Christian Candy sells ‘Candyland’ estate for £125mn

Property tycoon Christian Candy has sold his luxury estate just west of London for about £125mn, one of the biggest housing deals this year, according to people briefed on the transaction.

Christian and his brother Nick Candy made their names selling expensive apartments in London to the super-wealthy in the years after the 2008 financial crisis.

Christian Candy bought the main property on his Surrey estate, Cheval Manor, in 2015 for £29mn, according to Land Registry documents. He subsequently acquired a series of neighbouring plots and properties, all of which connect to form the sprawling estate dubbed “Candyland”.

Having invested tens of millions of pounds into the estate, Candy, 49, has been looking to sell for as long as three years and was originally hoping to receive £140mn from the sale, said one person with knowledge of the deal. The eventual buyer was from the Middle East, added this person.

The tycoon sold a house overlooking Regent’s Park in London for £104mn in 2020.

Candy declined to comment. Upmarket estate agents Savills and Knight Frank both worked on the sale of his Surrey estate, said two people with knowledge of the £125mn transaction. Both companies declined to comment.

Property sales of £100mn or more are extremely rare in England, especially outside of London.

“There are less than a handful [of £100mn-plus sales a year],” said Roarie Scarisbrick, a buying agent at Property Vision, the upmarket property consultancy. “It’s spoken about as a market, but it’s not: it’s a series of anomalies.”

Surrey, and the private estates close to Candy’s property such as Wentworth and St George’s Hill, are a magnet for wealthy buyers from all over the world.

In March, the Times reported that Candy had spent at least £50mn piecing together his estate, which includes a 25-metre underground swimming pool.

In 2021, Candy secured planning permission to build a network of underground tunnels connecting parts of the estate, including a basement equipped to house a collection of almost 60 cars.

Nick Candy was the public face of the brothers’ development activities and has stayed in the public eye, recently working on an unsuccessful bid for Chelsea Football Club and a failed approach to buy online retailer THG.

Christian has kept a lower profile, developing high-end properties in Holland Park in west London.

Apartments in the brothers’ flagship development, One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge, are among the UK capital’s most expensive.