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LONDON - It's concentrated in one tiny area - Arabs, Americans and Russians trying to outfox each other and seize control of valuable land.
A new terror crisis? A stormy United Nations session? No, this is central London's super-wealthy and overheated housing market, where the rich and famous compete for the perfect property in a prime location.
The whole of the London property market is hot - average asking price nearly £379,000 ($1.02 million) - but central west London, from Kensington and Holland Park in the west, through Bayswater to the north of Hyde Park, past Mayfair and Knightsbridge and down to Belgravia and Chelsea in the south - is at melting point.
In Kensington and Chelsea average property prices have soared by £120,000 to £1,329,878 in the past month and by £620,000 in a year.
There are two reasons for this extraordinary increase. The first is economics - there are far more wealthy buyers than there are homes for sale.
The second is status - when the world's wealthiest buyers want another prestigious address, they look to central London.
"London has what the world's richest people want - security," says estate agent Charles Peerless.
"It speaks the new universal language of English, has an easy air hub at Heathrow, good schools, a welcoming tax system for foreign owners, and the world's financial capital."
In the past year Peerless has visited Singapore, Dubai, the US and Shanghai, to explain London's property market to wealthy would-be buyers.
Estate agent Liam Bailey, of agency Knight Frank - which has about 300 top-ranked London homes on its books - says Britons now buy only half of the most expensive homes in central London, where apartments often cost more than £1 million and houses usually more than £2.5 million.
That figure drops to 40 per cent for the super-top-end homes costing more than £4 million.
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