While Andrew loses property after property, his daughters are quietly holding on to some of the most coveted addresses in London — courtesy of a deal their father is reported to have struck on their behalf before his world fell apart.
Beatrice has an apartment at St James’s Palace. Eugenie has Ivy Cottage, a three-bedroom home tucked within the grounds of Kensington Palace. Both serve as London bases for princesses who spend most of their time elsewhere.
The arrangement is a private one between the York family and the King, with an undisclosed rent paid by the princesses that is understood to flow back into the sovereign grant funding the working royal family.
The source of the deal is understood to be Andrew himself. “The deal was made with their father as he wanted them to have a foothold in the royal palaces,” a source said.
What the market says
Whatever the princesses are paying, it is almost certainly well short of what the open market would demand. When Andrew was footing the bill, he paid £1,600 a month for a four-bedroom St James’s Palace apartment, according to a Times report — a sum that property professionals in the area regarded as a fraction of its true value.
The numbers have only grown since. A two-bedroom flat in the vicinity of St James’s Palace was recently reportedly listed at £19,000 a month. Kensington homes of comparable size are valued at anywhere between £4,000 and £15,000 monthly. Whether Beatrice and Eugenie now carry those costs themselves, or benefit from some other arrangement, remains unclear.
The gap between his daughters’ situation and his own is now vast. The King’s accession in 2022 cost Andrew his Buckingham Palace office. The deepening scandal around his ties to Jeffrey Epstein cost him the lease on Royal Lodge — the grand Crown Estate property he had called home for two decades at a peppercorn rent — until the Epxress reported he was finally forced out in October.
The Crown Estate confirmed earlier this month that he had also relinquished the lease on East Lodge, a property near his former Sunninghill Park estate that had housed members of his staff.
He is now confined to Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate, waiting for work to finish on Marsh Farm — a considerably more modest property on a flood plain that will be his next home.
The princesses’ lives
Beatrice, 37, spends most of her time at the £3 million Oxfordshire home she shares with husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, their daughters Sienna, four, and Athena, one, and Edoardo’s son from a previous relationship, Wolfie, nine.
Eugenie, 35, is based in Portugal with husband Jack Brooksbank and their boys August, five, and Ernest, two.
Despite everything, Andrew sits eighth in line to the throne — a quirk of succession that places all four of his grandchildren ahead of both the Duke of Edinburgh and the Princess Royal, though none hold titles or carry out any royal duties.
