Property News · December 9, 2017

Renting: why are we seeing the death of the living room? | Patrick Collinson


Forget lounging around on the sofa: many landlords have turned shared space into more bedrooms – and it has helped drive up pricesThe huge shared living space, the lavender walls and the college-dorm chic; most of us can picture Monica and Chandler’s apartment in Friends, the 1990s TV series no doubt being re-run on some channel right now. I preferred This Life, the flatmates drama which defined the 1990s in a rather more British way. But you couldn’t make either of them today. Or, for that matter, The Liver Birds, Men Behaving Badly or even Not Going Out.Why? Lodgers can no longer lounge around together on some dog-eared sofa because living rooms simply no longer exist in many rented properties. When a landlord sees a living room or a dining room, what they see is enhanced rental yield. Why have shared spaces and shared experiences, when the room can be turned into another bedroom? The tenants can pop a chicken korma ready-meal into a microwave and eat it in their bedrooms. It doesn’t make for good TV drama – but it’s certainly very profitable. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Renting: why are we seeing the death of the living room? | Patrick Collinson

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