Property tycoon plans to convert home on The Mall into £140m luxury mansion

If you happen to have £140m to spare, then you can be a neighbour to the Queen. How?

Property tycoon Mike Spink is planning to buy 3 Carlton Terrace from The Crown Estate to build a luxury home worth £140m.

Spink has joined forces with private equity firm Evans Randall to fork out £65m for the property. It will be the closest privately-owned residence to Buckingham Palace.

Spink is an Oxfordshire-based developer. He previously bought a dilapidated country estate near Henley-on-Thames and spent £42m redeveloping it, then sold it to Russian billionaire Andrey Borodin for £140m in 2011. The sale made the property the most expensive house ever sold in Britain.

The property on The Mall, which is being touted as one of the “best ambassadorial-style trophy houses to come on to the London market for at least 20 decades” by The Times, was part of an off-market sale conducted by Knight Frank. The Grade II listed property is currently being used as office space.

Spink has obtained a 125-year lease from The Crown Estate and the property has planning permission for an extension that can create a four-storey home of more than 16,000 sq ft.

James Cooksey, head of St James’s and diversification portfolios at The Crown Estate, told The Times: “The sale of 3 Carlton Gardens will return this grand, listed building back into a family home. This supports our long-term vision for St James’s, which we see not just as a destination for business, retail and dining but also as a place to live.”

Richard Cutt, a partner at Knight Frank, said: “This project has been two years in the making and considerable time has been spent with architects, planners and historians to create a scheme for the house to maximise its potential. The culmination of this was the granting of full planning and listed building consent for a conversion back to a single private house.”

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