THE owner of Britain’s highest-profile estate agency has bought himself a seven-storey home on billionaires’ row. Jonathan Hunt, who founded Foxtons in 1981 in a former pasta restaurant in Notting Hill, west London, has spent more than £14m on an 1840s mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens.

Hunt, the richest agent in the country, is known to his rivals as the hardman of the London property scene. The 52-year-old’s fortune now stands at £347m, according to The Sunday Times Rich List, and his company has admitted using dirty tricks in the past in its drive for business.

Land Registry documents show that for £14,073,287, Hunt and his wife Lois, 50, are the owners of 10 Kensington Palace Gardens on a 125-year lease from the Crown Estate. There is a mortgage registered on the property to Schroders, the bank.

The couple list their address as 10 Kensington Palace Gardens on the documents, suggesting the house is for their personal use rather than for resale.

A lavish revamp is planned for the grade II listed mansion — including a cavernous underground sports complex — costing further millions.

Neighbours include Lakshmi Mittal, the steel tycoon, who last year spent £57m on numbers 18 and 19, a property which consists of two former embassies knocked together.

Hunt’s Italian-style stucco-fronted mansion has eight bedrooms. Plans lodged at Kensington and Chelsea town hall show the mansion will soon boast a vast swimming pool to be constructed under the lawn. A “movable floor” will glide into place above the pool to create a tennis court.

Hunt started out as a negotiator at the age of 17 straight from school in Surrey’s stockbroker belt. At Foxtons he shook up the estate agents’ trade by opening later and at weekends.

He encouraged his agents, who are supplied with Mini Cooper cars painted in racing style, to adopt the company mantra: “Our clients expect us to go to war for them!” Foxtons also has offices in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• UK regional accents thrive against the odds
• ‘Scarecrow’ wind farms put rare birds to flight
• What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth