London
housing crisis: £480 a month for a bed, in a shed, in the lounge
The rising cost
of renting in the capital has led to some landlords being creative
with their properties
Damien Gayle /
Wednesday 2 September 2015 16.56 BST
When a flatshare
advert calls for a “laid back, happy-go-lucky type that’s
sociable [and] open minded”, it’s not necessarily a warning sign.
But Joe Peduzzi had
no idea how far his tolerance would be stretched. The 22-year-old
found that the double room in east London he had expected to view was
in fact a mattress in a shed in the corner of a communal living room.
The room in Bethnal
Green, advertised on SpareRoom.co.uk for £480-a-month plus bills,
had been described as “the biggest in the house”, with the only
indication of its downside being that it “comes with a sofa which
means sharing it with the rest of us sometimes”.
“I was laughing to
myself down the road back to the tube,” Peduzzi, from the Isle of
Wight, was quoted by the Mirror as saying. But it is just the latest
sign of how desperate the London housing market has become.
It now costs an
average £2,583 a month to take on a rented property in central
London, according to Countrywide, the UK’s largest property
services company, making the capital one of the most expensive cities
in the world for renters.
This has led to an
increasing number of flatshares with no living rooms, as the cost of
shared space becomes too much for young tenants to cover.
Circumstances where landlords apparently try to offer their tenants
the best of both worlds have hitherto been rare, however.
Peduzzi had been
seeking a room in the capital after finding a new job in the charity
sector. He was shocked by the conditions he found. “I can’t
believe people have the cheek to advertise that as a bedroom,” he
was quoted as saying.
But he shouldn’t
have been surprised. In Greater London, the rent for a one-bedroom
flat has risen by an average of 22% over the past five years,
according to recently published Valuation Office Agency data.
That’s led to a
proliferation of so-called beds in sheds, although admittedly most
are not actually inside flats. Last month, Hackney council said it
would inspect a studio flat which was up for rent at £250 a week,
despite looking like a converted outbuilding.
Peduzzi turned down
the offer of the bed in a shed in a lounge, and the advert has since
been taken down. It is not clear if the current tenants of the flat
have found a new housemate.
SpareRoom.co.uk said
the room advertised breached their rules, which stipulate that
flatmates shouldn’t have to walk through another’s bedroom to
access communal space.
Matt Hutchinson,
director of the house-share website, said: “We’re no strangers to
quirky ads but this one puts a whole new spin on the phrase ‘beds
in sheds’.
“There’s no
clear reason given for putting a bed inside a shed, inside a bedroom,
but it could be because the other housemates use the room as communal
space. It’s a sign of the times that fewer house shares now have
living rooms.”
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