Harry and Meghan look set to become the bigger losers in the royal real estate shuffle. Photo / AP
Harry and Meghan look set to become the bigger losers in the royal real estate shuffle. Photo / AP
OPINION:
Over the course of the two weeks and change since Her Majesty passed away, there has been a lot of fretting: Fretting about what might happen to her beloved dogs, her $700 million fortune and her vast haul of tiaras. (Respectively, they are going to Prince Andrew and who knows, but absolutely not to Prince Andrew.)
But won't anyone think of the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property in her portfolio?
As the UK slowly gets used to this king business and the advent of Charles III, the new sovereign must, at some point, get his infamous leaky fountain pen out and decide whether to make his family members play the real estate equivalent of musical chairs, with dozens of grand houses which are now at his sole disposal.
One of Charles' first kingly duties will be managing the Crown's enormous real estate portfolio. Photo / AP
The facts are pretty astounding. The Crown Estate owns dozens of significant estates and homes, which are generally handed out to family members, along with the more than 140 grace-and-favour homes spun out across the UK (some estimates put that figure as more than 200 homes) which are generally occupied by loyal retainers and the more distant branches of the House of Windsor.
Of the major Crown properties that come under the purview of the King, and this is by no means an exhaustive list, there is: Buckingham Palace (which has apartments for Princes Andrew and Edward); Clarence House, where Charles and wife Camilla, the Queen Consort currently live; St James's Palace (the London residence of Princess Anne, Princess Beatrice, and Princess Alexandra); Kensington Palace (home to the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of Kent and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent) and which includes Ivy Cottage, Wren House, and Nottingham Cottage; Thatched House Lodge in Richmond Park, long-occupied by Princess Alexandra; the Windsor Great Park estate which includes Windsor Castle, Prince Andrew's Royal Lodge, Prince Edward's 120-room Bagshot Park, Frogmore House, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's Frogmore Cottage, the Prince and Princess of Waleses' Adelaide Cottage, and the gothic-revival Fort Belvedere; the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Dumfries House and the Castle of Mey in Scotland; Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland; Tamarisk House, on the Isles of Scilly in Cornwall and Llwynywermod in Wales.
Next there are the properties which were personally owned by the Queen and are now Charles': Balmoral Castle in Scotland which also includes Birkhall, Craigowan Lodge and Tam-Na-Ghar; and the Sandringham Estate which also comprises Anmer Hall, Wood Farm, and York Cottage.
(Princess Anne's Gatcombe Park estate, which was bought for her as a wedding present by the Queen, is privately owned, and her children, Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall live in houses on the estate with their families.)
Windsor Castle is just one of the grand royal properties across the UK. Photo / AP
Now, with Charles in charge, like so much with the royal whirligig there are those who stand to pick up some serious new digs and those, especially friends of convicted sex offenders or Montecito based-podcast progenitors, who stand to lose out.
Take Clarence House, the John Nash-designed Regency whopper which sits on The Mall and right next to St James's Palace.
Currently, it is home to the King and his wife Camilla, the Queen Consort, however they will, at some stage in the nearish future, move into Monarchy HQ aka Buckingham Palace. (The 300-plus-year-old Palace has been undergoing a 10-year, $628 million re-servicing which could affect the timing.)
Pre-Megxit, when California was still somewhere the royal family went on official tours when they fancied topping up their Mustique tans or to play polo, Clarence House had reportedly been "earmarked" (but "never agreed" upon) as a London home for Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, a former courtier has told the Times.
Which makes perfect sense. William and Kate, Prince and Princess of Wales, already have a four-storey, nine-bathroom Kensington Palace apartment and even with three children, one dog, a nanny and enough tennis rackets for a small nation state to have a hit, they don't need any more space.
But with the Sussexes long gone, the sovereign now faces quite the pickle about what to do with the enormous beast, which if it ever went on the market would have to be one of London's most expensive homes.
What's especially tricky for Charles is that with Harry off practising his downward dog, there is no one else Clarence House can obviously go to. (Given that Clarence House, like Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace and Windsor Castle, is owned by the Crown, nor can he liquidate any of them for some ready cash.)
The next HRHs in the line of succession are the York duo, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and either or both of them, as non-working members of the royal family, being given such a significant property seems unlikely. (There is also the question of who would pay for it given that while both have jobs, neither seems likely to be pulling in the sort of cash that can afford to pay the large staff the property requires. Nor could their daddy likely pony up the cash given he is essentially under home detention and can no longer gad about the Caucuses, paling about with autocrats.)
One of the issues I am particularly interested in seeing how Charles handles is his brother's occupation of the 31-room Royal Lodge. Formerly the Queen Mother's home, Andrew took the property over in 2003, paying $1.7 million for a 75-year lease (which works out at about $420-a-week) and spending about $12.7 million on renovations including putting in an indoor swimming pool.
Will Charles let Andrew continue to enjoy a plum piece of real estate? Photo / AP
Since 2008 the place has also been home to his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York and any of the unsold QVC juicers she might still have hanging about the place. (All those rooms gave her plenty of variety in terms of backdrops for her truly loopy Instagram videos.)
So, will Charles let Andrew continue to enjoy such a plum piece of real estate? It's not that the royal family needs the property but it's the look of the thing. Time and time and time again, Her Majesty stepped in to protect her supposedly favourite child, a man who clearly saw no issue with enjoying the largesse of a convicted child sex offender.
But, will the new king maintain the same line? Or could we see King Charles step in and boot Andrew and Fergie out of Royal Lodge into a smaller property in what would have to be a highly popular set-down?
Then again, if he did that, what to do with Royal Lodge?
(Even before the Queen's death, there seemed to be spare properties going begging with the bottom rung, smallest cottages on the Sandrigham and Balmoral estates available for rent, including on Airbnb.)
Next, one of the biggest unknowns would have to be what he will do with Sandringham House in Norfolk, which is, as one unnamed toff memorably told the Times in 2019, the "ugliest house in Britain."
The 20,000-acre estate, like Balmoral in Scotland, is now personally owned by Charles, however he already has Highgrove House, his stately country pile where he likes to spend his weekends pressing flowers and prying Camilla away from the bar cart. (I jest of course. That's what footmen are for.)
Likewise, the Waleses already have a 10-bedroom Norfolk bolthole of their own, Anmer Hall, which sits on the Sandringham estate. Of course they could upgrade to the big house but then that leaves their only 10-bedroom empty.
The Prince and Princess of Wales are likely to be moving into bigger digs – much bigger digs – back in Windsor one day. Photo / AP
And, the prince and princess are likely to be moving into bigger digs – much bigger digs – back in Windsor. While they only moved into their new four-bedroom home Adelaide Cottage in August, it is widely assumed that at some stage they will trade the positively twee home for the 1000-room plus Castle now sitting vacant. (OK, sure they will actually be moving into the Queen's private apartments, where she and Prince Philip hunkered down during the pandemic with a small gaggle of trusted staff, but it still includes very large receiving rooms and is hardly likely to be tiddly.)
Until William and Kate decide to upsticks, that too will sit empty.
(Reports suggest they won't be making any sort of move anytime soon given their focus on giving their three young children as normal a childhood as possible. Raising them in the oldest inhabited castle in the world, where Henry VIII's suits of armour are sitting about the place, perfect for dress ups, doesn't exactly scream average now does it?)
For Charles, managing this property musical chairs is a dicey business given that doling out grand estates and some of London's most valuable real estate like sweets during the biggest cost of living crisis in a generation would hardly go down well. Then again, leaving them empty would come across as horribly wasteful. King problems, amiright?
Daniela Elser says spare a thought for the Sussexes who now have that rarest of things for members of the royal family: a mortgage. Photo / AP
While the king ponders this hundred million dollar conundrum, spare a thought for the Sussexes who now have that rarest of things for members of the royal family: A mortgage. In 2020 they bought themselves a $20 million mansion in Montecito, taking out, according to Variety, a loan of $14.2 million. (They, like the Waleses, also pay rent for their home on the Windsor estate.)
If they had stayed on Team Royal, they would currently be in line for a property windfall, possibly picking up not only Clarence House but probably a much bigger country estate to boot. (Frogmore Cottage? I don't know her.)
On the upside, Harry and Meghan can boast of one thing that none of his relatives can: They can never be booted out by his father on a whim. That might just be priceless.
• Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal expert with more than 15 years' experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
