I bought the land for £5,000 and it’s worth £10m
Former racing driver Stirling Moss was interviewed in the Daily Telegraph today. It is instructive – here is an extract…
It was 1961 and I bought a plot in Mayfair and built a six-storey 2,500 sq ft house on it. It was a site that had been bombed out during the war and the council originally offered me the whole corner including a derelict hotel for £40,000.I didn’t want the hotel so I asked how much they wanted for just the two plots on the end and that was just £5,000. The build cost was £25,000 – I had to tank the bottom because there was a river running under it and I installed a lot of luxury items. I have a table, for example, that goes up into the kitchen where it can be laid for dinner and then descends into the dining room below.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR BEST BUY?
My house. Even if it was still a bomb site the plot alone would be worth £10m today. But the whole thing is out of date and needs modernising this year – I want a new kitchen and air conditioning in every room.
How, we wonder, did its value come to rise from £5000 to £10 million. Inflation alone would have brought the price up to, at most, £200,000. Where has the rest of the increase come from? Who earned it and how?