam Wollaston
It wasn't a permanent job and he was working remotely and he was living on a small sailboat, an Essex estuary, in a place called Maldon. Around about the same time, his boat was damaged in a storm and things sort of started going wrong for him. He went freelance, but he describes himself as a freelancer with no commission and no desk. He ended up living in a tent in North London, which was the kind of beginning of his homelessness.
Lucy Half
So tell me More about what happened next in his homelessness. Was he applying for legal places to live, for social housing?
Sam Wollaston
He wasn't. He wasn't doing anything about it himself, but someone, he was actually living on a cricket ground. And someone else got in touch with Streetlink, which is the organization that kind of puts people who are sleeping rough in touch with people who can help him.
Anders Fernstadt
And this is, of course, a beginning of my sorrows when I get housing, because getting housing is stepping into the Colosseum world of unreportable crime. It was a sequence of hell. You know, hell has many layers, as the Dante would have. Right. So I started in the upper crust of hell. Yeah, well, not too bad, but just a little. And then so three no fault evictions. And at every eviction, it was like clockwork.
Sam Wollaston
Yeah.
Anders Fernstadt
When the bag was packed, it was gone.
Sam Wollaston
What do you mean?
Anders Fernstadt
As soon as you went in, you were evicted.
Sam Wollaston
Oh, someone nicked it.
Anders Fernstadt
Yeah.
Sam Wollaston
The last straw was actually when he got hit by someone in one of these places and he'd just been evicted.
Anders Fernstadt
He came in and gave me a sucker punch while I was laying down. Ruptured my eardrum, threw a second punch completely unprovoked. So I had to basically in a state, not adamic undress, but almost make a jog over to a neighbor where they called an ambulance and then all your things are gone, never to, you know, never to be seen or heard of again.
Sam Wollaston
So you had nothing.
Anders Fernstadt
Yeah.
Sam Wollaston
He'd been going to Hyde park quite a lot because he was interested in the. The birds there, particularly the swans. And he liked the area.
Anders Fernstadt
You either, as my, one of my teachers in Edinburgh said, you're either a plant lover or an animal lover. You can't be both.
Sam Wollaston
And you were a plant lover.
Anders Fernstadt
Yeah, yeah, but it's one. See from. If we were horticulturists, they don't do garden damage. No, they don't. I mean, they eat seaweed.
Sam Wollaston
Yeah. All right.
Anders Fernstadt
So even the chicken can be trouble in the garden because they would pick the wrong stuff and so on. So I felt justified.
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Yeah.
Anders Fernstadt
Yeah. I can be a swan man and a horticulturist, no problem.
Sam Wollaston
But so you left and wandering around there, then he saw that there was this building with a porch that provided shelter. And that's when he first started sleeping on the porch of Rutland Gate.
Lucy Half
I'm interested to hear about his decision to settle on the porch rather than try and attempt to enter or squat inside the house.
Sam Wollaston
Well, I don't think. I don't think you Would get into it very easily. It's very. I mean, actually, I didn't even try the door, but I think if I had done. I don't know what would have happened, but. And actually it's quite hard to get to the door because he's got so much stuff on the porch. You could be in there. It's empty. Yeah, but how do you feel about that?
Anders Fernstadt
What I said to myself is like. It's like my. The pretend reality is I'm the child, parents are in the house. I just said, can I. Can I camp on the balcony?
Sam Wollaston
But why. But at some point it'd be nice if they let you into the house, wouldn't they? Because it's an empty house, you know?
Anders Fernstadt
Yeah, I agree. But now the fact that there's no downside.
Sam Wollaston
Yeah.
Anders Fernstadt
So now it's like the. Like, it's what, you know, where do you want to. You want to sleep in your. In your room, son, or in the treehouse? Treehouse.
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Treehouse.
Anders Fernstadt
A little bit like that.
Sam Wollaston
It is a bit like. He been in a few other places. He'd slept around a bit in London and he thought this was. As he says, he likes the area and don't we all? Yeah. And he likes. Actually. He's actually made some friends amongst the neighbours. He likes the neighbors. He likes the park very much. And the porch is quite big, so it provided a roof for him. And over time, he's built himself. He doesn't have a tent. He has a big umbrella and a couple of smaller ones. And he's put up kind of barriers. And he's got a mattress and he's got. I mean, he's made a kind of den there that. It's quite a sight. It spreads out from the porch along the railings with all these flowers and other things that he's accumulated there.
Lucy Half
Sam, you spoke with him for hours and I've had the pleasure of listening to the recording. I think our listeners will get the same impression that I've got from that recording. Anders does sound kind of somewhat happier than a lot of the people perhaps you or I know. How do you think he's managed to be so content in these.
Sam Wollaston
He's remarkably content for the situation.
Anders Fernstadt
I sleep so well because that's really the test.
Sam Wollaston
Yeah.
Anders Fernstadt
I'm at ease, I'm at peace. I've never had a gp. I've been sick, having come from being housed. I'm not gonna jump at any offer for anything, knowing what, you know, how bad it can be.
Sam Wollaston
It's much better here. Than it was
Anders Fernstadt
infinitely better.
Sam Wollaston
So do you have a mattress? What have you got?
Anders Fernstadt
Well, I'm like the princess on the pea. It's like layer upon layer of goodness.
Sam Wollaston
Okay. And the practicalities. He has a very kind of optimistic, positive outlook on, on things, which, I mean, is extraordinary. He does say that he's very atypical of people who are sleeping rough. And he says that, you know, he doesn't, he likes to drink, but he's not certainly not dependent on alcohol. He's not, doesn't have any drug habits. He says his health is good, his mental health is good. There are obviously things that are not great for him, like he doesn't have a toilet, he has to use ones in the park. He has to go and get food from food banks and things like that. And it's not a good life at all. But given the way he's living, he is incredibly unnegative about it.
Lucy Half
So for you as a writer, what drew you to this particular house, to this particular man? You've spoken a bit about the history, what the house looks like, but what was compelling to you about this story?
Sam Wollaston
So I was doing a series of pieces about empty buildings. The idea that there was somebody homeless living in the house that had been Britain's most expensive house. It just seemed to be such a visceral picture of the kind of wealth gap and the housing crisis. It just seemed to sort of say so much.
Lucy Half
What did you learn as you started digging through who the owners of the property had been?
Sam Wollaston
The property itself is. It's a strange one. It looks like a row of terraced houses and actually it was a row of terraced houses until the 1980s. In the 1980s it was bought by Rafiq Hariri, who went on to become the Lebanese Prime Minister and he was assassinated in 2005 in a car bomb in Beirut. Hariri had made his civilians building palaces for Saudi royal family. So probably because of that, the property passed into the hands of Sultan Bin Abdulaziz, who was the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia at the time. And he lived there for a while after 2005. He died in 2011. And it was actually then that we got the rest of got a sort of glimpse inside it. Not that we went in, but there was an auction of some of the stuff inside it. And that's when we saw these gold plated bins and stuff being sold. So we had a kind of idea of the opulence that had been beyond that big door.
Lucy Half
Right. And so it's unvacated as you've outlined. But is it on the market? What do we know about who owns it?
Sam Wollaston
So we know it changed hands in 2020 for 210 million pounds, which at the time was a record. It was the most expensive house in Britain and it was bought by who? The person who at the time was China's richest man. His name was Hui Ka Yan and he was founder of a property empire called Evergrande. Appropriately, perhaps, yes. It was then actually for sale about two years later for a knockdown 200 million. So it was a. You could pick it up a bargain. Yeah, exactly. It didn't sell and Evergrande went bankrupt. A Hong Kong court has ordered the liquidation of China Evergrande. For a company that was once the pride of the Chinese real estate sector, it's been a dramatic downfall. The world's most indebted property developer, Evergrande, has been given a winding up order
Lucy Half
by a court in Hong Kong.
Sam Wollaston
The company which has. It's quite hard to find out actually who owns these properties, but if you look on the land register, it says it's owned by a company called Vision Perfect Global Ltd. Which is based in Virgin Islands.
Lucy Half
Well, it's unsurprising to learn that there is an offshore haven in this story. Do we know who stands behind what we can assume is some sort of shell company?
Sam Wollaston
It's a shell company and we found out that it was bought by Hui Kai, who was China's richest man at the time and he was the founder of the Evergrande property empire. And actually I just looked on the company's house website and the name has been changed from Hui to his wife and her name is Dingyu Mei. They' since got divorced, so we now know it's in Ding Hu Mei's name and she is a Canadian citizen. So it's a palace in limbo.
Lucy Half
So, Sam, we've been looking at one property which tells a particular story about these unoccupied buildings in the uk. We know that the UK has many of such properties that are vacated, lying empty. What do we know about the scale of the issue?
Sam Wollaston
So last year there were 300,000 long term empty properties in England, which was, I think up 14% on the previous year. And that's not including second homes that are empty. There's a further 268,000 of those. The City of London tops it. So in the City of London, one in four are not in residential use. This includes second homes. Kensington Chelsea is one in nine properties as empty and Westminster, where Rutland Gate is the. It's One in ten properties are empty. I mean, London also has the most pressing housing needs. 1.3 million households waiting for somewhere to live in England, of which 340,000 are in London. So it has the highest number of empties and it has the most pressing housing needs.
Lucy Half
So who is buying these luxury properties? I mean, I'm thinking of the scene in succession where they fly into London and they have this incredibly grand house that's just sort of readily available to them that they own, but clearly is vacated most of the time. Is that the kind of thing we're looking at?
Sam Wollaston
That's pretty accurate, I think. I mean, London's also the center of offshore registered properties. So £80 billion worth of offshore registered property in the country. London's the hub of that with about 47,000 properties. And again, zooming in further on that, Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster, both really high on those lists. So layman's terms, it means that there are lots of properties in this part of London which are owned by billionaires. We don't know where they are and they are currently empty.
Lucy Half
Right. Which sort of pulls into focus this political argument that's been running for some time, perhaps not under this current government, that pulling in the ultra wealthy overseas generates a wealth for the broader city, the trickle down theory. But do you think it's investment, that it's land banking?
Sam Wollaston
So I spoke to Roland Atkinson, who's a professor at Sheffield University, and he's wrote a really good book called Elf How London Was Captured by the Super Rich. He talks about them buying for two reasons. Buying either just simply as a portfolio, something you just put on your property portfolio, or they do use them, but only use them for a few weeks a year. So they do literally just jet in on their private jets, get chauffeured into their places and go up in the lift and get service from the hotel next door. And. And they have no connection to the place they're living in. He just. And which is actually very much like the. With the succession
Lucy Half
coming up, how can we stop people from buying homes just to leave them empty?
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Lucy Half
So you've obviously spoken with a number of experts about this issue, this particular property. But having reported into unoccupied properties for some time, what are some of the solutions that experts are putting forward?
Sam Wollaston
The reason is simple. It's just we're building the wrong kinds of houses. We're building luxury apartments and they don't house either the homeless or poor people. I also spoke to Shelter, the charity for homelessness, and they actually came up with a plan of how to convert empty houses into social rent homes and that included compulsory purchase. That means councils being able to just buy empty properties, also disincentivizing people having empty homes, obviously through taxes, that kind of stuff, and also providing councils for the funds to do that. I mean, no one's suggesting that Westminster Council is probably richer than most councils, but I don't think they have a spare 200 million to buy this. And although Rutland Gate is a stark picture of the situation, I don't think the solution is to buy it and open it up to social housing. Probably.
Lucy Half
So, Sam, the image at the heart of your piece is Incredibly Stark. A 210 million mega mansion in the heart of London with planning permission to build an underground car park, a three story ballroom upstairs that is standing completely unoccupied. And meanwhile you have Anders living in a tent of umbrellas on the porch outside, urinating into a plastic bottle. What was it like for you to see the reality of that wealth gap?
Sam Wollaston
It was incredibly stark and incredibly visible. I mean, you read about wealth gaps, you read about housing crisis, but I think you need, I mean, that's why we needed to kind of find a particular building and a particular person to, to do this story with, because you need that to kind of drive it home. That's all very well to have lots of figures about homelessness and wealth gaps and offshore property, but when you see it like that, it just, it puts it into absolute visceral terms. And that's what it felt that to me, obviously. I mean, Anders being slightly cheerful about it was unexpected, but also charming as well. I mean, he's a Very charming person.
Lucy Half
Why do you think these empty structures are such a powerful lens for looking at Britain now?
Sam Wollaston
I think empty buildings are fascinating because they tell stories of something that was and isn't anymore. Then that sort of paints a picture of decline. And it could be decline of industry, it could be decline of the way we shop, it could be social habits. But it wasn't all kind of hopeless. Because as well as these empty buildings and stories I did, I met some extraordinary people. I mean, Anderson is one of them, but I met a lovely couple in Wales who had been the last congregation in their church before it closed. And I met the last two people living in a tower block in, in Hackney. I met some extraordinary people, but people also who cared about it and they just wanted to. They wanted it to be better and they wanted things to get better. So it was, it wasn't. I mean, it sounds like a really bleak project, but it was actually, it was incredibly rewarding project and I got a lot out of it. I made some friends like Anders. I mean, we text quite a lot now. He sends me pictures of new swans he's met.
Lucy Half
I'd love to see some of those. Thank you so much, Sam.
Sam Wollaston
Thank you.
Lucy Half
That was Sam Wollaston, the Guardian's feature writer. I really recommend reading his written version of this story over at theguardian.com, which has some fabulous pictures. That's all for today. This episode was produced by Guy Zafman and Aisha Riaz and was presented by me, Lucy Half the sound designer was Ross Burns and the executive producer is Elizabeth Kasson. We'll be back this afternoon with the latest. This is the Guardian.
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Podcast: Today in Focus (The Guardian)
Episode Date: June 29, 2026
Host: Lucy Half
Guest: Sam Wollaston (Guardian Feature Writer), with testimony from Anders Fernstadt
This episode delves into the surreal juxtaposition of unimaginable wealth and stark homelessness in central London. Guardian feature writer Sam Wollaston recounts his encounters with Anders Fernstadt, a former journalist-turned-homeless Swedish man living on the porch of a £210 million abandoned mansion in Knightsbridge. The discussion explores Anders’s story, the decadent and mysterious history of the mansion, the UK’s escalating housing crisis, and the political and societal implications of leaving London’s most lavish properties empty.
Mansion Description (01:00–01:44)
Introduction to Anders (02:06–03:34)
Background (03:34–05:49)
Experiences With Temporary Housing (05:49–07:29)
Finding Rutland Gate (07:29–09:58)
Scale of the Issue
Who Buys These Properties?
We’re Building the Wrong Homes (19:17–20:20)
Practicalities & Obstacles
On Homelessness & Resilience
“I have lived here for three years and every day I think surely tomorrow I’ll be rescued. But rescue never comes.”
– Anders Fernstadt (02:21)
Expressing the Wealth Divide
“The idea that there was somebody homeless living in the house that had been Britain’s most expensive house… just seemed to be such a visceral picture of the kind of wealth gap and the housing crisis.”
– Sam Wollaston (11:39)
Dark Humor About Possession
“It’s like the pretend reality is I’m the child, parents are in the house. I just said, can I camp on the balcony?”
– Anders Fernstadt (08:44)
The Reality of That Image
“A 210 million mega mansion… standing completely unoccupied… meanwhile you have Anders living in a tent of umbrellas on the porch outside, urinating into a plastic bottle.”
– Lucy Half (20:20)
Humanizing the Issue
“You read about wealth gaps… but when you see it like that, it just—it puts it into absolute visceral terms.”
– Sam Wollaston (20:48)
The conversation is deeply empathetic and occasionally laced with wry humor—particularly from Anders, whose philosophical and positive outlook confounds expectations. The incongruity of his shelter outside one of Britain’s grandest empty homes is “incredibly stark and incredibly visible” (Sam, 20:48), a haunting symbol of systemic dysfunction but also human resilience.
Sam’s reporting and Anders’s testimony anchor the abstract issue of housing inequality in a specific, unforgettable image. As Sam reflects, while the project began as a chronicle of decline, it ultimately became an unexpectedly rewarding journey shaped by encounters with remarkable people like Anders.
Recommended Further Reading:
Sam Wollaston’s in-depth feature and supporting images at theguardian.com