an occasional glimpse inside the world of selling really really expensive homes the summer exodus has begun with clients departing for various destinations the mediterranean the cornish coast country homes and some further afield to the us shorelines or canadian adventures i always like being ukbased during the summer holidays if you’re scrappy you can pick up deals with motivated buyers and sellers while others are away a few augusts ago i made my most effortless sale on a notting hill house backing onto communal gardens the received wisdom was that everyone interested in the house would be away for the month but it just happened the right buyer was inbetween holidays and in town we closed the deal before anyone else could see the property managing an attended exchange in 24 hours it’s rare for the whole panoply of players—seller buyer agent my own self buying agent and both sets of lawyers—to come away content but this was a good deal for all parties the buyers took the attitude that they were acquiring a home they would live in for decades as the sellers before them had done rather than an “asset” and being able to afford the house that ticked all their boxes meant they were happy to pay a reasonable premium to take it out of the market and avoid a bidding war but i have learned over time that being content is an attitudetolife skill set that if one doesn’t have a natural disposition towards one should definitely work on there are a number of clients and friends i confess who seemingly have it all but can’t quite appreciate it they bemoan the temporary summer cook’s weak points the new notting hill restaurant isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be … and on it goes i want to say “don’t sweat the small stuff life will come at you with enough of the biggies” i have one client who takes schadenfreude to the extreme he can only feel that he has won a deal if everyone else has lost for him life is a perpetual battle so i have mastered the art of positioning things in a way he wants i know what to do to make him feel happy about a given transaction chipping the lawyers down on fees letting him know whether he’s buying or selling that the other side is feeling harddone by generally projecting that the opposition is fairly miserable but it is rather exhausting and i sometimes want to shake him and say “enjoy it life is good you are spectacularly wealthy and you could be sharing so much pleasure and doing so much good with it” of course i hold my tongue it’s quite the contrast to clients i recently saw for drinks in a flat that i helped them acquire the place is spectacular a modernist masterpiece overlooking green on each side when i first saw it i thought it could be home to james bond daniel craig era as we clinked champagne glasses in the doublevolumed reception room it was a happy occasion my clients happen to be indian part of a rising trend of wealthy indian families buying in london the russians no surprise are out and the onepercenter mumbaikars delhi residents and bangaloreans are in case in point bloomberg among other news organizations reports the offmarket sale of hanover lodge in regent’s park for £113 million 145 million to indian billionaire ravi ruia a vast mansion of over 25000 square feet the grade ii listed property was linked to russian oligarch andrey goncharenko who paid £120 million for it in 2012 ruia the new owner and coowner of the essar group investment firm acquired the leasehold property through a sale of the home’s gibraltarincorporated holding company so it seems there’s a changing of the guard a new superprime crowd buying in london the secret agent has run his own estate agency in central london for more than 15 years he and his team of four work in sales and acquisition in the super prime price range