Michael Macfarlane often meets ultra high net worth families in their homes, where a house in Mayfair, in Belgravia or on The Peak in Hong Kong can double as a base of power. In a Wealth Office X conversation, he put that observation to two London agents, Gary Hersham and Irina Gamagina, asking whether property at this level is mainly about status, influence or privacy. Their answers point somewhere more domestic.

Comfort and privacy over display

Gamagina says that what she still sees most is a concern for family comfort. Clients want the right number of bedrooms, the right amount of space, a garden, a drive-through where needed and car parking. In her view the home remains, for most buyers, a place for comfortable daily living.

Hersham agrees, while drawing a distinction between families who have been wealthy for many generations and newer buyers. Most buyers, he says, behave like anyone else at home. They look after their children, hang their art and treat the house as sacrosanct. Meetings may happen at home, but in a particular part of the house. He believes people whose wealth was made some time ago care mainly about their privacy and their family environment. A recently enriched buyer may begin with some ostentation, he suggests, but that fades, and many become almost reclusive.

The family as decision-maker

Macfarlane raises a broader shift in the world. For the first time, he says, a majority of wealth is set to be held by women. He asks who drives the decision in a couple. Gamagina's first answer is that the decision rests on the wife being happy, and on the family and the comfort of the children. Hersham's view is that the decision belongs to the family as a group. He recalls showing a very expensive house a few months earlier to a buyer who attended both viewings with his wife and children. Families operate like families, he says, whether they are very rich or not, and he does not believe buyers now make unilateral decisions.

Gamagina develops the point through schooling. She describes families at her daughter's school moving just outside London because their children need more space and the parents do not want to drive them to sports practice at weekends. In her account the house is chosen around that family decision. A better answer to Macfarlane's question, she suggests, is that the decision lies in the hands of the family.

A different taste among younger buyers

Age matters as much as gender. Macfarlane recalls a Wealth Office episode with the gallerist Pearl Lam, who described young people in the West inheriting art collections and selling them because they were more interested in experience than in physical things. Gamagina sees a related change in property. There are more millionaires and billionaires every year, she notes, and many younger buyers want new, practical homes. She cites a young tech couple who bought a penthouse at Park Modern, with a spa, a gym, high ceilings and views over the park.

They didn't buy a piece of history. They wanted triple ceiling height, park views.

— Irina Gamagina, Wealth Office

The historical element, she says, is no longer such a priority. Hersham observes a parallel change in scale. Over the past decade or so, he says, buyers in London have increasingly looked for size, adding basements and other space that an owner would not have considered before. He points to the Rutland Gate sale, a house of some 60,000 square feet, as evidence of how much size had come to matter.

Where families choose to live

The same family logic shapes geography. Gamagina says her clients rarely have a single residence, and often have houses in three or four countries. Asked what new Asian buyers want from London, Hersham's answer centres on educating their children in the United Kingdom and enjoying the benefits of the UK and Europe. These buyers, he says, still live much as they did at home, with family and close friends around them. He has watched Chinese buyers move from small flats to very large houses.

Beyond London, Hersham describes Madrid as one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe, with a fantastic climate and a comfortable way of life, and points to Milan, which he links to Italy's arrangement allowing a fixed annual tax payment. Gamagina describes young entrepreneurs moving to Zurich for its safety, its tax position and a life of skiing in winter and the lake in summer, and clients settling in Barcelona and Miami.

Asked what a family should consider before its next purchase, Gamagina starts with questions about children, schools, boarding and lifestyle before any address is discussed. Hersham speaks of the satisfaction of finding the right home for a family. Taken together, their accounts suggest that at this level a property decision is a decision about how and where a family will live.