Last year, the Prince and Princess of Wales moved into Forest Lodge, their billionth “forever home,” which is a large mansion on the Windsor estate. Will and Kate paid for extensive renovations and they decorated the place using royal-owned homeware. Bizarrely, they purposefully chose a place which needed extensive security upgrades, including shutting down 150 acres of public parkland, closing down a well-trafficked entrance to Windsor Great Park and causing chaos for peasants who simply wanted to buy Christmas trees. People in the Windsor area pay a small annual fee to access the park and they were absolutely furious with Will and Kate’s asinine land-grab. And don’t even get me started on the Waleses evicting long-time residents of cottages close to Forest Lodge. Well, for some reason, William and Kate want to remind people of their terrible behavior. What’s funny is that W&K probably think the reaction to this news will be “thank god they’re paying their fair share in rent!”
The Prince of Wales is paying £307,500 a year to rent his family home of Forest Lodge in Windsor, The Times can reveal. Official documents registered this week show that the Waleses are now the official owners of the lease on the grade II listed mansion, paying nearly £100,000 more than the previous tenants.
While William and Kate signed a 20-year lease on Forest Lodge in July last year, the rent was until now unknown. However, in registering the official documents for their home, it is understood that the prince and princess have agreed to make the figure public. It comes after The Times revealed that William’s uncle, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, had only been paying a peppercorn rent on his home at Royal Lodge for two decades after a £8 million payment for refurbishment.
Documents filed at the Land Registry on Thursday show that the Prince and Princess of Wales are both listed as the proprietors of the lease on Forest Lodge in Windsor Great Park. The rental agreement covers the main mansion plus two cottages within the grounds, which are used for staff.
Paperwork shows that Forest Lodge was previously let for £216,000-a-year to Alexander Fitzgibbons, chair of the party planning business Fait Accompli that organised the wedding receptions for both the Prince and Princess of Wales in 2011 and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018.
Fitzgibbons and Cristina Stenbeck, a Swedish businesswoman, signed a joint tenancy deal in 2019 but six years later the property was let to the Waleses after rates were raised by nearly 50 per cent.
The new figure is understood to have been reached after three separate valuations carried out into market rates by Hamptons and Savills acting for the Crown Estate and Knight Frank acting for the Waleses. Having described it as their “forever home”, it is understood that the Waleses hope to extend the lease when it expires.
William’s rent is paid from the private income he receives after tax from the profits of the Duchy of Cornwall estate. While he does not officially release the amount of tax he pays on his income, Kensington Palace has said that he pays the highest rate. A recent investigation by The Sunday Times revealed that this figure was likely to be between £5 million and £7 million a year.
This story is a lot like the story about William’s taxes. Someone has convinced William that his obsessive secrecy is bad for business, so this is William being dragged kicking and screaming into some kind of financial transparency. Either that, or someone convinced William that it will be good for his image if people know that he pays a “fair” rent. Give him an award for paying more than the previous tenants, amirite?? The thing is, all of those valuations of Forest Lodge were done before Will and Kate hijacked 150 acres of public parkland just so they could have an “uninterrupted view.” The acreage wasn’t factored into the rental agreement. The Waleses evicting cottage-residents wasn’t factored into the rental agreement. All of the taxpayer-funded “security upgrades” were not factored into the rental agreement. All William is doing is reminding people that he and his wife planted themselves in the middle of a public park, banned the peasants from getting too close, and are now hiding away in their makeshift country estate instead of working. I find it especially crazy because… there were tons of available royal residences which would not have involved all of this.
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace’s social media, screencaps courtesy of AppleTV+.
The owner of The Times, Rupert Murdoch, is still doing PR clean up for WanK after secretly settling WanK’s phone hacking claim against another of his newspapers. I don’t believe this rental figure for a minute. W suddenly opening up some of his financial dealings is completely unbelievable.
Big F**king Deal!! He pays what he should for Forest Lodge but he should be paying more for the acreage that he commandeered!! Look over here not over there seems to be what they are going for with this but people really want to know what this taxpayer funded jerk pays in taxes!!
Exactly. Rent on 150 acres of prime parkland would easily be seven figures.
I can’t be bothered to look up how many taxpayer millions Peg collected from the uninhabitable prison still rented from his duchy. But I’m sure it more than covers his forever home rental.
“Even so, the Ministry of Justice has been paying the Duchy £1.5 million a year in rent since December 2023. Over the past 20 months, this has yielded at least £2.5 million in income for William.”
Easily pays the rent. I must admit that I was shocked. And people say he doesn’ t take tax payers money.
I’m guessing William found out he was bilking the government and charities from the newspapers since a change in leadership at the duchy occurred soon after. I hope they did an intensive forensic audit to make sure they cleaned up all the shady deals.
Except I think the duchy still is collecting those rents etc.
oh wait I looked it up and I stand corrected. They stopped charging rents on a lot of those government entities (but not all.)
Um no. I remember this because it was a reaction to his slumlord exposé, although a very belated one as you can expect from his amateur PR team. So the announced they would stop charging the most outrageous items, like councils paying rent for playgrounds and lifeboat docks (!). They were relatively small sums, but I guess there are many of them so it adds up. No mention of the charges to NHS and military facilities, seabed usage or the infamous prison rental.
Yeah right. The UK taxpayers pay
The scooter pic never fails to brighten my mood. 😂
Actually, when you do the math and factor in the up from payments, the rent is similar in total to Andrew with Royal Lodge.
Unless I’m missing something this is covering the fact that the ‘increase’ in rent that they claim to be paying (using some of the £££ they get from charging the public sector for things like an unusable prison) is because they also took over other cottages that were privately rented out. The cottages are mentioned but there’s no explicit link. I assume it’s being treated as one bigger property now and the rent reflects that.
And yes, that’s before you get near the fact that they’ve taken so much of the park or all the taxpayer money that went straight into ‘security’.
They are awful people.
Right? 307, 500 kind of seems like a steal right? For all those private acres in Windsor Great park?
The Windsor Great Park acres part of it is a classic real estate scam. If you or I wanted to lease land there, it’s priceless (impossibly expensive). If royalty wants it, it’s priceless (free).
I remember reading that small Frogmore cottage was rented to the Sussex’s for £240,000 a year so if WanK got FL and that 150 acre land grab of park property its a ridiculously low price If this is true.
Yes, they have considerably more acreage and the use of the cottages than the previous tenant.
Yeah, I think this was released because on its face, it seems like their rent is good for the crown estate. But when you factor in the increased acreage and the extra cottages (for “staff” so I guess they can say no live in help), they’re paying less than the previous tenants. And I honestly don’t believe that they paid for the renovations themselves.
So just to recap, the property value went up 50% between 2019 and 2025 but the Wales are now locked into the 2025 rate for the next 20 years? What a steal. Who wouldn’t want no raises in their rent for 20 years?
Especially if their sovereign grant rises astronomically every year
That part pinged for me. They signed a lease in 2019 but the property was revalued in 2025, coincidentally right when Will and Kate were looking for a bigger property, to a much higher rate.
Interesting timing.
So are his other forever homes free? Doesn’t he have six other homes, three of them also labeled as forever homes?
I dont think they pay anything for KP1A. It’s never been said if they do. anmer is part of Sandringham and there is no rent for that (so if other tenants lived there, presumably there would be income from that.) No rent for the place at Balmoral.
And no rent for Adelaide either. (which is now sitting empty.)
Let’s not forget about inflation.
And what are they paying on their other properties? Or are their other multiple mansions “free” (paid by taxpayers)?
I bet the rent was raised to force the previous tenants out so that Willy and kitty could move in . And who cares if he pays rent , this rent goes right back into his pocket the way that entire system is set up
To be in the highest tax band, 45%, he would need to declare something over £125,140 a year.
There are so many reasons this figure is B*llsh*t, to use the language commonly heard on the trading floor of an investment bank such as the one where I used to work. FWIW, if you break it down, £307,500 / year works out to £25,625 / month. Which works out to £171 / acre for 150 acres, monthly. Which is laughably low. From Google, £700 / square metre is typical of Mayfair, in London. That is how I would benchmark the value of that property. You only get valuations by proxy, by comparison, on the open market, but clearly, this is not an open market. There are multiples barriers to entry, like birthright, privilege, etc. But if you want to estimate the haircut (no pun) that William is getting on this sweetheart deal, compare £700 / square metre to £171 / acre. I just asked Alexa, one acre is about 4,050 square metres. So in theory he should be paying a notional value of £692,000 / acre for a total asset value of £104,000,000 / year which simply goes to show you how ludicrous the very notion of renting these places is. The entire transaction is ludicrous. Either you live in a grace-and-favour home by virtue of membership in the line of succession, starting with the Palaces, on down to the cottages, downsizing by degrees of separation from the throne, or, you hang up your skates and join the workforce. Trying to put a pound figure on the type of assets they accumulate is silly.
I will never get over the fact that taxpayers support these lazy grifters. Never.
So the Walses moved into the ex-mansion of the Sussexes’ wedding planner? Of all the palaces the Crown Estate could provide? That’s really really funny. They are obsessed with them. Both are.
Well she was also the Wales wedding planner..
It’s an extremely high end party planner that also did Pippa Middleton’s reception and Elle Goulding; Diana also used them, and one of the principals is related to Rosa Mockton, one of Diana’s old friends. Naturally the public face of it and the guy who rented it is an “old Etonian.”
If I was wealthy person with royal connections that wanted to rent a royal property I’d have to start asking if Kate and William will ever settle or be contented lest they eye up my lease.
So is the 307 thousand pounds coming out of the sale of one-fifth of the Duchy? Because William doesn’t pay– he GETS PAID.
It’s an extremely high end party planner that also did Pippa Middleton’s reception and Elle Goulding; Diana also used them, and one of the principals is related to Rosa Mockton, one of Diana’s old friends. Naturally the public face of it and the guy who rented it is an “old Etonian.”
If I was wealthy person with royal connections that wanted to rent a royal property I’d have to start asking if Kate and William will ever settle or be contented lest they eye up my lease.
That rent is significantly lower than market rents within a 10 mile radius of Windsor. I just looked on Rightmove and there are two 7 bed houses, with swimming pool and outbuildings on 2.5 to 3.9 acres asking £420,000 a year. Considering Forest Lodge’s proximity to Windsor and the acreage that is an incredibly low annual rent.
Unbelievably cheap rent, especially considering all the additional cottages and land. And more lies about the annual taxes. If William was really paying around 7 million in taxes, he’d release it. Instead, the palace/reporters just keep repeating the lie so the public thinks it’s true.
This is the type of headline that is designed to appeal to “their” supporters, who are older and will argue until they are blue in the face that rent has NOT tripled (at a minimum) in the last 20 years and it is easy to find a 2 bedroom apartment anywhere for $600 a month. This amount would seem fair to them, but is appalling to anyone else. Fair market rent on Forest Lodge including the 150 acre land grab would approach that total sum a month, not a year. Freezing the rent for 20 years is a con of tangerine terror proportions, especially considering that the funds ends up back in the royal coffers, so ultimately they pay rent to themselves while dodging taxes and bleed the tax payers dry. UK… You are the land that gave the world Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Morse/Lewis/Endeavour, and Poirot/Miss Marple, to name just a few. Hand to gaŵd, the rest of the world finds you fascinating and tourists will visit without this family of dull parasites sucking you dry. Lucy Worsley does more to represent your culture and tourism than the wails.
As far as your links go: Tom Brady walks the runway. I’m sure they think he is a get. His outfit is gorgeous, but to me, he is not. I still have the image in my mind of a young bimbo wearing all his superbowl rings while he was married to a woman who cared about him and sacrificed for him. While he sacrificed her for his ego. I think he is a vapid himbo. This link includes images of Lindsey Lohan. Again, I am happy that she landed on her feet. I’m happy she married someone who seems to care for her and care about her.
I think the most interesting thing about this is that the report says that William and Kate gave permission for their rent to be made public. Why was it secret to begin with?