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Guy Ritchie rues state of London property market

Wednesday, 23 April 2008 1:10 PM

Film director Guy Ritchie has blamed the present malady in the London property market on the world's super-rich.

Mr Ritchie has identified "new money" coming into the UK as the prime cause of local inhabitants being forced from the property ladder, and argues it is now almost impossible to buy a house in central London without £10 million.

"There hasn't been a property correction here for 20 years," Mr Ritchie said in an interview with Empire film magazine.

"House prices don't go down, they just go up. And the natives of England are sort of being left behind, because the big money came in and if it wanted something, it bought it and it made a bigger fortune by doing so.

"And as anyone who has tried to buy a house in central London knows... it's almost impossible to do so unless you've got ten million quid."

Mr Ritchie was moved to make the comments following discoveries during the production of his new film RocknRolla.

"The idea of RocknRolla was really inspired by reading so many articles about how much London has changed over the last 20 years and how London is being touted as the new New York, to a degree," he explained to Empire.

"It has changed, culturally, so much, and there's so much money here now that it seemed like there was a film to be made about that, because of all the new money that has come into the UK, particularly with the Russian oligarchs."

Guy Ritchie - who is married to pop queen Madonna - should have no such problems, however, having recently purchased £9 million country pile Ashcombe House, on the Dorset-Wiltshire border.

The film is scheduled for release later this year, as Mr Ritchie tries to woo back critics after his most recent release - described as "tedious, humourless, pretentious and nasty" - bombed.

Chris O'Toole

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