The differences go beyond that, but as long as you acknowledge it’s not exactly the same there’s room for discussion.
My primary residence is on the edge of a plutocratic neighbourhood. I know people with $100-million+ in net worth living here and in other places for whom these kinds of additions (down, up, or sideways) make no sense from the point of view of adding value, of enjoying and regularly using the amenities (adding room for a disco is not just trying to “increase the size of living space”), or of enhancing the neighbourhood.
There are currently foreign buyers who are pushing things in this neighbourhood the same way the Russian oligarchs are in London (here mostly teardowns replaced by outsized monstrosities), but the longtime residents (UHNWIs and HNWIs who themselves have tennis courts and large swimming pools and outdoors sculptures on their properties) do not look kindly on them or the garish eyesores they’re building.
For example, I know one older couple who reluctantly cashed out of their home when some shady character from Central Asia bought the lot next door, did a teardown of a perfectly lovely home that was in line with the character of the neighbourhood, and put up the sort of oversized mini-palace that only the likes of Il Douche would consider “elegant” and “classy.” I’m sure that some residents of these London neighbourhoods are doing the same thing rather than put up with the consequences, present and potential, of all these basement projects and the kind of people who build them.
I’ll agree there. What makes this situation abnormal and the displays of conspicuous consumption so gross is the fact that only plutocrats can afford to buy houses there. If they were just inconveniencing other plutocrats no-one would be complaining, but the long-time residents of these neighbourhoods and those people who’ve been priced out of the city as a whole are understandably not happy about being put in these situations so someone can have a car elevator.
The articles describe the basement amenities as little more thanan arms race between oligarchs. It’s intramural scorekeeping using money there. Americans in roomier areas tend to make it an extramural display. Either way having an in-home disco or the apparent extra room for it is not adding any real value to anyone’s lives.
Who’s pretending? I’m saying they’re bypassing the spirit of the zoning laws. I won’t hold my breath for the municipal authorities in London to do anything that would upset foreign or domestic oligarchs, though.
