Bizarre saga of this homeless Swede in tweed who became the sole resident of London’s largest house – except for Buckingham Palace!

Numbers 2-8a Rutland Gate is an outstanding property by anyone’s standards. Built in the Regency style and clad in white stucco, it is seven storeys high, measures 62,000 square metres, has 45 rooms and has breathtaking views of London’s Hyde Park from 68 of its 116 windows – all fitted with bulletproof glass.

So it seems quite a shame that for the last three years the sole resident of this huge Knightsbridge estate has been Anders Fernstedt, a very cheerful and bushy-bearded Swede.

More importantly, Anders, 57, who has a penchant for fine linens and fine tweeds, spends a lot of time chatting with swans in Hyde Park and cycling everywhere, doesn’t actually live inside the building.

‘Oh no, I never went in!’ he said, looking at me horrified. ‘This doesn’t feel right at all. No, no, no.”

Instead, homeless Anders lives in a cozy nest of duvets, down comforters and Hungarian goose down pillows under the property’s grand portico. Where, for company, she has a mountain of pointy teddy bears, toys, games, lots of flowers in vases, and a wardrobe full of surprisingly stylish clothes, many of which were donated by her very posh neighbors.

They also bring him food, pieces of furniture they think he’ll like, and fancy leather shoes, but he insists: ‘I never want anything.’ Neighbors love it – ‘it’s a wonderful Swedish bay,’ says one dog walker – and are delighted that at least someone is making use of such a magnificent building.

Because no one here even remembers the current owners visiting the palace, let alone staying one night in it. Certainly not since 2020, when the property market went wild with the news that someone had paid a staggering £210 million to make it Britain’s most expensive home.

And if that wasn’t enough, the elusive new owner has also secured planning permission to expand the place (apparently 62,000 square feet wasn’t big enough) with a massive spa, Olympic-sized swimming pool, two-storey underground car park, triple-height ballroom and vaulted roof greenhouse that can open to the London sky.

But that work never moved forward and no one will be moving in anytime soon.

The buyer, Hui Ka Yan, was the founder of Chinese property development giant Evergrande and was said to have amassed a fortune of around £30bn, including private jets, football clubs and palatial estates.

But just a year after spending so lavishly on Rutland Gate, Evergrande collapsed with debts of £225bn, precipitating a nationwide property collapse in China. Hui was detained, fined £4.8 million and disappeared from public view.

But this month he pleaded guilty in Shenzhen to a string of charges including bribery and misuse of funds, and now faces life imprisonment rather than enjoy the views of Hyde Park.

But the essence of the Rutland Gate dilemma does not lie in a prison in southeastern China. In fact, Hui can’t even sell the mansion to pay off his debts because when he bought it through a British Virgin Islands Company – naturally – the name on the deed was that of his then-husband, Ding Yumei, a Canadian citizen.

And it seems he can’t sell that right now either because his assets have been frozen since the divorce and crazy worldwide spending spree.

There it stands, a stone’s throw from the Royal Albert Hall; dirty, derelict and giving bananas to local residents.

‘We can’t stand to see properties empty, especially buildings like this; apparently this is the largest private house in London after Buckingham Palace!’ says a perfectly turned-out dog walker. ‘So at least Anders provides some life and colour.’

One of 24 luxury marble bathrooms in mansion bought for £210 million

It’s hard to imagine anyone actually living there. Not just because it’s so ridiculously large and the endless dirty windows are so empty and obscure. There isn’t even a garden, for God’s sake; No wonder Hui and Ding wanted that conservatory to be expanded. However, it was never intended as a single residence.

Originally built as four terraced houses in the 19th century, the block was rebuilt in the 1980s by YRM, an architectural firm known for the design of Gatwick Airport and the Sizewell B nuclear power station in Suffolk, and its massive size and flashy location immediately attracted the attention of ultra-rich foreigners with more money than sense.

The first of these was Rafik Hariri, a Lebanese construction billionaire and politician who bought the entire land and turned four houses into a huge mansion. He added endlessly wide staircases and staterooms and adorned the interiors with golf leaves and sparkling chandeliers.

When he died in 2005 (blown up on a Beirut street a year after resigning as Lebanese prime minister), his son Saad sold his estate to an elderly Saudi crown prince, Sultan bin Abdulaziz; he also added 24 marble bathrooms with solid gold faucets, more gold leaf, handmade wallpaper and a Louis XV Pompadour fireplace before he died in 2011.

Neither of them spent much time living there, but they loved having such a swanky London anchor in their portfolios.

According to Trevor Abrahmsohn of Glentree Estates, it’s all about prestige. ‘Owning a significant property in London is a badge of honour,’ he explains. ‘If you don’t have a second or third property in London, you haven’t arrived.’ Neighbors put it less delicately. ‘They’re pouring their money in here to have a security blanket in case things go wrong in their country,’ says Melville Haggard, president of the Knightsbridge Association. ‘We actually oppose the purchase and non-use of places. It happens everywhere but this is a block! “This is a white elephant.”

So while they all love Anders and make offerings to him, they also like that his living there keeps the poor state of the property in the news. So how did it get here? A former journalist, gardener and botanist who trained at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Anders is an only child who has never married and enjoys solitude.

He tried living on a boat in three different council houses (‘horrible, terrible’) and camped out in a corner of Southgate cricket ground for a month.

Jane Fryer visits Anders at Rutland Gate in Knightsbridge. The property was purchased in 2020 but remains empty

He reached 2-8a Rutland Gate in 2023 but, unlike billionaires, he was not tempted by its overpriced postcode and extravagant scale. ‘I liked that it was near the swans in Hyde Park. I love swans, I spend hours with them. “They call me the swan whisperer,” he says. ‘

‘I could also hear the church bells ringing from the Russian Orthodox church around the corner.’ So he laid out his sleeping bag and mat, tried it on, and immediately felt at peace.

‘Sometimes I wake up at night to the sound of racing Lamborghinis. Or the clatter of horses from the Hyde Park barracks, but it’s surprisingly quiet here. Life is so complicated now that it is almost necessary to get a doctorate to breathe, but I am happy. ‘It’s so peaceful here.’

But Anders is one of the new residents of this exclusive corner of London. As wars rage and non-local regulations tighten, prices in this region have fallen nearly 25 percent since 2022; but buyers, especially the ultra-wealthy, remain thin. Three estate agents on nearby Brompton Road recently closed up shop.

Anders has only witnessed three viewings since he arrived here. ‘The representative was very nice and bought me a cappuccino, what a nice person he was,’ she notes. But so is he; Even if he’s a terrible hoarder.

But the Swede insists his ‘get together’ has a purpose: the toys are to entertain local children, the flowers (albeit mostly dead) are to brighten the mood a bit, and the bulk of the mess is to ensure there’s no room for anyone else to join him.

‘One person is good, but two can turn this place into Calais,’ he says, referring to migrant camps. ‘And nobody wants that.’

He’s had a few very wet nights over the years when the umbrella over his bed wasn’t aligned correctly and there was only one official complaint, after which two police officers came and asked him to tidy up a bit.

‘It’s like being asked to clean a teenager’s room! They were lovely and I would make them a cup of tea but I don’t have electricity.’ Even if the freeze on Ding’s assets is lifted, no one expects a good sale; Definitely not close to the record.

The £275 million paid by billionaire Suneil Setiya for Providence House this month was made possible by the massive pile in Chelsea owned by Reform treasurer Nick Candy and his ex-wife Holly Valance.

Chinese property tycoon Hui Ka Yan, who is said to have amassed a fortune of around £30bn, owns the Rutland Gate property.

It also doesn’t help that experts say the math doesn’t work to divide it into circles or that it’s been completely stripped of its insides. Gone are all the fancy fixtures and fittings, including solid gold faucets, sinks and 27 gold-plated waste bins and tissue bins sold by the Saudi prince’s family in a 1,189-lot auction in 2015.

‘I took a look around and she was completely naked. Unemployed. Even fireplaces!’ says Melville Haggard of the residents association.

This means a four- to six-year renovation project will be required, and according to Trevor Abrahmsohn, today’s high-end customer has no interest in that. ‘They want perfection. They want instant gratification. So if they get a price in the £120m to £140m range, I would hope they would accept it.’

If it is eventually sold, Anders will of course move on. But for now, he is surprised that he was allowed to stay this long and that he received so much kindness and love. I met him, not me.

Yes, his nature is messy and unconventional, but he is extraordinarily warm, friendly, very clean, extremely attractive and an active part of the community. When the place is finally sold, the new owner can take a page out of his book.