Slim, but not shady: Famous 7-foot-wide London house on sale
new york — At just seven feet and seven inches wide, the aptly named “Slim House” in London’s upwardtrending Clapham neighbourhood might be the narrowest slice of yuppie heaven. But the home, narrower than a train car, is actually more expansive than it seems, offering four bedrooms over 1,058 square feet.
The building first cropped up on design-savvy radars in 2013, not long after local firm Alma-Nac gave the space — an original “gap house,” meaning it’s squished between two larger buildings — a complete makeover. The company tacked an additional room onto each floor and added a sloped, skylight-pocked roof and a lush, 48-foot-long, landscaped garden. Custom shelving units line the skinny property, which helps sidestep storage issues.
At the time, Alma-Nac partner Tristan Wigfall told design site Dezeen that “with such a narrow and deep plan the existing building was claustrophobic” (no kidding) and that “the key driver in developing the proposal was ensuring that natural light was able to penetrate deep into the plan to create rooms that felt spacious and light”. The property got plenty of attention, even making a cameo on the popular British television show, George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces.
Now the house is on the market for a £1 million ($1.4 million); in Clapham, the average price of a fourbedroom is currently £1.3 million.
Formerly written off as a stopping-off point for suburbia-bound Londoners not yet ready to take the country plunge, Clapham has become more desirable as a final residential destination in recent years. In 2015, more than 20,000sqft of the neighbourhood’s former World War II bomb shelter tunnels were converted into a high-tech underground farm growing salads and herbs. There’s certainly demand for such high-end greenery: Clapham is crawling with lauded restaurants, including chef Robin Gill’s two spots — the tasting menucentric the Dairy and produce-forward Italian haunt Sorella — plus chef Adam Byatt’s Michelin-starred modern British powerhouse Trinity. By 2016, the most appealing addresses were priced at £1,000 per square foot.
Amid London’s cooling property market, prices in the listing’s SW11 postcode experienced a 4.5 per cent drop last year. With experts predicting a rough 2018, those looking to jump in might find it best to keep investment ambitions on the smaller side — as in this place.