Billionaires' Row where mansions worth £350MILLION have been abandoned and left to rot for up to a quarter of a century

More than a dozen properties on one of London's most expensive streets are currently standing empty after being abandoned by their super-wealthy owners, it has emerged.
The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead, north London - dubbed 'Billionaires' Row' - has at least 16 giant mansions standing vacant, with a combined value of an estimated £350million.
Some of the homes have been unoccupied for up to 25 years, with the interiors left to rot and rooms taken over by plants, according to a new investigation.

Vacancies: Around a third of the houses on 'Billionaires' Row in Hampstead are standing empty

Empty: Heath Hall, currently on the market for £65million, is one of at least 16 mansions on The Bishops Avenue which are currently unoccupied

Expensive: Jersey House is on sale for £40million, rendering it unaffordable for all but the super-rich

The Guardian reported that around a third of the properties on the most expensive stretch of the road are currently standing empty.
And even some of the houses which have not been abandoned are unoccupied much of the time, according to residents, as they have been bought by rich foreigners who usually live abroad.
The Bishops Avenue, which runs between Hampstead Heath and East Finchley, attracts wealthy buyers thanks to its large houses and extensive gardens, giving it a rural atmosphere despite its relatively central location.
Among the empty houses on the road - home to media baron Richard Desmond as well as members of the Saudi and Brunei royal families - is Heath Hall, currently on sale for £65million.
The 14-bedroom house, which was built for the founder of the Tate & Lyle sugar empire, cost its latest owner £40million to renovate after it fell into disrepair after years of neglect.

For sale: £34million Stratheden is another home on 'Billionaires' Row' which is not being lived in

Confiscated: Dryades went on sale for £30million after being repossessed from its owner, a Pakistani minister

Other properties which are now on the market include Dryades, valued at £30million, which was repossessed from a former Pakistani government minister.
The sky-high prices are one clue to why so many of the houses are empty, as the homes are unaffordable for nearly all Londoners, meaning they end up being bought by overseas royals and oligarchs who maintain their main residence elsewhere.
The most extreme example of neglect comes in a group of 10 houses which been empty since the early 1990s before they were bought by a property company for £73million last year.

The properties were bought by members of the Saudi royal family between 1989 and 1993, according to the Guardian.
They could have been intended as boltholes to escape the turbulence in the Middle East being stirred up by Saddam Hussein at the time, which may explain why after his defeat in the Gulf War and subsequent deposition the houses were apparently unused.
The 10 homes are now so run-down that they are strewn with rubble after the ceilings fell in, while bird skeletons are scattered around the floors.

Location, location, location: The road runs between Hampstead Heath and East Finchley in north London

Bargain: Seven-bedroom Caravilla was one of the cheaper homes on the street when it sold for £12.5million

Anil Varma, a property developer who is helping to renovate the houses, described the road as 'one of the most expensive wastelands in the world'.
He told the Guardian: 'Not many true local residents live on the road. It is the likes of the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Brunei. They buy a property and don't do anything with it.'
One local resident said that he thought just three houses on the street's most expensive section were occupied full-time, while another said: '95 per cent of the people who live here don't actually live here.
'It is a terrible place to live really. It is very boring and the road is very busy.'
The revelation that so much prime property is essentially unused could help fuel the debate over the squeeze on first-time buyers.
The average house price in Britain is now £176,491, more than six and a half times the median salary, while in London prices rose by more than 11 per cent last year.
Boris Johnson has backed calls to levy punitive rates of council tax on homes which are unoccupied for two years or more, and campaigners are pushing for the Government to confiscate unused land if developers refuse to build on it.

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