Hotel To Become Apartments

Developers are set to make a fortune. The Thistle Hotel (former hotel in the Bayswater area of West London) overlooks Hyde Park and has a Victorian façade. The 80 'super-apartments' from this venture are expected to be worth up to £26 million each.

That's a resale value of over £2billion.

Seriously.

Wonder what the cost was before the transformation? If other sales are a guide: Intercontinental Hotels is to sell 25 hotels in London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong for a mere £1 billion. On average this represents just £40 million for each hotel. So a complete hotel's value is substantially less than the total 'value' of all the potential apartments contained within it. The opportunities for money laundering are enormous.

No one's going to buy into any of that unless for pure profit by selling on.

Surely.

As an investment, maybe. For any other reason?

Go figure.