2025-05-21
42 分钟This is The Guardian.
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Hi, I'm Sophie Elmhurst.
I'm the author of Super Prime Mover, Britain's most successful estate agent,
which was published in the Guardian Long Read in 2022.
So a story caught my eye a while ago about the sale of the most expensive house in London.
It was Rutland Gate, a huge white stucco building in London overlooking Hyde Park.
And I wondered what was involved in selling a house like that and contacted the estate agent involved,
who was Gary Hersham at Beecham Estates.
And Gary turned out to be, I think,
one of the most extreme and melodramatic characters I've ever encountered in this job.
And I knew straight away he'd make a wonderful subject.
He was also kind enough to let me into his world and follow him around some of the more extreme properties that I've ever encountered in this city.
And he was a way into the weird world of super prime estate agenting and the way these properties change hands between Russian,
Chinese, Saudi American, Indian billionaires.
And these are the kind of houses and deals that have a fairly strange and distorting effect on a city like London,
especially when they sit empty, as Rutland Gate was when I was writing the story.