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London: On guard and in pocket

from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)

Times

March 28, 2004

London: On guard and in pocket

A London home for £150 a month? It’s possible — if you become a property guardian and don’t mind living in a library or a warehouse, says Julie Sinclair

Spending half your salary on rent for the sake of a London postcode is not everybody’s idea of living. From Wimbledon to Walthamstow, an 8ft x 9ft shoe box in a house full of strangers will rarely cost less than £350 a month. Add bills and upgrade to a double and you could be spending £650 a month, leaving anybody earning less than £20,000 a year stuck indoors with the heating off.

So when Francis Ives, a 35-year-old art graduate, was offered a 1,500sq ft room in Hackney for £150 a month, it sounded too good to be true.

The catch was that the room was in an abandoned library, where he would be living as an anti-squatting guardian for a Dutch company, Camelot Property Management.

All Ives had to do, in exchange for the keys, was keep an eye on the place, report any leaks and go about his daily business. Camelot provides water, electricity and a secure building; the rest is left to the guardian’s imagination.

The first thing Ives did was convert his room into a live-work unit, giving him the studio space he needed to create his abstract art. “I had to do a lot of work when I moved in, but it’s fantastic once you realise the potential,” he says.

Ironically, an old polling-station sign still glued to the front door, the bars on the windows and the bed linen hanging behind them, all give the place the feel of a squat.

“It’s a bit prison-like,” Ives admits, “especially with the reflections you get from the bars on the windows. But it’s a great solution for anybody who hasn’t got any money.”

Greg Quixley, 31, a PE teacher from Cape Town, is guarding a Grade II-listed missionary college in Totteridge, north London.

“I used to live in a tiny box room in Wimbledon for £400 a month,” says Quixley, “but now I live here for £150 a month. There are about 40 rooms, and three of us living here. The money I’ve saved has helped me to buy a house back in Cape Town.”

Camelot’s guardians could find themselves in anything from a factory to a lighthouse, sharing with up to 50 others. To ensure they don’t end up squatting in the flats they are there to protect, they are bound by a licence, rather than a tenancy agreement. This guarantees them a minimum three months at a property, but gives them no residency rights, meaning they can be evicted at a month’s notice.

Camelot vets guardians, who must provide passports, a £300 deposit and an education and employment history.

Another option for footloose Londoners is to sign up as a property caretaker with Ambika Security, which entered the market as guardians of the Crown Estate. Bagshot Park, now home to Edward and Sophie, and a £15m property in Regent’s Park were among the company’s portfolio of properties to watch over.

Caretakers can be asked to provide security 24 hours a day — and asked to leave at 24 hours’ notice.

Ambika’s caretakers pay nothing, and could be living like kings for free. But as Ambika’s clients also include local councils, caretakers could also find themselves in a rescued squat on a troubled council estate.

For it is not only tenants who benefit from these novel security arrangements. Property owners can save up to 90% of the £5,000 a month it costs for traditional security guards. “When squatters move into a derelict building, the cost of repairing the damage can be endless,” says Joost van Gestel, Camelot’s owner.

The guardians, at least, know a good deal when they see one. For Chris Harper, 27, a music teacher from Reading, the embarrassment of having “Braganza Old People’s Home” as an address is outweighed by the fact that he’s two minutes’ walk from Kennington tube and has several of the building’s 100 rooms to himself.

“I’ve got two toilets!” he says. “It’s crazy.”

Ambika, 020 7376 9740, www.ambikaproperty.com; Camelot, 0700 226 3568, www.camelotproperty.com/uk

(posted 7306 days ago)

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