LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE
Looking to combine the comforts of a house and the pleasures of life on the water, Alex Prindiville set about building his own luxury floating apartments
You love your boat, restricted as it is in the space it offers. You also love your house but long to live in a marine environment. Waterfront living is certainly attractive but can also be prohibitively expensive, especially in London and the south-east. What to do?
That was the conundrum facing Alex Prindiville, a supercar trader with an office in Limehouse Basin in east London, who loved the idea of a swanky apartment overlooking the water but could never justify the cost. The alternative of a houseboat would be a lot more affordable but the ones he looked at were a far cry from the bright, modern, comfortable apartment he dreamed of.
“We looked at buying a houseboat but it was all a bit chintzy and dated. So me and my partner decided to build our own; a boat is no different to a car or a house. I have a keen eye for detail as my background is in engineering so I was confident we could make it work.”
The fact that Alex didn’t have any previous boating experience didn’t bother him. A dyslexic, he left school at 16 and started working as a lathe operator in the motor trade before his entrepreneurial streak pushed him to set up on his own.
“I have always been driven. When you have to work twice as hard to get what you’re doing across the line and you carry on down that trajectory, you have to be.”
He went on to found Prindiville Cars, a luxury car brokerage for ultra-high net worth individuals, a job he still loves.
“I’m lucky enough to supply exotic vehicles to celebrities, footballers and billionaires. Some of them do haggle but for the really exotic stuff over £250,000, they don’t bother about the price,” he said.
It’s this can-do attitude which convinced him to build his own houseboat and the end result has proved so successful that he’s now marketing his idea to other like-minded individuals. “I looked at how much we had made it for and thought that with a small margin, we could sell these,” he said.
And that is what Alex is now doing – building 15 houseboats a year in Sheffield with starting prices around the £300,000 mark. As Alex sees it, the newly formed Prindiville Marine isn’t selling boats, it’s selling floating luxury apartments. At over 1,000 square feet, they are bigger than your average two-bed apartment but cost half as much as the equivalent bricks and mortar. He has sold four in London already and is now working on a seagoing version which can cross the Channel, opening up the extensive network of European waterways to British based liveaboards.
The boats are built on a conventional 60ft steel barge hull with a beam of just over 12ft. They weigh 41 tonnes and are powered by a single 90hp Vetus diesel engine. Two-colour marine paint adorns
the outside and all walkway areas are coated in non-slip paint. Inside is a living room, galley/kitchen, master bedroom, second bedroom or office, hallway, and toilet/shower room. There is solid wood flooring throughout and pressure-jet central heating with ‘smart control’ to keep you warm in the winter. Obviously there are full electrics and hot and cold running water provided your mooring has suitable shorepower facilities.
“These floating apartments are a great way to get on the property ladder,” said Alex. “House prices are eye-watering; you either have to spend vast amounts commuting or buy yourself something the size of a broom cupboard in town. This is the ideal way to bridge the gap.”
The floating apartments are being marketed in Oxford, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Reading. “Anywhere with a nice waterfront really. Why buy a house that will always be in the same street when you can buy a floating house and position it in the right area for your job?” he said.
It’s not just in this country either. “Property prices in the south of France are ridiculous and there are problems with negativity around Spanish properties too,” said Alex.
“Why not buy a boat and put it in a marina? It is a tank in the water; paint it every five or ten years and it becomes a wonderful sunshine home that you can rent out for £1,000 a time.
Prindiville Marine also offers to sort out a mooring for you including electricity, water, sewage and Wifi as part of the deal. He estimates that mooring costs fall between £10,000 and £13,000 a year, depending on whether or not you live on the boat full time.
Once you’ve chosen your fixtures and fittings, Prindiville can build and fit out your boat for you within just four months.
“We manufacture our boats in Sheffield. We should be keeping industry going in our own country when there is so much unemployment around, not outsourcing work to other countries.
“I suppose that sounds odd coming from a guy who sells millionpound cars, but it would be nice if the government took notice; look what they did for the banks, but they’re letting industry go down.”
Odd maybe, but even though his modern take on barge living is a world away from the Sunseekers and Princesses most supercar owners aspire to, we can’t help thinking he may be on to something. Think of it as an alternative to an expensive riverside apartment or coastal holiday home and it suddenly makes a lot of sense. This is one idea which might just float.