George Lucas Gives London Luxury Market a New Hope

George Lucas finds your lack of faith in the London luxury housing market disturbing.

The creator of iconic franchises such as “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” purchased a home in northwest London for roughly $52.3 million, Bloomberg reported. Details of the property sale in September are not public, but the seller was a senior lawyer in the area.

The deal was one of the most expensive for a residential property in the United Kingdom capital this year. It also represented a beacon of hope for a market that’s seen better years.

In September, the number of deals for at least £5 million declined 41 percent year over year, according to LonRes. Stamp duty hikes and the elimination of preferential tax status for the uber-wealthy foreigners are sparking the slump.

That’s not to say there aren’t luxury deals unfolding in the city. Silicon Valley investor Matt Cohler bought a home in Notting Hill for £22 million at the end of April. A member of the multibillionaire family behind Thomson Reuters bought a London apartment for approximately £25 million this year. Nigerian banker Roosevelt Ogbonna recently bought a £15 million mansion in Hampstead.

And fashion designer Tom Ford bought an £80 million mansion last summer.

Lucas can certainly afford to take the plunge. He sold LucasFilm to Disney back in 2012 for a whopping $4.1 billion, handing the reins of the Star Wars universe to another proprietor. He’s worth about $6.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index.

He also has a unique eye for real estate.

Last April, it was reported that Lucas and his wife were combining two of their luxury condos in Streeterville’s Park Tower to form a 16,000-square-foot duplex penthouse in Chicago. They purchased their 8,000-square-foot unit on the 66th floor for $11.2 million in January 2023, the priciest condo sale of that year in Chicago. They paid $18.75 million for their 65th-floor unit in 2015.

The couple’s condo combination will cost $33.5 million to assemble, including construction costs, which will make it the most expensive finished condo in Chicago history.

— Holden Walter-Warner