“M
adame,” Marcel Proust wrote to his noisy upstairs neighbour in the summer of 1915, “I had ordered these flowers for you and I am in despair that they are coming on a day when… I feel so ill that I would like to ask you for silence… causing them to lose all their fragrance… and bristle with nasty thorns.”
For many of us the ills of close-quartered London living are just as prosaic as they were for the French writer over a century ago, delicately navigating the upstairs harpist’s playing and her dentist husband’s drill, as he flattered them into a peace that would let him finish In Search of Lost Time, his masterpiece.
However, a new trend might hold the answer, for the uber-wealthy at least. Prime and super-prime real estate agents — broadly defined as those selling properties over £5 million and £10 million respectively — are seeing a rise in high and ultra-high-net-worth individuals negotiating the right to “try before you buy” — renting a luxury home before taking the purchasing plunge.
Francesca Fox, the director of lettings at Sotheby’s International Realty, says the trend started last year but has accelerated “like wildfire” in 2025, driven mainly by international clients looking to relocate to London but increasingly concerned by high property purchase costs in the UK, potential changes to the non-dom rules, international wars and the whims of their own governments’ attitudes to taxation and business. With such slings and arrows, it makes sense to keep their roots shallow, for now.
