What property crisis? Rent this blacked-out shed in a living room for £530 a month

Shut up and get in the shed

Everyone loves a nice garden shed. They are Britain’s wooden havens for bicycles, tools and those magazines you don’t want in the house.

They are not supposed to go in the corner of the living room, and they are not supposed to be considered bedrooms worth £530 a month.

Yet this is today’s London – we’ve reached a time when this is actually happening, for real, to real people, in Zone 2. Zone 2! Is nothing sacred?

22-year-old Joe Peduzzi , the house hunter who witnessed the improbable living arrangement, said he “laughed all the way back to the Tube”, after “viewing” the prospect of living in a shed in a living room.

And quite rightly – you can easily pay off a mortgage on a 3 bedroom home in many wonderful towns and cities across Britain with £530 a month. Not in London. Not in zone 2. Five hundred and thirty quid mate? Might get you a shed.

The shed in question was listed as a “double room”, on SpareRoom.co.uk, and featured blacked out windows.

Peduzzi said: “When I first walked in I sort of noticed the shed in the background but didn’t really take it in.

“Then I scanned around the room and couldn’t see a bed so I asked where it was and the guy just pointed to the corner.

“I stuck my head in for a look but there was basically no room for movement. The mattress was right against the walls of this shed and the windows were blacked out.

“I had quite a hard time getting my head round in to be honest. I didn’t ask what the story behind it was but he seemed to think it was pretty normal.

“I’m not sure when it was built but there was no privacy in the room. The shed is in the corner of a communal room so other people would be walking through all the time.

“I was laughing to myself down the road back to the tube. I can’t believe people have the cheek to advertise that as a bedroom.”

“Sign of the times”

Speaking to the Mail, SpareRoom director Matt Hutchinson didn’t seem wholly surprised by the idea of some poor soul paying £6,360 a year to rent a mattress in a tiny shed in the middle of a living room in London.

“We’re no strangers to quirky ads but this one puts a whole new spin on the phrase ‘beds in sheds’,” he 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.”

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