Sarah Ferguson lost £400,000 on the sale of her Belgravia townhouse despite claiming “it was a good time” to do so.
The Duchess of York, 65, sold the property in August for £3.85 million, Land Registry paperwork reveals.
That is around 10 per cent less than what she paid for it three years ago, according to The Times newspaper.
Sarah said she “wasn’t looking to sell” the property in central London, which she originally bought as an investment for her daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.
Camilla Dell, founder of boutique agency Black Brick, said the duchess was “lucky that she’s sold it for as much as she did”.
“The market is not good,” Ms Dell said. “The market in prime central London is down 4.7 per cent this year and 24 per cent since the peak of the market in 2014.”
A spokesman for the duchess said: “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.”
Sarah purchased the house for £4.25 million in 2022 from Sebastian Macdonald-Hall, the son of property magnate Caspar MacDonald-Hall.
Sources close to Buckingham Palace had speculated that funds from the dwelling could be used to help the duchess and her ex-husband Prince Andrew from staying at Royal Lodge in Windsor.
King Charles, however, has suggested that the pair might downsize to Frogmore Cottage, the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
This is despite the Duke of York stepping back from royal duties after an interview on BBC’s Newsnight in 2019, in which he discussed his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
News of the house deal comes after emails showed that Sarah had kept in touch with the convicted paedophile, who died in 2019 in a New York prison, after claiming that she had cut ties with him.
In what she called a “humble apology” for disowning him in public, the duchess went on to describe Epstein as “a supreme friend”.
She has since been stripped of several charitable patronages, including the Teenage Cancer Trust and British Heart Foundation.
