Every great Washington fortune eventually finds a second home somewhere more forgiving than Washington. For the family that controlled Riggs — the bank that carried the accounts of twenty-three American presidents — that place was London, and the address was one of the most famous in the world: a three-level penthouse residence high inside the Savoy, set above the Strand with the Thames unspooling below.

I’ve spent my career selling the houses where Washington power actually lives, and I’ve learned the best properties aren’t sold on square footage. They’re sold on story. This one has an extraordinary one — a penthouse rising across three levels near the top of the building, with the river on one side and the whole apparatus of the Savoy at the door — and after years out of reach it is now privately available through our colleagues at UK Sotheby’s International Realty.

Riggs was never just a bank. For the better part of a century it was the private banker to the American establishment and to the embassies of half the world — the institution that liked to call itself “the most important bank in the most important city.” In 1981 the Texan Joe Allbritton took control, adding it to an empire that already spanned television, insurance, and the newspaper Washington read at breakfast. A man who banks the world’s embassies needs a foothold in the world’s capitals, and no city rewards that instinct like London.

Within London, there has never been an address quite like the Savoy. Richard D’Oyly Carte built it in 1889 on the profits of his Gilbert and Sullivan operas, above the Thames on the Strand — the first hotel in Britain lit throughout by electric light. He hired César Ritz to run it and Auguste Escoffier to cook, and effectively invented the modern grand hotel. Its guest list is the twentieth century itself: Edward VII, Churchill, Chaplin, Monroe, Sinatra. And since a 1903 expansion it has quietly held Britain’s first private serviced residences — homes inside the building, with the full run of the hotel’s service and kitchens, that have housed permanent occupants from Sarah Bernhardt onward. To hold the penthouse among them is to live not in London so much as at the very center of it.

I’m keeping the particulars where they belong on a property of this caliber — behind a private conversation rather than a public price. But I can tell you what it represents. Homes come to market constantly. Provenance like this — an American banking dynasty, a British national treasure, a penthouse view of the Thames from inside the Savoy — surfaces perhaps once in a generation.

The Allbritton era at Riggs eventually came to a close, but the London residence outlasted it, as the best real estate often does. Buildings keep the story long after the institutions that built them are gone.

It’s available again, privately, through UK Sotheby’s International Realty. If it speaks to you, let’s talk. Please reach out for any additional information, brochure ect.

Jim Bell - JBE@Sothebysrealty.co.uk

202-607-4000 Cell/ WhatsApp

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The desk was set up and the seal was on it. On the morning of June 24, industry and congressional leaders were filing into the Capitol for the signing ceremony, and Senator Elizabeth Warren was live on CNBC taking a victory lap for the biggest housing bill the United States had produced since 1990 — when the President posted that he wouldn’t sign it, calling it “the Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren centric housing bill, which is of minor importance.”

“I thought it was a joke,” Warren later told The New York Times. It wasn’t. At midnight on July 11, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act became law anyway — no signature, no ceremony, no President in the room. Trump let the ten-day clock run out in protest over an unrelated elections bill; the votes to override any veto were already sitting in both chambers, and everyone knew it.

But the sulk is the least interesting thing about it. What matters is that the bill got over the line at all. It began as an unlikely friendship — Elizabeth Warren, the progressive Democrat, and Tim Scott, the conservative Republican who chairs the Senate banking committee, who sat side by side through years of hearings and decided to attempt the first major housing bill since 1990. It nearly died a dozen times: stripped from the defense bill, watered down in the House, revived only when Warren and Maxine Waters cut a deal by phone in June. A polarized Congress, a hostile president — and it passed anyway, because the housing problem has become impossible to ignore.

But notice where all that energy went. The fiercest fight, the one Warren said “ripped the heart out of it,” was over the private-equity cap — over who is allowed to own homes — not over how to build more of them. A few days later, the Financial Times explained, better than any politician has, why that instinct gets the crisis exactly backwards.

This is not an American story. It is a rich-world failure.

The FT‘s survey is essential reading because it refuses to treat this as one country’s misfortune. The same pattern repeats wherever the modern economy concentrates work and money into a few cities. Dublin’s housing demand has jumped 40 percent since 2011 while its stock grew at half that rate — the worst shortage in the developed world. San Francisco, Lisbon, Sydney, London: the story rhymes everywhere.

And the cost is not abstract. It is a generation being locked out. In Ireland, the share of 25-to-34-year-olds living with their parents has more than doubled, to 42 percent. Among the bottom third of young earners it is worse still — 75 percent in Dublin and San Francisco, 55 percent in London. These are not lifestyle choices. They are people we have failed to build homes for. That is what the housing crisis actually is: a population that needs to be housed, and a rich world that has decided, city by city, not to house it.

There is one solution, and the evidence is no longer in dispute

You can treat the symptom or cure the disease. Rent control — the policy that carried New York’s incoming mayor into office — “eases pressures for people who already have a home,” as one economist told the FT, “but it doesn’t house the people without one.” It rations scarcity. It does not end it.

The cure is supply. Build more homes, of the right kind, in the right places. Where cities have done it, it has worked with striking consistency. Austin let developers build through a demand boom and watched rents fall — not slow, fall — while young homeownership climbed from 70 to 80 percent. Auckland rezoned for density in 2016 and rents flattened. Where building freezes — London after its post-Grenfell cost load, Dublin, the Croydon scheme killed by its own council — prices climb out of reach and stay there. The clearest finding in housing economics: the countries that build, house their people; the countries that don’t, don’t.

Which is the test to apply to the new law. The Road to Housing Act is strongest where it clears the path to build — easing federal regulation, streamlining reviews, backing factory-built homes — and weakest where it restricts, capping investors in a way the FT warns “may worsen” affordability without producing a single new home. Judge it by one question: does it get homes built? To the extent it does, it is the most important thing America has done for housing in thirty years. To the extent it doesn’t, it is theater.

Britain is about to run the boldest version of the experiment

This past Monday, Andy Burnham became Prime Minister on the largest state housebuilding program since the postwar years — and he’s earned the benefit of the doubt: Manchester, the city he ran for nine years, is the one genuine British building success the FT can point to, built by working with developers so that when demand arrived, homes followed.

The part I’d press him on is the tax. You cannot build your way out of a shortage while taxing the act of buying and moving into paralysis. Punitive stamp duty doesn’t just freeze prices; it freezes people in place and strangles the turnover that makes construction pay. Burnham’s reported plan to scrap stamp duty and council tax for a single annual, proportional levy on value is the most pro-supply idea on his desk. It is also the American model — a yearly charge on what a home is worth, and nothing on the courage to buy it.

The direction of travel, on both sides of the Atlantic, is finally right. Warren has already told her caucus to start on “Road 2.0,” and the political will is permanent now; voters won’t let it fade. The only question is what we aim it at. Growth is not the thing to be managed here. Building — at scale — is the answer. There are people who need to be housed, and there has only ever been one way to house them.

— James Bell

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But purchasing a second home isn’t quite the same as buying your primary residence. Vacation properties often come with unique legal and title issues that buyers don’t encounter in a typical suburban neighborhood. While the location may be idyllic, it’s important to understand exactly what you’re buying before you get the keys.

Here are a few issues every buyer should consider before falling in love with that perfect summer retreat.

Waterfront Property Comes with Additional Questions

For many buyers, the biggest draw is being on the water. But owning waterfront property involves more than simply enjoying the view.

One of the first questions is whether you actually own all the land leading to the water. In some cases, another governmental entity or homeowners association may own portions of the shoreline. There may also be restrictions on building docks, installing boat lifts, or constructing seawalls.

Even if a dock already exists, buyers should verify that it was properly permitted and that any licenses or permits are transferable. Assumptions can become expensive surprises after closing.

Understanding Riparian Rights

If you’re purchasing waterfront property, you’ll likely hear the term riparian rights.

Simply put, riparian rights are the legal rights associated with property bordering a river, lake, or other body of water. Depending on state and local law, these rights may include access to the water, boating, fishing, or constructing certain improvements.

However, these rights are not unlimited. Environmental regulations, state agencies, and local ordinances often govern what owners can and cannot do. In some areas, portions of the waterfront below the high-water mark remain publicly owned, even though they appear to be part of the property.

Understanding exactly what rights transfer with the property is an important part of the title review process.

Easements Can Affect Your Enjoyment

Vacation properties frequently involve easements.

An easement gives someone else the legal right to use a portion of your property for a specific purpose. Utility companies often have easements for electric or water lines, but waterfront communities may also have easements allowing neighboring owners to access the shoreline, community docks, or beaches.

Some easements are obvious. Others may only appear in recorded documents that are discovered during the title search.

An easement doesn’t necessarily make a property less desirable, but buyers should understand how it affects their ownership before settlement.

Shared Driveways Require Cooperation

Many vacation homes—particularly older cottages and rural properties—share driveways with neighboring owners.

A shared driveway agreement outlines who is responsible for maintenance, repairs, snow removal, and future improvements. Without a properly recorded agreement, disagreements can arise years later over expenses or access.

A title search will often uncover recorded easements or maintenance agreements governing shared driveways. If none exist, buyers should ask questions before closing rather than after a dispute develops.

Private Wells and Septic Systems

Unlike homes connected to municipal water and sewer systems, many vacation properties rely on private wells and septic systems.

Those systems often come with recorded maintenance agreements or shared-use arrangements if neighboring homes draw from the same well or utilize a shared septic facility.

Buyers should determine:

• Who is responsible for maintenance?

• Are inspections required?

• Are there recorded cost-sharing agreements?

• Has the system been properly maintained?

Understanding these obligations before closing can prevent unexpected expenses later.

Flood Insurance: A Cost Buyers Shouldn’t Overlook

For many waterfront and coastal properties, flood insurance has become a significant factor in the overall cost of ownership. While buyers often focus on the purchase price, mortgage payment, and property taxes, flood insurance premiums can add thousands of dollars annually to the cost of owning a home.

Premiums vary based on several factors, including the property’s elevation, location within a designated flood zone, the age and construction of the home, and the amount of coverage selected. In recent years, changes to federal flood insurance rating methodologies have resulted in substantial premium increases for some property owners, making it more important than ever for buyers to obtain flood insurance quotes early in the purchasing process.

Even if flood insurance is not required by a lender, buyers should carefully evaluate the property’s flood risk. A home that has never experienced flooding isn’t necessarily immune from future events, particularly as weather patterns continue to change and severe storms become more frequent.

Before making an offer on a waterfront property, ask whether the home is located in a Special Flood Hazard Area, whether the current owner maintains flood insurance, and whether there have been any prior flood claims. Understanding these factors upfront can help avoid surprises after closing and provide a more accurate picture of the true cost of owning your dream vacation home.

The Value of Looking Beyond the View

Vacation homes are emotional purchases. Buyers often envision family gatherings, summer cookouts, fishing trips, and years of memories before they ever think about easements or title reports.

That’s understandable.

But taking the time to understand the legal characteristics of the property is every bit as important as admiring the scenery.

An experienced title company reviews public records, examines the chain of title, identifies easements and restrictions, and works to resolve issues before closing. That due diligence helps ensure buyers receive not only the property they expect, but also the legal rights they believe they’re purchasing.

The best closings are often the ones where buyers never realize how much work occurred behind the scenes.

As summer continues and many families begin searching for their own getaway, remember that the perfect vacation home isn’t defined solely by the water views or the sunsets. It’s also defined by having a clear understanding of the property’s legal rights, responsibilities, and long-term costs of ownership.

After all, peace of mind is one of the best amenities any vacation home can offer.

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I recently toured this magnificent estate. It has just been recently listed by Sotheby’s UK—a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This exceptional early Georgian estate, steeped in English history, is set within a peaceful semi-rural pocket just 10 miles from Hyde Park Corner and moments from Richmond Park. Set within 2.3 acres, it offers approximately 16,000 sq ft of accommodation, complete with a swimming pool and tennis court.

The estate also has a fascinating history, with the late Diana, Princess of Wales, having been a regular visitor.

If you have questions or interest in this exceptional property, please do get in touch- Jim Bell (202) 607-4000/ JBE@Sothebysrealty.co.uk

If you have questions or interest in this exceptional property, please do get in touch- Jim Bell (202) 607-4000/ JBE@Sothebysrealty.co.uk

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I recently toured this magnificent estate. It has just been recently listed by Sotheby’s UK—a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This exceptional early Georgian estate, steeped in English history, is set within a peaceful semi-rural pocket just 10 miles from Hyde Park Corner and moments from Richmond Park. Set within 2.3 acres, it offers approximately 16,000 sq ft of accommodation, complete with a swimming pool and tennis court.

The estate also has a fascinating history, with the late Diana, Princess of Wales, having been a regular visitor.

If you have questions or interest in this exceptional property, please do get in touch- Jim Bell (202) 607-4000/ JBE@Sothebysrealty.co.uk

If you have questions or interest in this exceptional property, please do get in touch- Jim Bell (202) 607-4000/ JBE@Sothebysrealty.co.uk

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Nationally, the spring test came back muddy. Existing-home sales slipped in June, in the season meant to carry the year, with the thirty-year fixed parked near 6.5%. Prices held to a record anyway. Not a boom — a market clearing slowly, with rates doing the gatekeeping.

Here’s what the headline misses: a softer market is not a slow one for the right house. DC homes are still going to contract in about forty days, versus sixty nationally. It’s the tired listings and deferred-maintenance stock collecting price cuts — not move-in-ready product in prime addresses.

So the message to sellers is plain. The frenzy premium is over; you won’t be rescued by ten offers on an overpriced house. But the discipline premium is very much alive. Price to the comps, present it properly, and quality still commands speed.

For buyers, it’s inverted: real leverage on anything that’s been sitting, none on the best of it. Waiting for rates to drop has been a losing bet for two years running.

And capital is mobile. The client weighing a Georgetown townhouse against a Chelsea flat isn’t hypothetical — that’s a conversation I have most weeks now.

More on the London side of it in the next letter.

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Here is a number I put in front of a client in Mayfair last month, and it stopped the conversation cold.

He is American. He owns a house in Washington. He wants a flat in London — a real one, three bedrooms, lateral, somewhere he can leave a suit and a decent bottle. Call it £5 million.

His stamp duty bill is £863,750.

Not his closing costs. Not his fees, his lawyers, his survey, his Land Registry. His tax. Wired to HM Revenue & Customs on completion day, before he has turned a key, and never seen again. It is 17.3% of the purchase price. The last pound he spends is taxed at 19% — 12% top band, plus the 5% surcharge for owning another home, plus 2% for the crime of being a foreigner.

He looked at the number for a long moment and said: “So I have to make eighteen percent just to break even.”

Yes. That is exactly what it means. And it is why prime central London, one of the great cities on earth, is trading roughly 24% below its 2014 peak while global wealth has compounded for a decade.

Now Andy Burnham wants to abolish it.

What is actually on the table:

Let’s be precise, because the market is not being precise.

Burnham will almost certainly be Prime Minister within ten days. Nominations closed the way everyone knew they would; he took 322 of Labour’s 403 MPs on day one. Starmer hands over the keys on the 20th.

He has not published a housing tax policy. What he has done is say, on the record and repeatedly, that he has “long been persuaded of the argument for a land value tax” and that council tax — still assessed on 1991 valuations, which is a sentence that ought to embarrass a serious country — is “highly regressive.” He is a listed supporter of Fairer Share, a cross-party campaign whose plan is now reportedly being worked through by his team.

The Fairer Share Plan is simple enough to fit on a napkin. Abolish stamp duty. Abolish council tax. Replace both with a flat annual charge of 0.48% of the property’s value. Second homes, empty homes, and homes owned by overseas buyers pay double: 0.96%.

Read that again if you’re American. An annual tax, levied as a percentage of assessed value, with a surcharge for non-occupants, and no tax on the transaction itself.

That is the District of Columbia. That is Virginia. That is Connecticut, Florida, and every other jurisdiction where you have ever owned a home.

The mirror: Georgetown vs London

A $5 million house in Georgetown pays DC roughly $46,000 a year — 0.85% on the first $2.558m, 1.00% above. When you bought it, you paid 1.45% recordation. Nobody in Washington considers this exotic. It’s a line item. You underwrite it, you forget it, you pay it in two installments and complain about the trash collection.

Under Burnham’s scheme, a £5 million London flat owned by an American would pay 0.96% — about £48,000 a year — and nothing at all to buy it.

We have spent a decade telling American clients that London is expensive to enter. What we mean is that London is expensive to enter. It is cheap to own. The proposal inverts both.

Here is the trade, in full:

At £1.5 million, an American second-home buyer pays £198,750 in stamp duty today — 13.3%. The proposed annual levy would be £14,400. It would take fourteen years of the new tax to equal one afternoon of the old one.

At £3 million: £483,750 today, 16.1%. Annual levy, £28,800. Seventeen years.

At £5 million: £863,750 today, 17.3%. Annual levy, £48,000. Eighteen years.

At £10 million: £1,813,750 today, 18.1%. Annual levy, £96,000. Nineteen years.

Eighteen years. On a £5 million flat, it takes eighteen years of Burnham’s annual tax to equal what the British government takes from you on the first afternoon under the current one. And in the meantime, you would have paid nothing at all to buy it.

Why is this both a price event and a policy event?

Strip a transaction tax out of a market and the price goes up. This is not a forecast. It is arithmetic, and we have run the experiment in both directions.

Britain has raised its transaction tax five times in twelve years. The slab-to-slice reform of 2014, which loaded the top end. The 3% additional-homes surcharge in 2016. The 2% non-resident surcharge in 2021. The surcharge lifted from 3% to 5% in October 2024. The abolition of Multiple Dwellings Relief. Over precisely that period, prime central London fell about a quarter from peak, and it did so while the city kept its schools, its law, its language, its art market, its safety, and its time zone. Nothing about London got worse. The toll to get in got worse.

Run it the other way and you get the 2020–21 stamp duty holiday, which produced a transaction surge and a price surge, in the middle of a pandemic, for no reason other than that the tax was briefly gone.

A buyer prices the tax. A seller absorbs part of it in the discount. Remove the tax and that discount has nowhere to go but into the price.

And the current discount is real. LonRes had prime London values down 8.2% year-on-year in June, transactions down 12.7% in the first half, an average 10.4% gap between asking and achieved, and half of all sold properties previously reduced. Savills reckons average prime central London prices are down 24.5% from the 2014 peak. That is not a market in trouble. That is a market with a tax problem, wearing a discount as a bandage.

Now, the part nobody selling you a flat will tell you…

I would not be doing my job if I gave you only the bull case.

One: None of this is Policy Yet. Burnham has not published a plan, and a former Treasury adviser I read this week put the odds bluntly — full replacement of council tax and stamp duty is a multi-year exercise that a new government is more likely to kick into the next manifesto than deliver in year one.

Two: The Near-Term Risk Runs the Other Way. The High Value Council Tax Surcharge — the mansion tax — is already legislated to hit £2m-plus homes from April 2028, and reporting suggests Burnham may cut that threshold to £1.5m. The plausible eighteen-month outcome is not that stamp duty goes away. It is that an annual tax arrives on top of it.

Three: An Annual tax is a Permanent Liability. Knight Frank’s Tom Bill made the sharpest point in the debate: annual revaluations convert house price growth into an ongoing tax bill. Under this system, your appreciation invoices you. Americans know this and price it. Many British owners have never in their lives paid tax on the value of their homes, and they are about to.

Four: The 0.96% is Still a Penalty Rate. Britain is not proposing to stop taxing foreigners more. It proposes moving the penalty from the front door to the annual bill.

What I am telling clients.

Do not wait for the announcement. That is the whole of my advice, and here is why:

If reform comes, it will be announced long before it is enacted, and the day it is announced, the market freezes — nobody signs a contract with a £864,000 tax bill attached when abolition has a date on it — and then it unfreezes violently, upward, with the discount gone and the sellers holding the pen. You will not get to buy in the gap. Nobody does.

Meanwhile, the direction of travel is unmistakable, and it is one-way. Every serious party in Britain — Labour under Burnham, and the Conservatives, who have also pledged to scrap stamp duty — is converging on the same conclusion: tax the asset, not the transaction. Whatever the final shape, the entry cost is going down and the carrying cost is going up. Permanently.

Which means the buyer who wins is the one who buys into today’s discount at today’s carry, pays a one-time cost that is painful but finite and fully known, and owns the asset when the toll booth comes down.

The buyer who loses is the one who waits, misses the discount, and inherits the annual bill anyway.

London is not cheap because London is broken. London is cheap because Britain built a tax that punishes the act of buying, and is now, at last, having second thoughts.

We have about a year.

Jim Bell

202-607-4000

Jim Bell is Executive Vice President and Global Advisor at TTR Sotheby’s International Realty in Washington, DC, and Consultant at Sotheby’s International Realty UK on the DC–London corridor. He has closed approximately $1.2 billion in transactions. Reply to this note if you’d like the full underwriting on a specific price point — or an introduction in London.

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UK Sotheby’s International Realty announced this morning that it has launched a bespoke advisory service for American buyers in the UK’s prime residential market. I am leading it as a consultant to the Mayfair firm, while continuing as Executive Vice President at TTR Sotheby’s International Realty here in Washington.

The announcement ran this morning in PrimeResi, London’s trade journal of record for prime residential.

Here is why the advisory exists.

Americans are now UK Sotheby’s largest overseas client group — by transaction volume and by value. Beauchamp Estates puts US nationals at 30% of every sale above £5 million in prime central London this year, up from 20% at the end of 2025. In Mayfair, the American share of sales above £5 million is 50%.

That is not a trend. That is a market.

What that market has lacked is a broker on the American side of the table. The traditional structure is an international desk in London that receives inquiries and routes them. The advisory is the inverse: a single adviser who works for the buyer, and who knows what a Washington client actually needs to understand — how the money moves, where the tax exposure sits, what a 92-year lease means and what it costs to extend, why the survey matters more than the brochure.

I have been doing versions of this since 2016, when I showed One Hyde Park to a client from Washington.

Alex Isidro, Managing Director of UK Sotheby’s International Realty, put it this way in the announcement: the UK is firmly on the radar of American home seekers and investors, and the firm wanted someone who speaks the language of both markets.

Nothing changes in Washington. I am closing here, listing here, and living here. What has changed is that the work I have been doing informally since 2016 — advising Americans buying in London — now has a formal structure behind it, and the resources of Sotheby’s in Mayfair.

If you have been thinking about London, it is a short conversation. My line is open. 202-607-4000

Tomorrow: Andy Burnham’s proposal to replace stamp duty and council tax with an annual levy on property value — and what it would actually mean for an American buying in London.

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3307 O Street NW- Georgetown: Stunning top to bottom renovation of this charming light filled and spacious 3,200 sq ft. 5 bedroom 4.5 bath Federal in the heart of Georgetown. Every detail has been thoughtfully attended to from the high ceilings, custom finishes, designer lighting, wide plank wood flooring and captivating floorplan. All new electrical, plumbing, all chimneys relined, new roof, new windows, new flooring throughout, all new bathrooms and kitchen. The main level offers a formal extra wide living room with fireplace and alcove, separate dining room, stunning gourmet kitchen opening to a fabulous entertaining patio, and completed with a main level powder room. Upstairs on the second level one is welcomed with an inviting primary suite with fireplace, incredible wardrobe space and elegant primary bathroom. A second bedroom and second full bath complete this level. On the third floor, two additional bedrooms, (one the size of the primary below it), a third full bath, second laundry and exciting rooftop deck will delight the senses. The daylight walkout lower level accessed from within the home is a suite unto itself, with a full bedroom, sitting room, living room, laundry and full bath along with its own outside entrance.

It’s the sort of property that rarely comes up and almost never stays around long. You need to move quickly with a market expert.

For a confidential conversation, reach out to me directly, and we’ll talk.

202-607-4000

JBell@TTRSIR.com

Jim Bell

Billion Dollar Broker

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I land in London on July 1.

On Friday the 3rd, I’ll be at the Hurlingham Club for The Summer Social — UK Sotheby’s International Realty’s invitation-only gathering of private client advisers and industry professionals, with Enness Global, Lumley, Sytner, Capital Services Group, and IFX Payments. Three to four hundred of the people who quietly move the top of this market are in one room. It’s a working day, and a good one.

Then the Fourth of July with Sotheby’s UK — marking 250 years of American independence from the wrong side of the Atlantic, which has its own quiet comedy.

This is the first time I’m writing to you from London with Sotheby’s UK. I’ve shown property here since 2016; now I’m doing it properly, working with Americans buying in the city. 25% of all buyers in London are Americans. The Washington, D.C., business continues exactly as it always has. London is simply new ground with a new team.

If you’re in town this week, I want to see you. A drink, a coffee, a hello between meetings — I’m easy to find.

Jim

202-607-4000 (WhatsApp)

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It’s the sort of property that rarely comes up and almost never stays around long. If it’s of interest to you or someone you know, pricing and a private viewing are a phone call away.

Reach out to me directly, and we’ll talk.

202-607-4000

Jim Bell

Billion Dollar Broker

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The president abruptly canceled a signing ceremony at the Capitol on Wednesday, posting on social media that he would not act until lawmakers take up the SAVE America Act. The desk and presidential seal had already been set up in Statuary Hall. CBS News

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed both chambers with veto-proof majorities and restricts institutional investors from buying certain single-family homes. It becomes law within ten days regardless of whether Mr. Trump signs. The Hill + 2

He called the measure “of minor importance.” Republicans had planned to campaign on it this autumn. PBS

More to follow.

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When the plates were cleared, Greenspan explained, with the patience of a man who had explained far more complicated things to far less attentive rooms, that one did not leave the table after lunch at the Metropolitan Club without having a chocolate chip cookie. It was not optional. It was tradition, and tradition, in his telling, was a form of respect — for the room, for the people who came before you in it, for the ordinary civilities that hold a place together when no one is watching.

That was the lesson. The man who could move global markets with a single syllable spent the back half of a lunch making sure a kid he would almost certainly never see again didn’t miss the cookies. The brilliance was real — you felt it the way you feel weather — but the thing that stayed with me was the graciousness, scaled all the way down to the person directly in front of him. I have met a great many powerful people since. Most of them never learned that part.

A few years later, the federal budget did something I had been taught was theoretically possible and practically mythological. It balanced, then ran a surplus, then did it again. I was still young enough to find it astonishing, almost magical. I watched a column of numbers walk down to zero and keep going, and a fair share of the credit sat with the man who had shown me, with great seriousness, which cookie to take at the club.

History will argue about the rest — the exuberance he called irrational, the deregulation, the crisis that arrived the year after he left, and rearranged how everyone remembers him. Let the economists have it. They will be at it for decades, in the deliberately fogged dialect he invented to keep them busy.

I’ll keep the smaller thing.

I never had lunch with him again.

I have never once skipped the cookie.

-James Bell

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The Basic Framework

Under DC law, properties are classified into different tax classes, and the classification assigned to a property determines its tax rate. Most residential properties fall under Class 1 (A or B), with rates of $0.85 and $1(for value over 2.558 million) per $100 of assessed value, respectively. Vacant properties, however, are subject to a dramatically higher rate. Properties designated as vacant are taxed at $5.00 per $100 of assessed value — nearly six times the standard residential rate. Properties deemed “blighted,” meaning they pose safety or health hazards or are in serious disrepair, face an even steeper rate of $10.00 per $100 of assessed value.

This punitive tax structure is intentional. The goal is to make holding onto an empty property financially painful enough that owners either develop the property, sell it to someone who will, or at a minimum maintain it in a habitable condition.

How Properties Are Designated Vacant

The Office of Tax and Revenue (OTR) works in conjunction with the Department of Buildings (formerly the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs) to identify and designate vacant properties. A property can be classified as vacant if it is unoccupied and either lacks a certificate of occupancy, has failed an inspection, or has had its utilities disconnected. The designation process typically begins with a complaint, a routine inspection sweep, or a flag triggered by utility data.

Once a property is identified as potentially vacant, the Department of Buildings conducts an inspection. If confirmed, the owner is notified, and the property is placed on the vacant property list, triggering the higher tax

classification for the following assessment cycle. Owners are given an opportunity to appeal the designation, which is an important safeguard given that erroneous designations do occur, particularly for properties that are temporarily unoccupied during renovation or between tenants.

Exemptions and Appeals

Not every empty building automatically faces the punitive rate. The District provides several exemptions for owners who can demonstrate legitimate reasons for vacancy. Properties actively under construction or renovation with valid permits may be exempt. Additionally, properties that are for sale or rent, provided they are being actively marketed, can apply for a vacancy exemption as well. Estate properties caught in probate, properties owned by government entities, and those subject to certain legal disputes may also qualify for exemptions.

The appeals process runs through the Office of Tax and Revenue and, if necessary, the Office of Administrative Hearings. Owners contesting a vacant designation must typically provide evidence of occupancy — utility bills, lease agreements, proof of ongoing permitted construction, or documentation of active marketing efforts. The burden of proof falls largely on the property owner, which can be challenging for estates or out-of-state owners who may not have organized records readily at hand.

Assessment Values and the Double Impact

A critical point often overlooked is that the punitive tax rate applies to the assessed value of the property, not just some nominal figure. The Office of Tax and Revenue assesses properties annually at what it determines to be fair market value. In a city where land values in many neighborhoods have appreciated dramatically over the past two decades, the assessed values underlying these calculations can be substantial. A modest rowhouse in a transitional neighborhood assessed at $600,000 would face an annual tax bill of $30,000 under the vacant rate — a powerful incentive to act.

This double pressure — high assessed values combined with high tax rates — is what gives DC’s vacant property tax its teeth. Critics argue that it can be devastating for low-income longtime homeowners who find themselves unable to maintain or occupy a property due to health, financial hardship, or family circumstances. Advocates for the policy counter that the exemptions are designed to protect such cases and that the overall public interest in reducing blight justifies the framework.

The Broader Policy Goal

Ultimately, vacant property taxation in the District is a land use tool as much as a revenue mechanism. The District faces persistent pressure to produce more housing units and revitalize corridors that have languished for decades. By making vacancy expensive, the City helps move properties back into active use. Whether the current rates strike the right balance remains a live debate, but the underlying logic is straightforward: in a city with as much demand as Washington, DC, a “vacant” property is a civic failure, and the tax code reflects that judgment.

Coming Soon… in fiscal year 2027 (October 2026 - September 2027), the vacant property tax rates and exemptions will undergo a significant overhaul. We will examine those changes in the coming months.

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​​​​​​​A corner residence at The Ritz-Carlton rarely comes to market, and this one arrives unlike any before it. Over a meticulous two-year renovation, the current owners enlisted architect and interior designer Jerry Harpole and Fine Point Construction to rebuild the home entirely — architecture and interiors conceived as a single, seamless vision in a refined traditional style. Every detail was considered. Everything is new.

Spanning 2,771 square feet, the residence opens onto a southwest-facing wall of glass that fills the corner with afternoon and evening light, framing open city views and two private terraces. Three bedrooms plus a den offer generous, flexible living, anchored by an exquisite kitchen designed for both everyday life and entertaining. Custom electric shades and drapery run throughout, alongside bespoke millwork and finishes that reflect a level of craftsmanship impossible to replicate. The offering includes two parking spaces — a true rarity at this address.

Residents enjoy the full measure of Ritz-Carlton living: 24-hour concierge and door service, valet parking, and direct access to the adjoining Sport & Health club and spa. Steps from the West End, Georgetown, and the Kennedy Center, with the boardrooms of downtown minutes away. A turnkey, once-in-a-cycle opportunity to own the best-positioned residence in the building

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Last week, Nicole Friedman reported in the Wall Street Journal that real estate agents are quitting the slow market now grinding through its fourth year. She’s right, and the piece is worth your time. She follows a Fort Worth agent who launched a brokerage in 2023 on a good market, watched rates and prices strangle demand, sent most of her team off to find second jobs — her husband took a position with a school district — and finally closed the doors this spring, calling the last stretch the hardest of her career. I read it with sympathy, then with recognition, then with a contrarian’s itch. The headline tells you what happened. It doesn’t tell you what it means.

The numbers aren’t in dispute. By the Journal‘s account, the ranks of full-time agents and brokers fell by 72,000 in a single year — the steepest drop since 2008. The National Association of Realtors has shed something on the order of 400,000 members from its pandemic peak. Last year’s sales pace was the slowest since 1982, when I was a teenager in Atlanta who couldn’t have told you what a basis point was. The exodus is real. People are hurting. None of that is the part worth arguing with.

Here’s the part the breaking-point framing misses: a great many of the people leaving were never in the business in the sense the word is meant to carry. The boom manufactured agents. When money is nearly free, and a listing clears over a weekend, a license stops being a craft and becomes a toll booth — a thing you hold up to collect on a transaction the market was going to complete with or without you. Hundreds of thousands of people walked through that booth between 2020 and 2022. It should surprise no one that they’re walking back out.

I’ve been doing this since 1989. I’ve now watched three of these cullings — the early nineties, 2008, and whatever we end up calling this one. Each time, the trade press writes the obituary of the American real-estate agent. And each time, with real and painful exceptions, the people who leave are the people who arrived when it was easy.

This isn’t a sneer at the Fort Worth broker. Closing a business you built with your own name on the door is a specific kind of grief, and anyone who has signed a lease and made payroll knows it doesn’t care whether you deserved it. She did nothing wrong. She was early, and she was unlucky on timing, which in this trade is most of what luck is. But look closely at what actually thinned: the part-timers, the boom hires, the people for whom real estate was a side door into easy money. The profession didn’t shrink so much as it sobered up.

The reporting says the survivors will be the well-capitalized and the genuine producers. True enough. But capital isn’t the moat. Trust is the moat — and trust is the one asset a slow market mints rather than melts. My best clients were never closed in a frenzy. They were earned over years: dinners, unbilled advice, the occasional and unpopular don’t buy that one. In a hot market that work is invisible, because anyone can sell a house when the houses sell themselves. In a market like this one, it’s the only thing that works at all.

Which brings me to the figure that ought to worry the right people. Nearly half of would-be buyers and sellers told surveyors this year they’d consider skipping an agent altogether, and three in four agents expect to be competing with software and artificial intelligence. Good. They should be. If your value to a client was looking up listings and unlocking a door, your phone has been outperforming you for a decade, and AI will finish the argument. What a model cannot do is sit across a table and tell someone the truth about a house, or take the eleven-o’clock call when a deal is coming apart and a family is frightened. Dario Amodei made the point in the FT this spring that AI spreads at the speed of trust. So does everything else in this business. It always has.

My dry cleaner, for the record, let his license lapse. He's much happier, I'm told, and the pressing has never been better. I don't say that to be unkind. I say it because the slow market is doing the profession a favor it would never do for itself: it's reminding everyone that this was always hard work, and that the hard work was always the point. So to the agents still standing in the fourth year of it — still making the calls, still telling clients the truth, still showing up when the easy money left town — I'll say only this. Keep going. The market that broke the others is building your reputation.

— Jim Bell, Billion Dollar Broker, June 7, 2026

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Most homeowners understand the importance of protecting themselves from identity theft and cybercrime, but fewer are aware of a growing real estate-related threat: title theft and seller impersonation. While these crimes remain relatively uncommon, their financial and legal consequences can be severe. Understanding how these schemes work and recognizing the warning signs can help homeowners and real estate professionals avoid becoming victims.

Understanding the Threat

Title theft occurs when a criminal fraudulently transfers ownership of a property into their own name—or that of another party—without the owner’s knowledge or consent. This is typically accomplished through forged documents, false identification, and the recording of a fraudulent deed in local land records. Once the transfer is recorded, the fraudster may attempt to sell the property, obtain loans against its equity, or use it in other financial schemes.

Seller impersonation involves a criminal posing as the legitimate property owner and attempting to sell the property through a real estate broker, attorney, or title company. Using forged identification and ownership information, the fraudster seeks to complete a sale before the true owner becomes aware of the transaction.

Vacant land, vacation homes, rental properties, and homes owned free and clear of a mortgage are often targeted because there may be fewer parties actively monitoring ownership records. These properties are generally considered higher-risk for fraud attempts.

How These Schemes Work

Most title fraud begins with information gathered from public records. Property ownership information is readily available through many local government websites, allowing criminals to identify properties with substantial equity and limited oversight.

The fraudster may then create forged deeds and signatures and submit those documents for recording. If accepted, public records may temporarily reflect the criminal as the property’s owner. Using the same information, the fraudster can also create fraudulent identification that mimics the true owner’s signature and identity.

Once apparent ownership has been established, the criminal may attempt to:

· Sell the property to an unsuspecting buyer.

· Obtain a mortgage or home equity loan.

· Transfer ownership through multiple parties to complicate the ownership trail.

· Use the property as collateral in financial transactions.

In many cases, the true owner does not discover the fraud until receiving notices from lenders, collection agencies, government offices, or prospective purchasers.

Warning Signs of Potential Fraud

Homeowners should remain alert for unusual activity involving their property. Potential warning signs include:

· Bills or correspondence addressed to someone else at the property.

· Unexpected notices regarding loans, liens, or mortgage applications.

· Changes in property tax statements or assessment notices.

· Mail indicating ownership transfers that were never authorized.

· Unexplained inquiries from real estate agents or prospective buyers.

· Difficulty accessing property records that previously reflected the correct ownership information.

Real estate professionals should also recognize common red flags when dealing with sellers, particularly involving vacant land, rental properties, or mortgage-free homes. Warning signs may include sellers who:

· Insist on communicating only by phone, email, or text.

· Seek a sales price significantly below market value.

· Push for a quick closing or an all-cash transaction.

· Refuse to appear in person for settlement, often claiming to be out of state or overseas.

While none of these factors alone proves fraud, they should prompt additional verification and due diligence.

Steps to Reduce Risk

Although no preventive measure can eliminate all risk, several practical steps can significantly reduce vulnerability to title theft and seller impersonation.

1. Monitor Property Records

Regularly reviewing property ownership records can help identify unauthorized changes before significant damage occurs. In the District of Columbia and Maryland, land records are available online at no cost. Real estate professionals should also review ownership records before listing or handling transactions involving unfamiliar properties.

Beyond fraud prevention, property record reviews often reveal important information such as additional owners, outstanding issues, or matters that should be addressed before a sale.

2. Protect Personal Information

Title thieves often rely on stolen personal information. Homeowners and real estate professionals should safeguard sensitive documents, avoid transmitting confidential information through unsecured channels, and properly store or destroy financial records. Strong cybersecurity practices can reduce opportunities for identity-related fraud.

3. Pay Attention to Unexpected Notices

Correspondence relating to mortgages, liens, deeds, or ownership changes should never be ignored. Prompt investigation of unusual notices can help uncover fraudulent activity before a transaction progresses further.

4. Keep Contact Information Current

Owners of second homes, rental properties, and vacant land should ensure tax authorities and other relevant agencies have current mailing and contact information. Receiving notices promptly can be critical in detecting unauthorized activity.

5. Consider Enhanced Owner’s Title Insurance

Owner’s title insurance protects against covered title defects that affect ownership rights. Many enhanced owner’s title insurance policies provide affirmative coverage for fraud and forgery occurring after settlement. This can offer broader protection than a standard owner’s policy, which typically focuses on defects existing before settlement.

Homeowners should consult their title insurance provider or title professional to understand the specific protections available under their policy and determine whether enhanced coverage may be appropriate for their circumstances.

Staying Vigilant

Title theft and seller impersonation can create significant legal and financial challenges for both homeowners and real estate professionals. Although fraudulent transfers can often be reversed through legal action—and may be covered under a quality owner’s title insurance policy—the process can be costly, time-consuming, and stressful.

Awareness remains the most effective defense. By monitoring property records, protecting personal information, verifying unusual activity, and exercising appropriate due diligence, homeowners and real estate professionals can reduce their risk and better protect one of their most valuable assets.

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The answer is yes. Here’s why I’m saying it out loud.

I’ve been showing American buyers property in prime London since 2016. I know what that market feels like when it’s expensive and indifferent to you, and I know what it feels like when it’s leaning in your direction. Right now, it’s leaning in.

I just came back from London. I toured properties across prime central — Kensington, Mayfair, Chelsea, and Marylebone. What I found surprised even me. Well-priced inventory. Motivated sellers. A city that wants buyers back.

Americans Are Driving the Market

This is no longer sentiment. Americans now account for roughly 25 percent of prime London property purchases, according to major estate agents, with inquiries from U.S. buyers reaching an eight-year high in early 2025. In 2024, Americans overtook Chinese buyers as the largest foreign buyer group in prime central London — a title once held by Middle Eastern royals and Hong Kong billionaires.

The currency math alone is compelling. According to Knight Frank, since July 2014, dollar-denominated buyers have received an effective discount of roughly 38 percent in prime central London — accounting for both currency movement and price softness. Put plainly: $1 million buys around 34 square meters in prime London today, compared to just 23 square meters in 2014. You are getting meaningfully more for your dollar than at any point in the past decade.

The softening at the top of the market has been real. Properties over £5 million have seen a 45 percent increase in price reductions, according to LonRes. For cash-rich American buyers, that’s an opening.

Sotheby’s Is Where the Action Is

Our own brand’s numbers tell the story at the institutional level. UK Sotheby’s International Realty posted £1.63 billion in 2025 sales, led by Mayfair and Knightsbridge in a record prime London year. In 2024, the firm secured the number one market share in both the £10 million-plus and £15 million-plus property segments — all in under two years of rebuilding. When a brand built on discretion and global reach produces numbers like those in a “challenging” market, the underlying demand is real.

On the global side, Sotheby’s International Realty reached $157 billion in 2024 global sales volume — and specifically flagged London as a key market for international expansion.

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The Tax Headwind — and Why It May Not Last

There is a legitimate downside, and I won’t bury it. The callout box above shows the full picture. The short version: an American buying a prime London property as a second home faces standard SDLT, an additional property surcharge, and a non-resident surcharge — stacking to a top rate of 19 percent for overseas buyers purchasing an additional property.

On a £3 million flat in Knightsbridge, you’re writing a tax check approaching £480,000 before you hang a picture. That is real money.

But here’s what experienced buyers understand: taxes imposed by governments can be reduced by governments. Attractive pricing of the right stock has sustained interest from international buyers, as motivated vendors have been willing to conclude on terms that might previously have been rejected. Buyers who moved while sellers were flexible will look very smart if policy shifts and competition returns. The buyers waiting for the tax cut will be competing against each other in a suddenly crowded market

What I Saw on the Ground

I toured properties that in 2021 would have had competing offers before the second viewing. Today, they are available, priced with intention, and represented by agents who are ready to engage. Prime London hasn’t lost its fundamentals — the architecture, the neighborhoods, the global demand from tenants, the cultural gravity. What it shed was the frothy premium. That is exactly when serious buyers move.

I’ve had this conversation with clients across the DC–London corridor for nearly a decade. The ones who acted when the market gave them an opening are glad they did. The ones who waited for certainty are still waiting.

The Bottom Line

Prime London is not distressed. It’s disciplined. Inventory is available, sellers are realistic, the dollar is strong, and Americans are the most active cohort of foreign buyers in the market. The tax burden is real — but it’s a policy number, not a permanent condition.

If you’ve been thinking about London, this is the moment to have the conversation. I just walked those streets. I know what’s available and what it’s priced at.

The window is open.

Jim Bell is Executive Vice President and Global Advisor at TTR Sotheby’s International Realty. He has been advising American buyers in the London prime market since 2016.

Washington reinvents itself on a fixed schedule, the way some people buy a new car the moment the lease is up — not because the old one failed, but because the calendar said it was time.

I watched it happen again this week. The primaries rolled in from a dozen states, the city read the tea leaves the way it always does, and by morning, a certain kind of Washingtonian had quietly concluded that the next chapter might be better lived somewhere else. They won’t say that’s why. They’ll say the kids are gone, or the winters got long, or they’ve always wanted a place near the water. And they’ll be telling the truth — just not the whole of it. In this town, the personal reason and the political weather tend to arrive in the same envelope.

I find the whole thing oddly comforting. After thirty years and somewhere north of a billion dollars in other people’s front doors, I’ve stopped being surprised by the churn and started being fond of it. Washington is a city that cannot sit still. It is always either arriving or leaving, packing or unpacking, and a remarkable number of those boxes pass through my hands.

What I’ve learned is that the house is never the reason. It’s the occasion.

Some of the occasions are joyful. A family outgrows its walls. A career takes off, or finally lets someone leave. But many are quieter, and a few are heavy. The children are launched and the rooms echo. The stairs that were nothing at fifty have become the day’s main negotiation at eighty. There’s a move to a single floor, or to a community where help is down the hall, or the slow and tender business of selling a house because the person you shared it with is no longer in it. I have stood in a lot of kitchens while someone decided what their next, smaller life was going to look like. It is the most human work I do, and the part the spreadsheets never capture.

Through all of it, I keep one fixed point. While Washington changes its mind every other November, I drive out to a historic farm in Somerville, Virginia, where the fields have not had a strong opinion about anything since 1835. The contrast is the whole secret. You cannot watch a city reinvent itself this often without somewhere quiet to watch it from. The farm is my somewhere. It is also, not coincidentally, where I do my clearest thinking about what my clients actually need, which is rarely what the market thinks they need.

Here’s what the market gets wrong. It treats a sale as an ending and a purchase as a separate beginning, two transactions performed by two sets of strangers who never speak. For most of my career that was simply the way of things. You sold a Washingtonian their freedom and then waved as they vanished into someone else’s territory, hoping the agent on the other end was halfway competent.

And more often than you’d think, the call comes from the new city. The owner is already in Tampa, or Tampa-adjacent, phoning about a house in Kalorama they’re no longer standing in. The move happened first; the listing is the loose end. By the time I have the keys, the family photos are already on a wall a thousand miles away. Which tells you something about the old way of doing this: the right moment to have me in the room was before they left, with both ends of the move in one set of hands.

So I got tired of hoping, and I built that team — one that spans the corridor my clients actually live in: Washington, London, New York, Los Angeles, Georgia, Tampa and Palm Beach. And I stay in it for the whole journey. Not the listing and a handshake goodbye. The whole arc. The hard conversation about whether it’s really time. The staging and the sale here. The search on the other end, in a city where I already know the good blocks and the right people. The landing, and the first few weeks after, when a person is standing in a new place, wondering if they made a terrible mistake. I’m there for that part too.

One move instead of two. Sell in Kalorama, land in Tampa. Leave a McLean house that’s grown too big, arrive in a New York apartment near the grandchildren — or in London, if that’s where the children are scattered. Same hands the whole way. No re-explaining your life to a new stranger at the worst possible moment.

That, increasingly, is the business I’m in. Not the buying and selling of houses — anyone with a license can do that — but the holding-together of a transition, end to end. The election may be what gets someone thinking. Health, age, family, the simple mathematics of too much house — that’s what actually moves them. And a broker who treats the entire journey as one job, across cities, is what makes the move bearable, sometimes even good.

Washington will change its mind again. It always does. The names on the doors will turn over, the moving trucks will line the streets of Georgetown and Kalorama like they do every couple of years, and a certain number of my neighbors will decide their story continues elsewhere.

When they do, they know where to find me. I am with them for the whole journey.

— Jim Bell,

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