When Emma Boardman goes to bed at night, she doesn’t just climb the stairs,
then shut her door. It requires a little more agility than that. Instead,
she clambers up a ladder onto her sleeping platform – and shimmies down the
rungs again each morning.
It is a manoeuvre that Boardman, 33, an events consultant, has grown used to
since buying her home in Fulham, southwest London, in 2006. “I can’t deal
with ordinary, small, poky places, and this was the largest open space I
could afford,” she says. “When I moved in, I only had a mattress and a
beanbag. It was minimalist living at its best.”
Welcome to the super-svelte world of the studio: a universe of fold-up beds,
tiny bathrooms and kitchenettes suitable for one-pot parties. Boardman – who
advises anyone embarking on studio ownership to “Get a big, big cupboard and
be tidy” – is one of a growing band of Londoners who have chosen to live in
one room. They are largely a mixture of first-time buyers, like her,
desperate to get on the property ladder, and professionals willing to trade
space for a better postcode. And, as Boardman has found, studios need not
mean dark, dingy rooms furnished with just a soggy mattress and a dripping
tap. She has transformed the boxy 402 sq ft property, for which she paid
£187,000, into an airy, light-filled home by calling in a carpenter to build
a wall of fitted storage and painting everything white, including the floor.
“The light is amazing, and living in a studio isn’t as limiting as you might
think,” she says. “I hide most of the clutter, so it really is quite a
soothing space.” Although she is selling up, she remains a convert to the
minimalist one-room lifestyle: she is moving to a larger live/work unit that
has room for her boyfriend and her expanding business.
Boardman is not alone in her enthusiasm. The fashion for studios was boosted
in the 1980s with the rise of the pied-à-terre, as those with country houses
bought a city pad for the week, but today there is growing demand from
buyers who want to live full-time in these cosmopolitan cupboards. They are
snapping up attic garrets, loft spaces in inner-city warehouse conversions,
purpose-built studio blocks and even coastal surf pods, just big enough for
surfboard and lodgings.
Why have they caught on? The obvious reason is the spiralling house-price
rises of the past decade: the average cost in London is £351,039, according
to the Land Registry. Small is not just beautiful, but often the only
affordable option. Couple this with the growing number of people who live
alone – up from 3m in 1971 to 7m in 2005, says the Office for National
Statistics – and it is easy to see why studios are regaining their
popularity.
But what about their value? Historically, they have existed in a sort of
limbo. As they were often difficult to raise a mortgage on, the market
relied on cash purchasers. As a result, studios could command spectacular
prices in a boom, when there were lots of cashed-up buyers about, but were
also the most vulnerable sector in a downturn, falling fastest and furthest.
Now that is changing, according to Stern Studios, a self-confessed
“broom-cupboard expert”.
“It is an old myth,” says Sonya Trudgian, co-owner of the agency, which has
been selling bedroomless properties in London for more than 30 years.
“Studios are now subject to the ebb and flow of the market, just like any
other property. They appeal to investors and owner-occupiers, mainly
professionals who have another house somewhere in the country, and young
girls who will sacrifice space for safety and a good location.”
Stern’s cheapest studio is in Stockwell, south London, priced at £169,950; the
most expensive is a £280,000 flat in Chelsea. There are waiting lists in
purpose-built blocks such as Chelsea Cloisters and Tudor Close, in Brixton.
Indeed, the number of smaller properties, including studios and one-bedroom
flats, as a percentage of the new-build market has tripled since 2000,
according to Knight Frank, the nationwide estate agency. Many buyers try to
boost a studio’s value by adding partition walls to create a one-bedder,
but, says Trudgian: “A decent studio is far more valuable than a poky
one-bedroom flat.”
Earlier this year, when a shoebox-sized one-room flat on Cadogan Place,
Chelsea, came onto the market for £170,000, it attracted 35 viewings in the
first week, and 13 offers – despite being just 147 sq ft. The surprised
owners withdrew what had been a former cleaner’s cupboard, and are thought
to be renovating it, with a view to selling in the future.
“There were a lot of investors,” says Jason North, a partner at Strutt &
Parker Lane Fox’s Chelsea office, who was showing the property, “but also a
number of people already living in Belgravia, looking for a nanny or
housekeeper’s flat. One wanted it primarily to get a parking permit. Others
saw it as a perfect crash-pad alternative to a hotel.” Although the market
slowdown means interest would not be as strong if it came up for sale this
week, North says that demand is still there for anything under £500,000, and
that, for the first time, studios are holding their own against the rest of
the market. London estate agents and developers have even coined a new
phrase to lure the more aspirational owner-occupier: the “studio suite”.
“It started a year ago,” says John Ennis, head of new homes and investment at
Foxtons. “There is a dedicated sleeping area, perhaps on a mezzanine, but
more generally separated from the living room by a sliding screen. As there
is often no second window, you can’t sell them as one-bed flats, though I
often wish you could. There is a colossal demand for entry-level flats. Not
everyone can afford a two-bed – and they make good rental investments.”
Planners’ pressure for high-density schemes, coupled with high house prices,
have seen the micro-flat phenomenon spread across the UK; in the southeast,
owners are converting lofts and garages to let out. Masshouse, a Birmingham
development marketed by Knight Frank, changed its second-phase plans to
include many more smaller units, as they proved more popular than the
two-bed flats originally envisaged.
“Five years ago, we couldn’t sell any studios,” says Mark Evans, a Knight
Frank partner, who is selling the studios for £130,000-£150,000 (0121 200
2220, www.knightfrank.co.uk).
“They were a bit too big, but once they brought the size below 500,000 sq
ft, we couldn’t get enough.”
Georgie Bowers, 26, a PR executive, has been folding her bed into a wall
recess each morning since buying her studio on Chelsea Embankment for just
under £200,000 in 2004.
“Okay, there’s not a lot of room,” admits Bowers, who has employed
space-saving devices such as a wall-hung, flat-screen plasma TV and fitted
wardrobes. “But I love the area. I can walk to work, I eat out a lot, and
it’s great to be by the river.”
It also helps that she has become “very good at shoving things in cupboards”.
Emma Boardman’s studio is for sale for £335,000 with Foxtons; 020 7565 4000,
www.foxtons.co.uk. Georgie
Bowers’s studio is for sale for £375,000 with Chapeltons; 020 7351 1686, www.findaproperty.com/chapeltons.
Stern Studios; 020 7244 7301, www.sternstudios.co.uk
Greed only surpassed by delusion. A desperate attempt to shore up the bottom of the market. It really does insult the intelligence of your readership.
dermot, London, UK