BUCKINGHAM Palace’s Summer Opening begins today, which will allow visitors to view 19 State Rooms filled with royal treasures and history.
Alongside these, Buckingham Palace hosts 775 different rooms, including 52 royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices and 78 bathrooms.
Comparison website Compare My Move has researched into how much it would actually cost to rent a room in Buckingham Palace.
To work out how much the rent would be for a room in Buckingham Palace, the first step is to look at the value of the property.
Buckingham Palace is estimated to value at £3.9bn.
The monthly rent of a property will usually be between 0.8% and 1.1% of the property value.
This means that to rent Buckingham Palace as a whole would cost somewhere between £31,200,000 and £42,900,000 a month – over half a billion pounds a year.
To work out the base price of the room rental, the total cost would need to be divided by the number of rooms, which comes out to £5,032,258.06 per room.
Using this number, Compare My Move estimated that the monthly cost to rent a room in Buckingham Palace would be between £40,258.06 and £55,354.84.
This is only the base value – aside from property value, there are many other factors that would affect the rental price of Buckingham Palace.
Location is a major factor, with transportation, shops & retail, good schools and leisure facilities being highly valued by renters looking for a property.
Any location in London is going to be expensive, with a two-bedroom flat currently worth an average of £2,400 per month.
Buckingham Palace’s location in the sought-after Westminster area would increase its value even further.
Another factor when calculating market value is the condition of the property.
Parts of Buckingham Palace date back to 1703, when the Duke of Buckingham and Normandy built Buckingham House in St James Park.
A house that is 320 years old may put some doubts into its condition, and in any other house, a Building Survey to assess the structure of the building could be needed.
However, the palace is currently having investments to make sure the property condition is up to scratch – with a £500m renovation underway to be finished by around 2027.
It is often the case that landlords may base the rent price on their own financial needs; for example if they have a mortgage on the renter’s property.
The King is estimated to earn £22.3mn a year, and this money comes from the taxpayer-funded sovereign grant.
Buckingham Palace also contains several amenities that would drive up the price: these include a cinema, post office, chapel, doctor’s office, jewellers and an indoor pool.
Taking all of these factors into account we can assume that the rent in Buckingham Palace would be on the higher end of the previously specified scale.
However, although monthly rental should be around 0.8% to 1.1%, the average rental price for the UK is around 0.43% of the average house price.
Compare My Move estimate that the rent for one room in Buckingham Palace with access to all of the amenities at around £55,000 per month for a larger room.
This calculation is mainly due to the location and sheer size of the property, although it would likely be higher due to Buckingham Palace being King Charles’s residence.
