The Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson has taken a £400,000 blow to her townhouse – after buying it for £4.2million.
Land Registry transfer documents reveal she sold her Belgravia home in August for 10 per cent less at £3.85million, despite having only bought it three years ago.
The duchess had been renting out the two-bedroom property to a private tenant for an estimated £4,000 a week in recent months.
She previously claimed the house was bought as an ‘investment’ for her daughters and it ‘seemed like a good time to sell it’.
Sarah, 65, bought the property in June 2022 in her own name, but her daughters Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie were also listed on Land Registry paperwork.
A spokesman told the Times last week that she ‘wasn’t looking to sell it’ but she ‘was asked by the tenant to buy it and it seemed like a good time to sell.’
‘It’s an investment property for her girls, and so the monies will be reinvested accordingly,’ they added.
However as the £400,000 loss has come to light, sources close to the Palace have suggested the funds from the sale will be used to help keep her and Prince Andrew in residence at Royal Lodge in Windsor.
The home was previously owned by Sebastian Macdonald-Hall, the party-loving DJ son of property magnate Caspar Macdonald-Hall with a family fortune of £950million.
Sarah and her ex-husband Prince Andrew still live together in Windsor at the 30-room Royal Lodge, a 19th-century Grade II-listed mansion with 90 acres of land.
The Windsor property has a £400,000-a-year bill needed for its upkeep – and Andrew’s brother King Charles III is said to have been trying to get them to move out.
News of the sale comes after several charities severed ties with Sarah after it emerged she apologised to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein in April 2011 and called him a ‘supreme friend’ in an email after publicly disowning him in the media.
She told him: ‘I know you feel hellaciously let down by me from what you were either told or read, and I must humbly apologise to you and your heart for that. You have always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family.
‘As you know, I did not, absolutely not, say the ‘P-word’ [paedophile] about you but understand it was reported that I did.’
Among the organisations to end their relationship with Sarah after the email came to light was the Teenage Cancer Trust, which dropped her as patron after 35 years.
Similar announcements came from Wiltshire and Dorset-based children’s hospice Julia’s House, Prevent Breast Cancer, The Natasha Allergy Research Foundation and the National Foundation for Retired Service Animals.
The British Heart Foundation also said Sarah was no longer a serving ambassador for the charity. Julia’s House said it would be ‘inappropriate for her to continue as a patron of the charity’ – citing her correspondence with Epstein as a deciding factor.
Sarah sent the apology email to Epstein after he threatened to ‘destroy’ her family in a ‘chilling call’, it was claimed.
The Duchess sent the message in April 2011, describing Epstein as a ‘supreme friend’, after publicly disowning him in the media.
James Henderson, the Duchess’s spokesperson at the time, said the email was sent after a ‘really menacing and nasty’ phone call from the sex offender who had a ‘Hannibal Lecter-type voice’.
The duchess was approached for comment.
