Areas, Westminster
Beautiful, expensive, and oddly empty. Most Londoners would take Islington instead.
Sourced from 5 threads on Reddit, checked 12 September 2026.
In the September 2026 thread asking where people would live with no budget limit, Mayfair appears mostly in sentences like "not Mayfair". The reasons people give are that the streets belong to offices, hotels and galleries rather than residents, and that a lot of the flats are second homes standing empty.
“Duncan Terrace, Angel. Would NOT choose Mayfair, Belgravia, Fitzrovia, Knightsbridge and the like.”on r/london, Sep 2026
The recurring street-level complaint is cars: revving on Park Lane and the streets around the big hotels, and supercars parked across pavements until the council started towing them. Westminster brought in fines for engine noise covering Mayfair and Soho. It peaks in summer and is loudest late in the evening.
“Literally just saw him get pulled over by police at Hyde park corner”on r/london, Aug 2025
When people work out why Mayfair costs roughly twice what Pimlico does, the answer they land on is the housing itself. Mayfair was built as grand houses for wealthy owners and stayed that way, with almost no social housing mixed in, so there is no cheaper half of the area to pull the average down.
“Mayfair is a historically posh area, with houses built largely for the gentry, so most are opulent”on r/london, Jan 2024
Threads about Mayfair streets are about vehicles rather than muggings. Pavement riding by electric bikes around the Oxford Street end comes up, and the replies are clear that this is a London-wide problem rather than something specific to here. Nobody in these threads describes feeling unsafe walking around Mayfair itself at night.
“Happening all over London. Where I live it tends to be food delivery riders. Absolute menace.”on r/london, Mar 2026
Crime figures for this spot are in the panel on any listing here; this page picks them up on its next refresh.
Median asking rent on the first page of Rightmove for W1J, 25 listings, sorted by newest, weekly prices converted to monthly. Asking prices, not what tenants end up paying. Two bedroom asking prices in W1J run from about 5,000 to over 20,000, so the median hides a very long tail. Checked 12 September 2026. See what a home here actually costs each month, council tax and bills included, with the rent plus bills calculator.
The ListingMap browser extension shows what’s nearby, real crime figures and a true monthly cost on every rental listing in Mayfair, not just this page.
Crime figures for this spot are in the panel on any listing here; this page picks them up on its next refresh.
Mayfair is where the money is, and Londoners are surprisingly rude about it. Ask r/london where they would live if cost did not matter and Mayfair gets named to be ruled out about as often as it gets picked. The complaints are consistent: lovely buildings, nobody on the pavement, and a lot of engine noise.
A one-bed is about £3,850 pcm, a two-bed about £5,500 pcm, checked 12 September 2026. Median asking rent on the first page of Rightmove for W1J, 25 listings, sorted by newest, weekly prices converted to monthly. Asking prices, not what tenants end up paying. Two bedroom asking prices in W1J run from about 5,000 to over 20,000, so the median hides a very long tail.