Jitters can't shake London's "super-prime" market

By Luke Baker

LONDON (Reuters) - Growth may be slowing, stock markets are skittish and banks have reined in their lending, but at the very top of London's property market there's little sign of demand tapering off.

In the latest evidence that the super-wealthy are seemingly impervious to the world's financial jitters, a company building 80 hyper-luxurious apartments overlooking London's Hyde Park said on Monday it had already pre-sold half of them at an average price of more than 20 million pounds ($40 mln) each.

The most sought-after apartments in the complex, called One Hyde Park, are fetching nearly $12,000 per square foot, a price that seemed all but fanciful just two years ago.

"The fact is that despite the credit crunch, extraordinary wealth creation has continued across the global oil and commodity sectors," Liam Bailey, the head of residential research at estate agents Knight Frank, said.

"The financial market, far from being dead, is still providing huge rewards for those in the right position."

"Right position" may be a bit of a euphemism -- it really means those with hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars to spare and willing to spend big to get exactly what they want.

As with many of London's priciest properties, the buyers are increasingly not British but foreigners, with Russians, Americans and those from the Middle East at the top of the tree.

In recent weeks there have even been high-profile purchases by billionaires from Israel and Kazakhstan too -- diamond dealer Lev Leviev paid $70 million for a brand new home and Horelma Peramam spent $100 million for a mansion nearby.