Prince William plans to sell off a ‘fifth’ of the Duchy of Cornwall’s real estate holdings

Back when King Charles was the Prince of Wales, he tried to prepare for his kingship by leaking details of various financial crimes and improprieties in which he was involved. Those stories were dutifully reported but mostly ignored and forgotten in a matter of months. As I said at the time, Charles was lucky that his biggest issues post-Diana were dry, financial improprieties and mismanagement. Well, the current PoW, Prince William, seems to be mimicking his father’s final years as PoW. William has been trying to release financial information at an increasingly steady clip, while simultaneously announcing some very odd moves. William is the caretaker of the Duchy of Cornwall, a real estate empire which provides his family with a $25 million annual income. A few months ago, the duchy sold off a significant parcel of farm land for seemingly no reason. It was odd. As it turns out, that was probably a test case for some larger moves from William and the duchy. According to the duchy’s chief executive, they’re going to liquidate about a fifth of duchy-held real estate. Hm.

Prince William will sell off a fifth of the Duchy of Cornwall in the next ten years as he plans to invest £500 million in tackling the housing and nature crises, The Times can reveal. The Duke of Cornwall will consolidate his holdings around five geographic “heartlands”, focusing on the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, Dartmoor, the Bath area and Kennington, south London, where he feels he can make the biggest social and environmental impact.

Will Bax, chief executive of the duchy, said the next decade would be an era of change after William decided the duchy “shouldn’t just exist to own land. It should first and foremost exist to have a positive impact on the world.” The majority of William’s private income comes from the more than £20 million a year in profit he receives from his 54,000 hectare private estate, called the Duchy of Cornwall. The £1.1 billion holding, spread across 21 counties, has been bestowed on every heir to the throne since the 14th century.

Bax, who became chief executive of the duchy in 2024, said that William had given him a mandate to tackle climate change, nature decline and the housing crisis on the estate, as well as driving economic growth in struggling communities and increasing renewable energy development.

“If we don’t see an opportunity for positive impact, then perhaps we don’t need to be a part of that place,” Bax said of the plan to sell off about 20 per cent of the duchy estate. “But where there is social need and where there is environmental challenge and where there is an opportunity to enable change, then we’ll be a great partner in working with people to achieve that.”

Bax said William planned to invest £500 million, made up from land sales, development income, partnerships and borrowing, into his priorities over the next decade. This includes pumping about £160 million into housing solutions, such as building much-needed affordable homes in the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall and Kennington. Through a portfolio of land owned on “urban fringe locations” the duchy also hopes to “unlock about 10,000 to 12,000 homes between now and 2040”, Bax said. They will underwrite about £120 million pounds of reinvestment into workplaces and places “that will create economy”, such as doubling the size of the industrial park on St Mary’s, the largest of the Scilly isles, and finding ways of enabling entrepreneurship on Dartmoor to give young people an economic future in the national park.

Bax defended the duchy from accusations it has behaved “overly commercial” in its dealings with tenants in the past. “I don’t think that was true,” he said.

Under the Duchy of Cornwall Management Acts, the Treasury must seek to ensure that the estate’s capital is protected for future generations, by ensuring property and investment transactions deliver a longer term commercial return. After an investigation by The Sunday Times and the Channel 4 Dispatches programme into the royal finances in 2024, the Duchy of Cornwall stopped imposing rents on lifeboat stations, the fire service, village halls and school playing fields.

Grassroots community groups now occupy their premises rent free and there is a “tiered system for charities and other non-for-profits, which was designed to acknowledge those that were directly involved on the ground in our communities to deliver great outcomes”, he said.

[From The Times]

The one nice thing I’ll say is that the UK, like the US, has an affordable-housing crisis and people need to get more involved in problem-solving the crisis. It’s especially bad in London and London’s suburbs, so if William is actually trying to tackle that crisis by making affordable housing in those areas, good for him. But… this reeks of William’s typical M.O. of overpromising and underdelivering. One day, he’s a keen environmentalist and the savior of homeless people and the next day, he’s flying his private helicopter back and forth between his eight forever homes. This current scheme sounds much more complicated than Bax implies, not least of which is because William seems to think that he can do this with little to no oversight on the duchy. What would be revealed if there’s a full audit the duchy’s finances, you know? Parliament is probably going to have a lot to say about William’s high-handed scheme.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.