Yahoo News John Caudwell's new £200m flats would buy you 1,389 average Stoke-on-Trent houses
Stoke-on-Trent's self-made billionaire John Caudwell hopes three flats he is building in one of London's poshest postcodes will sell for £200 million - each.
The 71-year-old comes from humble beginnings growing up in Shelton and Bentilee before making his fortune with Phones 4U. He now concentrates on his charity work and international property development empire.
And one of his biggest projects is building 29 homes at 1 Mayfair, around the corner from where he lives when he's not at his mansion near Eccleshall.
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The development will include three penthouses with a £200 million asking price each. The other properties - built on what was once home to a petrol station, car park and aparthotel - will start from £35 million.
If successful, this would make the apartments significantly pricier than any such home in British property history. In fact, £200 million for one flat would buy a staggering 1,389 houses in his home city of Stoke-on-Trent where an average property costs £144,000.
Despite the hefty price tag, John told The Times that 450 parties have already expressed an interest in the 29 properties. Each residence will have ultra-luxurious interior flourishes galore, and the development will include a 'crystal gallery' modelled on the hall of mirrors in the Palace of Versailles.
Speaking about the development, John told The Times: “Everything about this building will be timeless — timeless architecture, timeless quality and timeless build structure. There’s no reason at all why it can’t be there in 500 years’ time.
“You’ve got probably 6,000 billionaires [in the world] … and we don’t need a big percentage of those people. And a huge number that are worth more than £10 billion. You know, they can afford it. To some of those people — I mean, it sounds a bit blasé — it’s small change.
“I mean, in a way that’s the sadness of the world, you know, because there’s so much devastation, and then so much extreme wealth. But there is that extreme wealth, and people will want the very, very best.”
It was all made possible from John's gamble on mobile phones in the 1980s. With his brother Brian, in 1987 John registered Midland Mobile Phones as a mobile phone wholesaler taking 26 Motorola mobiles at £1,350 each.
It took eight months to sell all 26 phones to plumbers, taxi drivers and television repairmen at a price of £2,000 each. The company made a loss every month for the first two years of operations.
In 2003 he sold Singlepoint to Vodafone for £405m and completed the sale of the wider business three years later for £1.46 billion to private equity firms Providence Equity Partners and Doughty Hanson.
He now claims his money weakness to be charity and once even spent £800,000 for three days in South Africa with Elton John and David Furnish visiting their own charitable work.
READ MORE: Take a tour of John Caudwell's £250 million Mayfair mansion (and his one in Eccleshall!)
