Who rents all the expensive flats in Central London?

[mournerouge]

Or not even just Central London. There are loads and loads of 1 bed flats for say £3,000-£4,000 a month for 50sqm. Two bed flats are usually the same price.

Dp and I could afford these, but choose a 2 bed instead. Even if I was single, and I could afford to rent one of these. Why would I when you can get the exact same thing for say £2200?

I've seen identical flats in the same apartment block go for £600 a month more than another.

But more importantly, who can afford these flats? I work in finance and dp works for a US law firm, so we both are surrounded by people on £200k+ a year, and no one we know would even consider spaffing 3k on a tiny one bed. I'm not even talking shiny tower block flats

Foreign students (or their parents) mostly.

I think a lot of it is paid for by employers . E.g. DH worked for a Japanese company in London. Lots of Japanese staff and their families would come on 3/5 year postings and be housed by the company.

That's a good point about employers

Escorts? If we’re talking Chelsea, South Ken, Knightsbridge etc.

This is my perspective:

My husband and I currently live in a four-bedroom suburban house with a large garden and a media room.

We have grown children and are downsizing and moving into a one-bedroom apartment in the city which is the same cost as the house we live in.

Yes, we could get a two-bedroom apartment for less cost in a different building and even a three-bedroom townhome only two streets away for the same cost but we are not interested.

As the children started leaving one-by-one, we have come to realize that even when they weren't there, the house still needs to be cleaned to avoid dust and frankly, it was getting to be a drag. Besides, one thing I did notice is that if there's space, someone/something will fill the space.

For the next phase of our life, we want to spend the time traveling so our emphasis is less on the size of our house. Perhaps, we will change our minds in the next few years and move to a larger place but for now, that works for us. It may be the same thing for the people who rent one-bedrooms in Central London.

We sold an expensive flat in central London recently and every viewer was non English. Lots of the viewers were from China/Hong Kong/Singapore.
Probably the same with rentals - in fact the Chinese buyer came from
a rental in central London. She was buying on her own with family money.

There's a large housing crisis in London a lot of these places are often left empty as people can't afford it

I rent out a flat, not quite at the level you are talking but it's small, to a couple on secondment from South Africa. Accountants. I imagine it was part of the package. It was initially for 18 months but they've been there four years now.
I used to rent a house out in Zone 3 to a family from Holland who worked for Rolls Royce. Corporate let.
Another relatively expensive flat (well outside London) i did used to rent to foreign students. Best tenants. My last tenant was an English couple who were awful, stopped paying, caused thousands of pounds worth of damage and neighbours complained about them from the first week.

A lot of them are owned as investments. They don't really care about the rent.

There’s a housing crisis BECAUSE these places are empty.

Singapore where homes cost more than in central London, and with a currency stronger than sterling, has just raised additional property tax on foreign buyers to 60% from 30% in order to cool the market. In the UK we charge 3% extra which won't make much difference especially as sterling is so weak.

Perhaps we are as indifferent as our Government/s, because I can't see any threads or news articles on any city natives being priced out when the problem is infinitely worse in cities than in say the picturesque rural west country or Wales. Or any meaningful action like the Singaporean Government has taken.

High class hookers and Tory MPs for their mistresses / rent boys.

The difference is that in Singapore, men serve in the army and thus housing policy is designed in such a way that every soldier who sacrifices two years of the best years of his life will own his home eventually (89% home ownership)..while the private properties that you are speaking of (which cost more than in London) account for 15% of the market (the rest is government housing which is far cheaper, you can buy a new build flat in the suburbs for £200k), I think expensive condos do have a knock on effect on the HDB market. If richer professional couples cannot afford the private condos to live in cos investors are buying them up, they will buy hdb and pay over the odds for them which is why there are almost weekly headlines on million dollar HDB flats in good areas. Or they will not be able to upsize from their starter HDB flat to buy the condo and this will restrict supply in the resale market. This will then affect ordinary Singaporeans who only have HDB as an option and the government will not be able to keep their promise of guaranteed home ownership. It's a very different social contract..