Imagine a room, roughly 5.5 metres square. That’s enough to make a decent sized living room, or a large master bedroom, or a garage with not quite enough space for two cars. It’s alright, is what we’re saying here. You could swing a cat in there, as long as the cat was obliging and didn’t mind taking the slight risk of having its head smashed into the wall.
Now keep that space in your mind’s eye, only this time pack into it a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and all your worldly possessions. Finally, imagine stumping up £950,000 to live in it. From the Evening Standard:
A studio flat believed to be Britain’s smallest £1million home has gone on the market in Mayfair.
The tiny 334 sq ft flat is smaller than a double garage and has a combined living and bedroom space along with a cosy kitchen and bathroom.
Its £950,000 price tag means prospective buyers would have to fork out £38,000 in stamp duty as well as £2,200 for an annual service charge.
Now, for those who aren’t familiar with the economic stratification of London (and who have never played Monopoly), this is a particularly nice bit of town. And this is a particular nice inter-war mansion block, of the sort Bertie Wooster would have had hangovers in.
Nonetheless, it is fundamentally a single room, on the market for the better part of a million quid. Significantly, the listing on property website Zoopla makes a point of showing you both the exterior of the building and its grand entrance hall…
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…before deigning to show you the actual (only) room.
…but estate agents Wetherell are convinced it could make a perfect 21st century home for a student or socialite.
Chief executive Peter Wetherell said: “It would provide the perfect Mayfair pad for an overseas student studying in London from a wealthy family, or a socialite who wants a Mayfair address but at a lower cost.”
At a lower cost.
A few weeks back, the papers also noticed this single room house in Barnsbury, in which the bed is a shelf, which can only be accessed by climbing onto a work surface, yours for £275,000.
To acquire that on a single income (let’s be honest, you’re never going to fit a whole couple in there), you’d need an income of at least £55,000, and £27,500 cash in the bank.
Everything’s going to be fine.
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