10 QUESTIONS WITH FEHD ALSAIDI & CHARLES CUTTING AT SAVILLS MAYFAIR
April 2024
Good morning Fehd, Charles, and welcome to The Mayfair Musings. Please tell us about yourselves.
Fehd: Hello! I’m Fehd Alsaidi, joint head of Savills Mayfair sales team. I joined the department in autumn 2021 and have spent more than 17 years working across prime London’s residential property market. In the early stages of my career, I was based in south west London before embarking on a brief stint in Hong Kong. Upon my return, I joined a boutique firm in South Kensington and later moved across to Strutt & Parker where I operated in Chelsea, Knightsbridge and Belgravia. The majority of my career has involved selling high value homes and handling more specialist and complex residential asset sales. At Savills, I cover the prime and super prime markets of Mayfair and St James’ alongside Charles Cutting and Jasper Jevons, who joined the team in November last year.
Charles: Thank you for having us. I’m Charles and head up Savills Mayfair office alongside Fehd. I came to Savills in December 2022, following more than a decade with Foxtons where I was an Operations Director and Sales Manager in the Marylebone and Mayfair offices. Having worked in and around Mayfair for nearly 15 years, I’ve developed an extensive knowledge of the area, along with a great network of local contacts.
You’ve recently expanded your team. Can you tell us more about the department, the properties and the geographies you cover?
Fehd: We made a new senior hire in our team towards the end of last year, welcoming Jasper Jevons as a director. Having previously been involved in some of the area’s most notable deals, he will focus on prime and super prime sales of flats and houses alongside myself and in general support the wider team also. We’ve always taken a collaborative approach to our work and this has paid dividends when it comes to our track record in the area and driving the business forward together.
Charles: We’ve built a reputation for setting pricing records for clients, through combining expert local knowledge and an unrivalled global reach with a personal, discreet and professional service. We cover the property markets in Mayfair, Soho, Covent Garden, Hyde Park Estate, Connaught Village and St James’. Each geography offers something completely different and attracts a range of buyer profiles, which makes no two days the same. The properties we handle vary from one-bedroom flats at £500,000 through to penthouse apartments, mews houses and trophy homes at the very upper end of the market.
What have been the key highlights and successes for Savills Mayfair over the past 12 months?
Charles: Reflecting on 2023, historically special properties or homes within the right value window enticed multiple interested parties, particularly as values sat approximately 15% to 20% below where they were at the last peak. Newly renovated properties with a lift and a porter sold well but anything that required substantial work tended to miss the market. We saw a degree of caution and lack of urgency among some vendors and those who didn’t need to sell opted to hold off. However we saw some strong activity across new world-class residential developments (No.1 Grosvenor Square, Twenty Grosvenor Square and 60 Curzon).
As for the start of 2024, we’ve had a really good start to the year and there is certainly positive market sentiment that is continuing to encourage buyers to invest in Mayfair’s bricks and mortar. There’s a real sense that people want to transact and get on with their next move, especially since there’s been a softening of interest rates.
Fehd: Last year brought about some notable achievements for us, including a number of significant house sales. One of the standout deals from last year involved a spacious 9,000 sq ft residence on South Street, which at the time set a new benchmark for £psf rates in freehold sales since 2018. So far this year, the same themes we saw in 2023 have persisted into this year; discerning buyers continue to vie for top-tier properties, with particular interest in turnkey residences or distinctive homes that are rare to come to the market.
Market activity is gaining momentum so far this year, especially in the £6 million+ bracket, with notable traction seen in the upper echelons ranging from £25 million to £35 million. The mid-range, £10 million to £20 million market has been slightly less active but this can largely be attributed to a lack of stock at this level. Mayfair is known for its limited supply of stock which can further drive levels of demand and competition.
Savills is a global property company and has a network of 40 offices in the Capital. What role does the wider company network play in working with the Savills Mayfair sales team?
Fehd: Savills global network is made up of a vast number of different specialist teams that we work with on an almost daily basis. For example, the Mayfair residential team works frequently with our specialist super prime new homes team who look after some of the most significant and desirable residential developments in the world. We are also in daily contact with the international desks based at our global headquarters on Margaret Street as well as Savills Private Office to identify buyers and their requirements that can be matched to our stock.
Charles: The Mayfair office sits within Savills prime central London region and we are in touch with our lettings team and neighbouring Marylebone, Sloane Street, Knightsbridge and Westminster offices almost daily. The cohesion between teams allows us to match both clients and properties together - whether it’s introducing buyers to new areas of London that they might not have previously considered or presenting a lettings option so that clients can try a lifestyle or location before they buy. We also work closely with the wider Savills business and are supported by our incredible research department, who help us inform clients about the market and our PR and marketing teams who can convey our recent successes and market trends.
Who are your buyers and what types of property are they looking for?
Fehd: We continue to see strong demand from international buyers in Mayfair along with domestic purchasers looking to upsize or downsize within the area. The growth of tech and pharmaceutical are two sectors in particular which have seen extraordinary growth in recent years, creating a new generation of wealth who want to invest in London real estate. These top end buyers continue to seek out Mayfair’s trophy townhouses and luxury apartments – many of which offer exquisite standards of living, flexible space to work from home and the facilities on par with those of a five-star hotel. Some of these homes offer in excess of 20,000 sq ft of space, ideal for multi-generational living and grand entertaining.
Charles: International buyers are often more interested in quality of design, finish and service, rather than larger floorplans and outdoor space, so demand is focused on best-in-class properties, particularly at the top end. The pied-a-terre market is particularly buoyant and we see international clients choosing a flat or apartment with a concierge over a house so that they can ‘lock up and leave’ and have peace of mind that their home is secure while they are away. Such preferences are largely influenced by the seasonal nature of international buyers, who divide their time between the UK and other countries.
How important is social media in the work you do?
Charles: There is certainly an appetite for social media when it comes to selling homes – especially the super lust-worthy ones! It’s great to have a presence on social and showcase some of our stock as well as having an additional touchpoint to reach new or existing clients. Facebook continues to be the largest driver of traffic to our website and individual listings and we are continuing to see a good level of new followers each month. In January alone, there were 14,000 new followers across Savills social channels, a 77% increase compared to January 2023.
Demand and activity levels remained exceptionally strong across the prime central London market in 2023. Why do you think London – and Mayfair in particular – has seen such strong interest?
Fehd: Mayfair has long been the location of choice for high-end discerning buyers, not only for its calibre and variety of property, but for all that it offers from a lifestyle and educational perspective; world-class restaurants and private members clubs, vast array of designer retail stores and leading art galleries, all nearby. This, coupled with the connectivity to the rest of the capital, makes Mayfair a very appealing location for a wide range of people.
Both local cash buyers and international buyers played a pivotal role across prime London last year, which saw prices for higher value properties remaining steady over the course of the year. Half of all sales in excess of £5 million took place in traditional prime London postcodes, with around 8% of those transactions taking place within Mayfair. This rebalancing back in favour of the prime postcodes that traditionally dominated £5 million-plus sales pre-pandemic has been driven by the return of international travel for business and leisure, and the global wealthy once again looking to buy into the unique London lifestyle.
Do you handle many off-market sales and why might a seller opt to take this route?
Fehd: There’s a proportion of our market that will be reliant on website exposure because it drives interest from around the globe and allows motivated buyers to see what is readily available on the market. That said, there are parts of the market where buyers and sellers want to be more discreet and generally the higher up the pricing scale, the more off-market instructions and transactions we see. Buyers at this level of the market often want to transact without others knowing or to avoid having a digital footprint. When properties are not publicly available, this can help identify the more motivated buyers wanting to transact, than those who may just be window shopping.
What can we expect to see from the Mayfair property market in 2024?
Charles: Now is a really exciting time to be in Mayfair given the new openings and continued investment by Grosvenor in terms of streetscape and landscaping. The lifestyle pull of Mayfair is a big factor for people and we are seeing a broader range of buyers coming into the mix, both in terms of ages and nationalities and that’s something we expect to continue to see as we go through 2024.
If you could buy any property in and around Mayfair, what would you choose and why?
Fehd: There’s a quintessential Mayfair townhouse on South Audley Street that I would absolutely love to own. It’s one of the oldest townhouses in Mayfair and has incredible history, character and superb proportions throughout! Its genuine gem. Any event or dinner party would be a memorable occasion.
Charles: It would have to be one of the portered, fully refurbished three or four bedroom apartments around Mount Street. My commute would be a dream!
