Buy to leave: the departing non-doms who are keeping their London houses empty
Non-doms leaving the UK are not selling their London properties. They are holding them vacant, managing tax residency around the 90-day threshold.
The assumption was that departing non-doms would sell their London homes on the way out. Some have. But a growing number are doing something else: keeping the house, leaving it empty, and managing their visits to stay below the 90-day UK residency threshold.
The property industry has started calling it “buy to leave.” The term is new. The behaviour is spreading.
The numbers
Research from Beauchamp Estates, published in summer 2025, found that 70 per cent of sellers of properties worth £15 million or more in London were non-doms. The most common destinations were Dubai, Milan, and Monaco.
But the sell-side is only half the picture. Alex Michelin, CEO of the development firm Valouran, has described a pattern in which departing families retain their London properties as long-term holds. They do not rent them out, because rental income creates a UK tax liability. They do not sell, because they like the asset and expect London to recover. They simply leave the house empty and visit for short stretches each year.
The 90-day threshold is the line. Spending fewer than 90 days in the UK in a tax year, combined with having no UK employment, generally keeps an individual outside the UK tax net. A well-located empty house makes that easier to manage than a hotel.
The departures
Henley & Partners projected that 16,500 millionaires would leave the UK in 2025. Companies House filings showed a 75 per cent increase in director departures in April 2025 compared to April 2024. Between the October Budget and July 2025, 3,790 company directors left the UK, a 40 per cent year-on-year increase.
HMRC will not have official data until January 2027, when self-assessment returns for 2025/26 are filed. Until then, the evidence is directional but consistent: people are leaving, and they are not coming back in a hurry.
What it does to the market
Empty houses depress neighbourhoods. They reduce the sense of community in residential streets. They also, paradoxically, support prices by keeping supply off the market. If a departing non-dom holds rather than sells, the property is not available to a buyer. Supply stays tight, prices stay high, and the market becomes even less affordable for residents who actually live there.
Simon Chadowitz, a partner at Fladgate, has noted that some clients are structuring their departures around the buy-to-leave model precisely because they expect the political environment to shift again. If a future government reverses the FIG regime or introduces more favourable terms, they want to be able to return without having sold the house.
The planning lesson
For families making cross-border residency decisions, the property question is often treated as secondary to the tax question. It shouldn’t be. A house in the wrong jurisdiction, rented or occupied at the wrong time, can undermine the entire residency position. Conversely, a house held in the right way can preserve optionality.
The buy-to-leave trend is, at its core, an optionality play. It costs money to leave a house empty. But for families with significant assets, the cost of maintaining an empty property is trivial compared to the tax exposure of getting the residency calculation wrong.
