Real Estate Industry News

The London home Mark Carney rented while serving as the Bank of England’s governor has hit the market for $6.9 million.

Carney and his family moved into the 8-bedroom South Hampstead house 5 years ago and reportedly rented it for $4,450 per week. The banking “rockstar” was paid about $1.115 million a year in wages and allowances for the Bank of England governor post, which he held for just under 7 years from July 1, 2013 to March 15, 2020. 

Canadian-born Carney, who has since been appointed United Nations United Nations’ special envoy for climate action and finance, was replaced as Bank of England governor by Andrew Bailey on March 16. Carney and his wife Diana Fox-Carney, a British economist, and their four daughters, reportedly moved back to Canada this month.

Carney’s decision to rent in understated South Hampstead and not ritzier spots such as Hampstead proper, Chelsea or Knightsbridge was widely praised at the time. It was also noted that he opted to commute to his office in the City of London’s Threadneedle Street by the Tube rather a chauffeur-driven car.

The Victorian semi-detached house, which has an elegant redbrick front, well-proportioned, high-ceilinged rooms, period features, a wine cellar, and an 80ft rear garden, lies on Compayne Gardens in the northwest London neighborhood of South Hampstead, about 1.5 miles north of Regent’s Park.

The 6,000-square-foot four-story house has four bathrooms, a master bedroom suite with a study spread over two floors, a double reception room that spans the entire depth of the house, a large kitchen open to a family room with a sunroom overlooking the garden, a first-floor balcony, and a separate staff/guest studio with kitchenette, according to the sales details.

Mark Pollack, co-founder of Aston Chase, the agency handling the sale, says that the house, priced at just $1,174 per square foot, represents exceptionally good value-for-money as in neighboring Hampstead and St John’s Wood comparable properties routinely sell for anything from $1,587 per square foot (unmodernized) up to $3,809 per square foot.”

Carney and his family relocated to London in 2013 from the Rockcliff Park neighborhood in Canada’s Ottawa, according to researchers at Aston Chase. Carney, who is 55, started out as a banker at Goldman Sachs GS and later he served as the Bank of Canada’s governor from 2008 to 2013. He is currently writing a new book “Value(s): Building a Better World For All”, which looks at ways to build a more inclusive society in a post-Covid-19 world.

Designed by architect Norman Shaw in arts and crafts style in 1886, the redbrick property–which went on sale this month–lies on a tree-lined street in the South Hampstead conservation area and is a 5-minute walk from West Hampstead Overground station and West Hampstead and Finchley Road Tube stations. Nearby Finchley Road, meanwhile, has a large range of shops.