London flat listing: £480 a month for a bed in a shed

‘Flat wanted: amenities must include a Black and Decker power tool, rusty lawnmower and set of cobwebbed golf clubs.’

Just when you thought the London housing crisis couldn’t get any sillier, news reaches us of a recent vacancy in Bethnal Green for £480 per month. In a shed. In the corner of a communal living room.

Listed on Spare Room as costing £480 per month with £50 thrown in to split bills with three other housemates, 22-year-old flat hunter Joe Peduzzi turned up to check out the room at Somerford Street, East London. From there, any thoughts of a relative bargain were quickly ever evaporated when he discovered the bed was located in a wooden shack in the corner of the living room.

After being shown the abode - a mattress thrown inside an indoor garden shed, complete with blacked out windows – the Isle of Wight native said he “laughed the whole way back to the tube."

He added, "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There was no chance I was paying £530 a month for that.”

Worst of all, the advert read: "The room is the biggest in the house and comes with a sofa which means sharing it with the rest of us sometimes. We are on the search for a laid back happy-go-lucky type that's sociable, open minded and creative.”

There are open minded people, and then there are people who’ve lost their minds entirely. Which we figure would be the only sort of tenant who’d put up with that sort of site plan. And it beggars belief what sort of owner would allow this to happen…

Matt Hutchinson, director of SpareRoom.co.uk, said: “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.”

If Jethro’s feeling flush and looking for a place, he knows where to head.

[Via: The Guardian]