Even Billionaires Recoiling at Asking Price for London Mansions

“We’ve had offers of around 25 million pounds, but they aren’t quite high enough,” says Noel de Keyzer, a veteran broker for Savills Plc, a London-based real estate agency. We are standing in a surprisingly sunlit subterranean family room beneath the garden of 29 Brompton Square in Knightsbridge, on the market for 27.5 million pounds ($44.3 million). Damien Hirst butterfly prints hang on the earth-tone walls of the recently renovated, fully furnished 1820s house.

“I would say that eight out of 10 buyers will take a house like this lock, stock and barrel, including the contents, and do very little in terms of altering the design,” de Keyzer says. By “a house like this,” de Keyzer means super-prime -- the designation given to properties asking in excess of 10 million pounds, Bloomberg Pursuits magazine will report in its Holiday 2013 issue.