Not a lot of people know that Michael Caine’s daughter has a keen eye for property. When she’s not chatting with her dad in a sherbert dab, she’s in South America, putting the final touches to her latest project
Natasha Caine, the only child of actor Sir Michael Caine and his wife Shakira, has left behind her modelling and London IT girl days to turn her attention to property development and interior design. The 35-year-old, who lives in south London, has found a second home in Uruguay’s glitzy resort of Punta del Este – dubbed the St Tropez of South America – where she and her husband, Michael Hall, CEO of the Obsidian Group, are working on a new development of luxury villas.
Michael, my husband, has been going there with friends in winter, which is when the place comes alive, since he was a teenager. Then he took me there for Christmas a few years ago and I loved it. Out of season it’s very quiet, then overnight it explodes. It has a similar climate to Cape Town, so winters are warm. It’s safe, relaxed and unspoilt, perfect for horse-riding along the beach and through the pine forests. It’s where the South American jet-set go to party, but it’s not flashy. It has more of a shabby chic feel.
Villalagos is 13 villas – which start at £1.25 million – on a 225-acre site in Punta Piedra, between the beachfront neighbourhoods of La Barra and Jose Ignacio. Each house is around 6,000 square metres and set on a private plot of 12-17 acres, surrounded by lakes, orchards and fruit and vegetable gardens. It’s like having your own mini-farm, or chacra as they call them in Uruguay. You feel as though you’re in the middle of the countryside, yet you’re right next to the ocean. I’ve interior designed the properties – they’re open-plan with glass walls that open onto large courtyards and infinity pools. We’ve kept one for ourselves to use as a winter retreat.
No, I’ve bought, renovated and sold properties in west London for years. I redesigned our two-bedroom maisonette in Great Titchfield Street in central London with marble-effect white walls and a huge glass wall leading out to a zen garden, which recently sold for over the asking price of £1.1 million. My parents and I lived in Miami in the late 1990s, and I’ve been helping them decorate their new apartment there, too. It has a wrap-around decking terrace overlooking South Beach. My dad and I are big walkers, so we often walk along the sand for miles. He’s not the sort who could sit in a villa in Tuscany for months – he’d go nuts.
Not yet, but we’re taking my parents and my half sister Nikki there for the fi rst time this winter. I think they’ll love it. My dad has a strong attachment to the weather, buzz and action of Miami, and it’s not dissimilar. Punta del Este is a long journey from the UK – it’s a 13-hour fl ight to Buenos Aires, a 40-minute fl ight to Montevideo then an hour’s drive – so Miami is a good halfway meeting point.
My dad has a keen eye for property. He has always bought well, including his fl at at Chelsea Harbour, which has gone through the roof. We’re a very close-knit family and if the three of us are in the back of a cab, or sherbet dab, we’ll often talk in Cockney rhyming slang using our normal accents. My dad will ask “Have you got any sausage” – meaning cash – and my mother or I will give him some change and say: “Here’s some rifl e”!
For more information on Obsidian’s developments, call 020 7499 1300 or visit www.obsidiangroup.co.uk
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This article is taken from issue 59 of A Place In The Sun magazine, on sale now, or to subscribe click here...
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