Los Angelenos and New Yorkers Are Headed to London, Says Nest Seekers Founder

Eddie Shapiro, founder and CEO of Nest Seekers International, launched the firm in New York City more than 25 years ago, “a couple of months after 9/11, during a very complicated time in the city’s history,” he told Mansion Global. 

In the decades since, the company has grown from a Midtown office into more than 80 locations worldwide, spanning major U.S. hubs and international markets from Paris to Dubai. The firm recently opened a new London flagship, and Americans have taken note.

Shapiro, who began his real estate career in the early 1990s, spoke to Mansion Global about how buyers are reacting to recent changes in the market, how President Trump and Ellen DeGeneres help drive demand from U.S. buyers to London’s homes, what kinds of properties they’re seeking and the neighborhoods that they’re drawn to. 

Mansion Global: There has been some uncertainty and changes in the London market recently, how are buyers responding to that?

Eddie Shapiro: These big cities, they never fail. There are moments where people pause—when the taxation changed significantly in London, some of the [changes to the] non-domicile laws, that did take some people off the market. But on the flip side of it, if you look at the capital markets, that’s trillions of dollars of newly created wealth within those companies that trade in that world. 

You still have an enormous amount of wealth that’s created on the crypto market, you have wealth that’s continuing to be created in all the standard industries of the world, and these guys are becoming global citizens and acquiring properties everywhere. So the long and short of it is: For every person that leaves or moves into the sidelines and says, “this is not the right time to do it,” someone else comes in and says, “now is my time to buy.”

What’s on the horizon in the London market?

Our year in London, this past year, was significantly better than ’24 and ’23 and we remain optimistic and excited to enter ’26 with wind in our sails and some great opportunities.  

We’ll continue to see further investment coming from the Middle East; you’ve got a local, affluent London-based community that continues to live their lives—either upgrade or downgrade, get married, get divorced, all the standard reasons why people buy and sell—and I think we’re going to continue to see more U.S. interest coming in.

I’d love to hear more specifically about what attracts those U.S. buyers to London.

The media matters. Within months after [CNN show] “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” we had a buyer that wasn’t even thinking about Italy who ended up buying a house in Lake Como for $10 million because of the show. So that definitely helps start trends. Then if you have a few high-profile buyers, they complement that. 

You’ve had a lot of high-profile people buying in London recently, Americans. And there’s been a lot of talk, and that’s motivating others to say, ‘wait a minute, why not London?’ 

Right now, about 30% of recent inquiries for us have come from the U.S.

A lot of it started with politics. “We’re leaving New York because Trump is back in,” or “we’re leaving the U.S. because Trump is back in power.”

Some of them came back, some of them now have multiple homes because they can, but they got others to think about it. So if Ellen DeGeneres bought a place there, then others are saying, “she’s done very well with her real estate portfolio, maybe we should follow.”

There’s all sorts of things that drive it.

Are people actually coming to you and saying “oh, Trump’s in,” or “Ellen bought in the Cotswolds”?  

What they do is they help tip it over the line.

So they were already thinking about it and now this is a great excuse to just say, “you know what, now is the time, let’s do it.” Or “we’ve been thinking about it for years,” or “we had plans of going and living in Europe for a while and we always imagined ourselves doing this. And you know what? Now we have a good excuse to go do that.”

When they arrive in the U.K., what kind of properties are these U.S. buyers looking for? My theory is that Americans prefer something with some quintessential British charm, would that be an accurate portrayal?

I think it’s hard to pigeonhole. There are plenty that appreciate the beauty, the architecture and the cultural fabric of the city and come in want this charming London, but others, they walk in and they’ll see some of these properties and say, “Well, this is going to need another seven-figure renovation to bring it to my standards,” and they might settle for something modern. 

It’s hard to bundle everyone into one type of property or another, it’s a mix, it depends what your price point is. 

And how about what neighborhoods they look at?

If you’re in fashion and in the arts and in some kind of a creative industry, East London could feel cool. The Williamsburg of London, Shoreditch, you get a lot more bang for your buck over there. 

And then if people have come from the Upper East Side, or from Connecticut, or from Beverly Hills, they want a beautiful townhome in St. James, or maybe Chelsea or something like that.

Some want to be next to the American Embassy and Battersea over there. Those are great neighborhoods. If you have kids, the parks and the grounds are very unique. And there’s a sense of security around the embassy that maybe you don’t get in other neighborhoods, there’s a whole group of people who are attracted to that. 

So it fluctuates really all over the place. 

What are the main markets where these relocating Americans are coming from?  

A lot of Californians. When you think about the entertainment industries, so much of it is U.K. and so much of it is L.A. So there’s a kind of connection there between those two worlds.

And it’s the affluent cities, that’s usually where you’d have the global citizens that move around and have the luxury to live in different countries. So some come from South Florida, more from New York, more from California. Those are the main inquiries.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.