The West End of London is an ownership jigsaw dominated by a handful of “great estates” which together own hundreds of acres at the heart of the capital.

It seems hard to imagine a London without the names of Grosvenor, Portman, Howard de Walden, Bedford and Cadogan estates on its map. Their presence at the top of the list of London owners seems as embedded as the British monarchy and, of course, The Crown Estate is also among them, with its extensive holdings across Mayfair and St James’.

But with so much international capital hungry for London real estate, is there now a sound business case for them to sell-up? Together, the great estates own upwards of £20 billion of assets. That level of commitment would’ve once been out of the reach of buyers, but in these times – when a Korean pension fund can pay £1.2 billion for a single London office building – there is no longer such a gulf between a potential seller’s asset base and the pool of willing equity.

The market has not been tested with a major London estate sale, but now, The Langham Estate has been put on the market with a price tag of around £370 million. The 27-asset portfolio is clustered around Oxford Street and stretches east towards Fitzrovia. It was originally part of the land owned by the Earl of Oxford, which was inherited by the family of Lord Howard de Walden, who then sold it in 1925.

For a brief period this Autumn, the £100 million Fitzrovia Estate, to the east of the Langham, was also up for sale and there was the tantalising prospect of one buyer scooping up both. However, it is now believed that Shaftesbury Capital, the seller of the Fitzrovia Estate, is pulling the sale owing to a lack of attractive bids.

Or maybe it’s because they’re now planning to buy the Langham and create a new power base north of Oxford Street? Although that might involve a slightly fractious negotiation as the seller of the Langham Estate is Shaftesbury’s erstwhile agitator shareholder, Samuel Tak Lee.

Meanwhile, returning to the great London landed estates, if you consider the level of their assets and the returns they generate for today’s descendants of the families who originated these holdings, they do not look that generous. Post-war strategic asset acquisitions have redressed historic which were often compelled by death duties and other financial needs. So overall, the asset values of the great estates have remained progressive and this has fed through to the profits and dividends which are distributed to a mix of the estates’ operating companies and a network of founding family beneficiaries.

However, the volume of the money that those beneficiaries receive in relation to the estates’ net asset values would leave the average property investor scratching their heads. In its latest annual report, the Howard de Walden Estate – which has an asset base valued at £4.449 billion – showed profit after operating costs of £99.3 million with a dividend of £40 million being paid to family beneficiaries who are believed to now number about 40. Both the profit and dividend were creditably progressive in their performance, up 13% and 33% respectively. But for the de Walden family, and its growing group of beneficiaries, would a break-up not be attractive so that a lump sum could be settled on them once and for all?

That would, of course, completely ignore the fact that the families behind these estates see themselves as temporary “stewards” of the assets and not owners. Their role is to leave the estates in a better state than they found them and they have a commendable duty of care to the communities which they serve, plus a greater good for London. And, of course, the estates generally have checks and balances that prevent any ne’er-do-well heir selling up.

That’s not to say that they don’t consider the possibility. In 2005, when Peter Vernon was interviewed to become Grosvenor’s Group Executive Director. He was somewhat stunned at his first interview when he was asked to go away and prepare a business case for… selling the whole of the estate’s multi-billion pound Mayfair holdings. Previously a long-time, highly experienced business consultant at PwC, Vernon went away, prepared the case for a sale and duly presented it at his subsequent interview. He ultimately got the job and was in the post for nearly 17 years. And, of course, that disposal plan was never enacted. So whilst it was perhaps just a slightly mischievous approach to the recruitment process, I do like to think that somewhere in Grosvenor’s HQ that business case is still sitting in a desk drawer and one day it may be dusted off…