18–19 Kensington Palace Gardens

In April 2004 the global press reported £70 million — USD 128 million — and called it the most expensive house purchase ever recorded. HM Land Registry records £57,145,967 on 30 June 2004, for 18–19 Kensington Palace Gardens together with three mews houses at the rear. The reported figure was about twenty-two per cent high. It stood uncorrected in reference works and news archives for years, and it is still repeated.

This is the register's standing example for its own rule. A registry entry is the sum in the transfer deed on the completion date the deed states; a report is a report. The same distinction produced the gap at 220 Central Park South — $239,958,219 recorded against $238 million reported — and at The Lana in Dubai, where Land Department sales came in thirty-seven per cent under the average ask. Here it produced a world record that was never the number everyone quoted.

The house is two: the former Egyptian embassy at 18 and a Russian embassy annexe at 19, united in the 1990s by David Khalili, with Lionel de Rothschild at number 18 from about 1912. Twelve bedrooms, some 55,000 square feet, garaging for twenty cars, a ballroom and a basement pool. Tenure is a long lease from the Crown Estate, which owns the street — the freeholder of the second most expensive road in the world is the British sovereign's property corporation.

Sources

• HM Land Registry via the Kensington Palace Gardens reference record — £57,145,967 on 30 June 2004 for 18–19 plus three mews houses; the sale noted as widely misreported at £70m
• NBC News and The Sunday Times, 12 April 2004 — £70m / USD 128m, described as a world record
• TIME, 2006 — USD 128m, 6,400 sqm, twelve bedrooms
• buildington.co.uk — Ecclestone bought in 2001 at a reported £50m; David Khalili united the houses in the 1990s; Rothschild at 18 from c.1912
• Knight Frank via Wealth-X — the street at about USD 107,000/sqm, second in the world behind Pollock's Path
• Neighbouring purchases reported for Wang Jianlin (2005), Roman Abramovich (2009) and further Mittal family houses are carried as context and are not this record's facts

Verification

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Inventory

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£57,145,967 registered against £70m / USD 128m reported worldwide

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Booking

Private Residences records addresses; it does not broker them. Enquiries are passed to the party named in the record, and nothing on this site is an offer.

Classified by The Resort Collection House · Edition 2026 · PR-D-202