There is a house for sale in Chelsea that is advertised as having views of the Thames. The Cheyne Walk home also, presumably, has views of the Embankment traffic. The asking price is £6.5m — about right for one of London’s most prestigious addresses. But buy one of the houseboats moored on the river just along the road, by Battersea Bridge, and you’ll get virtually the same address and save yourself about six million quid.
Simon Woodroffe, the 54-year-old founder of the Yo! Sushi chain of restaurants, has done just that, and he’s a happy man. He loves the water, the community, the peace. He also believes he may have discovered the next big thing: “the last undeveloped piece of London”.
The multi-millionaire is among the 15,000 or so people who live on Britain’s 4,000 miles of navigable rivers and canals. Until now, the stereotypical image of a houseboat community has been a hippie one. But Woodroffe is an example of the new breed of owner.
So how did he come to live on the Thames? Well, he had been looking at riverside penthouses — “but they are like being in a prison” — then he met Nigel Day, who set up Riverhomes.co.uk two years ago with his father and brother. Woodroffe fell in love with the idea of a boat and asked Day to look on his behalf. “Last summer, Nigel called and said a really big one had come up, a run-down, 83ft, double-ended barge,” he explains.
“I said I’d buy it sight unseen.”
The barge refit took three months; in November, Woodroffe moved in with his daughter, Charlotte, 16. The top floor (or deck) is largely open plan: the kitchen is open to the sitting area, which in turn is open to a great chunk of river and sky. The day I visit, the tide is out and a fat duck is pottering about on the stony beach — hard to believe the King’s Road is a five-minute walk away. Below are three large bedrooms, a snug with giant flat-screen television, and two bathrooms that wouldn’t look out of place in the penthouses Woodroffe so disdains.
The vessel and refit cost £500,000, and its proud owner believes it would already fetch more. Not that he’s selling.
“I have a house in Rutland that I used to go to every Thursday afternoon for years, when Charlotte was at school near there,” he says. “Since we’ve moved here we haven’t been back. I spend a lot of time here, it’s a creative place away from the hurly-burly, and the wind blows away the city sounds.
“Until last year there was no security of tenure, but now these moorings have been granted 25-year leases.” He’s even eligible for residents’ parking.
At Cheyne Walk, the boating community is still a bit posh-hippie, with at least one home-made wind chime in evidence, but the river life attracts people of all persuasions. Woodroffe, whose CV includes stints as a roadie and a rock-show stage designer before making his fortune with conveyor-belt sushi, fits right in: neighbours include artist Damien Hirst, and the boat next door is owned by Bob Geldof’s girlfriend, Jeanne Marine.
This isn’t London’s only houseboat village: go for a waterside stroll and you’ll soon find others — about 300 boats are estimated to be moored in London’s tidal section of the Thames alone.
Bill and Chris Hart, both 54, have lived at Blackwall Marina, Canary Wharf, and round the corner at Poplar Dock Marina, for about six years. They used to have a kitchen/bathroom showroom in Surrey, then a pub. They built a bungalow, sold it, then, in 2000, bought their Luxemotor barge via the internet for £50,000.
They moved to London’s Docklands on a whim, as the barge is seaworthy. They like the village atmosphere, and their daughter works nearby. Now they plan to move to Spain, so their 100ft-long barge, with its four double bedrooms, office, bathroom (with freestanding bath) and big living room — about 1,600sq ft all up — is for sale for £250,000 with Riverhomes.co.uk. The firm has just sold a one-bed Docklands flat for £265,000, which is about half the size of the Harts’ boat.
Spend time with the Harts aboard their barge and life seems idyllic, but boats do have disadvantages.
“The biggest factor that people fail to appreciate is that you’re buying a depreciating asset,” explains Rod Grant, general manager of Britain’s biggest inland marina, at Sawley in Nottinghamshire. “Unlike a house that will increase in value, a boat will, at most, reach break-even point after three years. But it must be well maintained.”
It’s the mooring that counts: they can be hard to find and expensive. Rates and conditions vary from mooring to mooring, council to council, river to canal, tidal to non-tidal, and the further south you go, the more they cost. Day gets between 50 and 100 inquiries each week for ones in London alone. Many cities, such as Birmingham and Liverpool, have small clusters of residential boatowners, but again, the options for permanent moorings are limited. Manchester, which has next to no residential moorings, is creating 20 in the Old Trafford area in the next two years. But there’s unlikely to be a sudden surge in bankside renovation across the UK.
The Harts pay £8,000 a year for their Canary Wharf spot. They get water, pump-out facilities (sewage has to go somewhere, and the river isn’t an option), and metered electricity. They don’t pay council tax, water rates or service charges. They renew their lease each year, and lack of permanence has never bothered them. “They have their rules and regulations — you can’t hang out the laundry, for instance — but you’d have to do something terribly bad to be moved on,” says Chris.
Buying a boat requires the same sort of care you should put into buying a house (see panel opposite). You need surveys and safety checks (averaging about £600); insurance (£150-£300 a year, depending on the craft’s length); and an annual licence (British Waterways charges about £500). Getting a mortgage is difficult: standard lenders usually steer clear, and most are arranged through marine lenders. Mooring fees are typically £4,000-£8,000 a year. Most people who buy boats do so with cash — and it is wise to sort out the mooring first.
“There are cowboys out there who will sell unlicensed moorings,” warns the Port of London Authority’s Martin Garside. “You need to do multiple searches, just as you would with a house.”
“It is a myth that boats are exempt from planning law,” he also warns. “Any houseboat requires two sets of permissions: the permission of the appropriate navigation authority to be there, and the local authority. You’d be well advised to also check with the environmental authority as well.”
For Per Ostrand, 45, and his wife, Sarah Lolley, who moved from the Azores for the sake of their young son’s education, a boat was the ideal option.
“It satisfied two basics for us,” says Per, a ship’s engineer. “We could live on it while cruising around to find a suitable school and moorings.” Three years on, they are moored 200 yards from their son’s Oxfordshire school.
Abi Isherwood, 26, moved from south London to Bristol with her husband, René, 18 months ago. Eight months ago, their daughter, Ramona, arrived.
“We needed somewhere quickly and we needed to buy something,” says Isherwood, “and a boat was all we could afford.” They bought the 32ft Swn-y-mor, a 1950s motor launch, for just under £20,000, and live on a stretch of the River Avon, between Bath and Bristol, with seven other residential boats.
“There’s a real sense of community,” insists Isherwood. “I think people move on to boats for economic reasons, but it’s the lifestyle that keeps you here.”
They pay £2,500 a year in mooring fees, and Isherwood estimates it costs another £300 a month for heating, fuel, water and basic maintenance.
Narrowboats are the most common residential vessels. On average they are 45ft-50ft long and just over 6ft wide, they can be bought new from about £90,000, or second-hand from £25,000-£30,000.
John Rush, 56, and his wife, Pauline, have lived at Sileby on the River Soar, near the Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire border, for four years. They had enjoyed family narrowboat holidays so much that when their children left home they went waterborne full-time — they even designed their 57ft-long vessel themselves. It cost them £63,000.
“I’ve basically bought my retirement home early,” says Rush, who works at the local marina.
Don’t buy a boat, though, if you think it is a quick way to jump rungs on the property ladder: boats and houses remain two very different markets. But if you’re a waterbaby at heart, it could be the lifestyle change you’re looking for.
In 1989, fashion stylist Pamela Chapman and Edward Burrell bought a freehold mooring on the Thames at Sunbury for £91,000. They have a barge, 72ft of river frontage, two workshops and a parking space, but such a setup is “like hen’s teeth”, says Burrell. They are lucky, but are worried about the future.
“Each year we pay council tax of £1,200; a river licence of £1,000; insurance of £600; and £1,000 towards having the bottom scraped and painted every four years or so. We don’t pay a mooring fee because we own our mooring, but if the licence fee goes up to £4,000 a year, which it may do over the next nine years, we will not be able to afford to live here in retirement.”
She wouldn’t live any other way, but it’s not like being on dry land. Woodroffe’s barge is in a tidal section of the Thames, where water levels can vary by up to 22ft. The boats are beached at low tide, putting everything on a tilt, and wash from passing boats can cause wine bottles to crash to the floor; wet gangplanks must be negotiated with care, and our photographer lost his phone overboard at Canary Wharf. Woodroffe has done the same.
“I was leaning over and saw it leave my pocket,” he says. “I gave myself until it hit the water to get over it.” Only those who could do the same should consider living on the water.
Additional reporting, Seb Morton-Clark
Float your boat
If you have set your heart on a life afloat, there are crucial issues to take into account before you buy.
“So many people see a romantic image of boating on television, but they don’t consider what it’s like in winter,” says Beryl McDowell, chairwoman of the Residential Boat Owners’ Association. “There are also hidden costs — for example, the price of moorings.”
Indeed, such is the strength of demand that paying for your moorings can cost you as much as renting a flat — if you can get hold of one. A berth in central London, for example, at top-end Ice Wharf, next to King’s Cross, could set you back about £600 a month, with people snapping up wrecks for three times their value just to get a space.
Visit your potential mooring several times before you buy, and ask questions — marinas tend to have a strong community feel, and you’ll be able to get an idea of potential problems from other residents.
Don’t confine your search to the city centres: moorings in Greater London and rural areas cost about £65 per month; in central London you are looking at anything from £250. (Most marinas charge per metre; prices are based on a 13m-long boat.) Check how much protection the mooring contract gives you and how long it will last. A recent outcry about boat owners’ lack of security of tenure resulted in a consultation by the now defunct Office of the Deputy Prime Minister about whether or not owners should get additional contract rights. The outcome has not been published yet, so check the small print of your contract.
A safety crackdown means there are extra costs to consider — a boat-safety certificate, licence and insurance are all compulsory. To obtain these, you will have to get the boat surveyed every four years. This entails having your craft craned out of the water at up to £95 a day and then enduring a nail-biting few hours as the surveyor wallops the hull with a large hammer to find out where it’s worn away. Keep aside project money for inevitable repairs and to pay the surveyor, who will charge up to £500 a day. When buying, always ask about the condition of the hull, and when it was last dry-docked.
It is possible to obtain a mortgage, but terms will not be as favourable as those when buying on land. Barclays, RBS and Bank Of Scotland all offer deals, but interest rates tend to be about 8%-10%.
British Waterways, 01923 226 422, www.britishwaterways.co.uk; the Residential Boat Owners’ Association, 01353 749 509, www.rboa.org.uk; www.livingonboats.co.uk; www.apolloduck.com (popular classifieds site for liveaboards)
Emma Rubach
On the market
A two-bed, two-bath houseboat on the River Thames at Chelsea, ‘Macauley’ has a mooring licence until 2020 and fees of £9,000 per year. Riverhomes.co.uk (020 8788 6000, www.riverhomes.co.uk) is selling the boat for £425,000
For sale for £85,000, this 80ft houseboat in Flushing, near Falmouth in Cornwall, has four cabins. It is accessible only by foot; mooring fees are £340 per year. Contact Marilyn, 01326 376 180, www.houseboats.apolloduck.co.uk
