Very bijou! Bed under stairs for £500 a month
...and then there’s £60 of bills on top!
AT £500 a month, the room in a shared flat in a nice area of London may have seemed too good to be true.
Especially as the room was ‘furnished’, including a single bed, the flat had ‘easy access to Tube stations’ and the flatmates were ‘a good bunch’.
But Alex Lomax quickly found out what was keeping the cost down: it wasn’t a ‘room’ at all – just a single mattress wedged into a cupboard under the stairs.
When she arrived for the viewing she found there was barely enough space to lie down – much like the cupboard under the stairs occupied by Harry Potter.
It even looked as though the other occupants of the flat still kept their coats in the cupboard. And a box of washing powder on the floor suggested it was still being used for general storage.
The original advert had said that the flatmates ‘like to chill out a lot together’ so they were ‘not really looking for somebody that just wants to stay in their room’.
Last night landlord Dan Smith, who is charging £60 a month on top for bills, had not responded to inquiries about the cupboard – so was unable to clarify whether there had actually been a previous tenant who enjoyed ‘staying in their room/cupboard’.
While Mr Smith was not available to discuss his understairs space, it stirred up a storm of controversy on the internet after Miss Lomax, 23, tweeted pictures of the miniature lodgings.
Miss Lomax, a journalism graduate, said on Twitter: ‘I have literally just been shown a bed under the stairs for £500 a month. F you London! # nothanks #privetdrive!?’
Privet Drive is the street where Harry Potter lived in a cupboard under the stairs with his uncle and aunt.
Speaking about her flat viewing in Clapham, south London, Miss Lomax said later: ‘My first reaction was shock to be honest. I wish I’d been angrier at him, because I left fairly quickly and politely saying it just wasn’t for me.
‘He showed me the room pretty much straight away, so I didn’t get to see much of the house itself. I think he said it was three or four others staying there.’
Miss Lomax, who has been looking for a flatshare for a month, said landlord Mr Smith seemed ‘nice enough’, but was unapologetic about trying to rent out the cupboard for £115 a week.