Hans

Hans is the kind of place where the shopfronts do the talking: designer flagships, hotel entrances with doormen, and townhouses that have never needed a lick of paint to look expensive. You won't find a high street of caffs and bookmakers here — you'll find the sort of retail that exists to serve people who already have everything, and the streets are quiet in the particular way that very expensive streets are quiet, even with over eight thousand people packed into each square kilometre.

The practical picture is unusual, and worth sitting with. Knightsbridge and Sloane Square Underground stations put you in the centre of London within minutes, so the commute is about as good as London gets. Schools follow the same pattern skewed toward independents — Hill House, Knightsbridge School, Sussex House, Garden House — the kind of names that fee-paying families relocate for, alongside St Joseph's Catholic Primary, which carries an Outstanding rating for those who want the state route. But the household composition here isn't the young family with a mortgage; the median age sits around 42, and a place like this tends to attract people well past the first-time-buyer stage, or those buying a pied-à-terre rather than a forever home. Housing itself is dominated by leasehold flats, with terraced houses trading at prices — a local median near £3.6 million — that make the phrase "For Sale board" feel almost comic. Freeholds exist but they're the minority; you're buying into a building and a management company as much as a home. The affordability grade here is a flat D, and it's not hard to see why: the median house price is nearly seven times the London borough average for Kensington and Chelsea itself, which is itself one of the most expensive boroughs in the country.