British Royal Family Sitting On King’s Ransom Of Real Estate Assets
Several members of the British royal family have received in excess of £1B in income from hereditary land and real estate, according to an investigation by The Guardian.
In an extensive report on the money received by King Charles and the late Queen Elizabeth II from two land and property estates, the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, the UK newspaper established that they derived huge sums from their inherited estates.
The Crown Estate also falls under their auspices. A specific company was set up to manage the estate in 1955, three years after Queen Elizabeth ascended to the throne, and the company’s portfolio is valued at over £15.6B and includes London’s Regent Street, the parkland around Windsor Castle and a portfolio of regional retail assets. It also owns a substantial UK offshore wind generation operation.
The Royal real estate fortune has been the subject of a Bisnow podcast.
The duchies manage large tracts of farmland, hotels, historic buildings, commercial real estate, stores and some prime luxury real estate in London. They also have substantial investment portfolios, but they pay neither corporation nor capital gains tax.
In 2022, duchy income totalled £41.8M. Adjusting for inflation, the two monarchs have received the equivalent of more than £1.2B in total revenues from the two estates, The Guardian estimated.
The royal family’s claim to the duchies dates from Britain’s historic fiefdoms but MPs have periodically challenged this and called for profits to be paid to the Treasury.
Profits from the 18,481 hectares of rural land that makes up the £625M Duchy of Lancaster, primarily located in the north of England and the Midlands, automatically pass to whomever sits upon the throne.
The Duchy of Cornwall, which consists of 52,450 hectares, mostly located in the southwest of England, is valued at more than £1B. Its profits go automatically to the male heir to the throne, so when Charles became king in 2022, this passed to his son, Prince William.
While the duchies were originally mainly rural and agricultural land, they have diversified widely. The Duchy of Lancaster’s portfolio includes warehouses and industrial estates including in Basingstoke, Swindon and Redditch. Recent acquisitions include a business centre in Harlow, Essex, an industrial estate in Salford, and land at the Forton services on the M6 motorway in Lancashire.
The Duchy of Cornwall also owns extensive urban land holdings, including the Oval cricket ground and flats in Kennington, London and a Crowne Plaza hotel in Reading.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment on The Guardian’s income estimates, which it described as “speculative”.
