In her early twenties Rachel Bagenal was doing what most young Londoners do — renting in shared houses, building her career and hanging out with friends (notably her partner Harry Dwyer, a former flatmate Simon Chouffot, and Neil Double, a work friend). In many ways the four were in the same boat: loving London but tired of the chaos and insecurity of the lifestyle they were stuck in because they lacked the funds to buy places of their own.
Debating their options, they dreamed about clubbing together, buying some land and building their own homes. But after some light-touch research about the cost of buying a plot and paying for a build, they quickly realised that the costs and complexity of such a project was far beyond their collective resources.
But the idea of building rather than simply buying homes persisted. “We found the whole idea of shared ownership uninspiring,” says Bagenal. “Harry and I did try many times to buy a doer-upper too, but there were always developers interested and they always did go to a cash buyer. We thought there should be another option for first time buyers like us, without the bank of mum and dad.”
In 2013 the four friends decided to stop talking and start doing. They set up a not-for-profit developer to provide affordable homes for themselves and others in the same situation. Their big idea was that the homes they built would be habitable — and thus mortgageable — but not be fully finished either. This would reduce construction costs, and the concept inspired the name Naked House.
Unlike a commercial developer, Naked House would not cream a profit margin off the top, meaning they could sell their homes at around 20 per cent below market levels.
That was 2013, and Bagenal, now 45, and Chouffot, now 46, were both renting in Hackney. Bagenal was working in the housing and regeneration department of Hackney Council, and Chouffot was a chef. Dwyer, now 45, was directing music videos, and was renting a room in a windowless former carpet factory in Shoreditch, while Double, who also works in housing, was the only one with a toehold on the housing ladder. He had managed to buy a small shared ownership flat in Poplar, which meant he was paying a mortgage and rent at the same time.
In their spare time the foursome started looking at sites and researching funding options. This led them to Enfield Council, which had some small plots of land, unused garages and car parks on its estates that it was looking to repurpose. Sadiq Khan and the GLA were also supportive, offering seed funding when Naked House was in its early stages, and a £500,000 grant in 2017.
The whole process of taking over the publicly-owned sites was frustratingly slow and convoluted, and it was not until 2019 that Enfield Council green-lit the handover. Then came the process of raising “several million pounds” to pay for the sites and fund the build, bolstering the GLA money with loans from the Charities Aid Foundation, Charity Bank and the Big Issue.
In 2020 architects OMMX drew up plans for 22 homes — a mix of flats, bungalows and townhouses — across three sites. After a difficult period trying to find a contractor during the early pandemic, just as supply chain problems plus inflation were together hiking costs, work began on site in late 2024, more than a decade after the birth of Naked House.
Life, of course, had moved on by then. Disillusioned by the cost of London living, the co-founders of Naked House have one by one taken an exit strategy. Bagenal and Dwyer now live in Oxford with their seven-year-old, and Bagenal commutes back to her council job in the capital while Dwyer has graduated from videos to a YouTube channel.
Double, his husband and their child have decamped to Nottingham, where he still works in housing, but as a consultant. Chouffot is based down in Devon.
“It is the typical story of the people who we are trying to help now,” he says. “We got asked to leave our rental accommodation two or three times because the landlord wanted to sell, and we couldn’t afford to buy. Leaving was the only other option.”
“We wanted to get this done as a model for how small sites could be used for affordable housing”
Neil Double
Chouffot has also had a career change, and now runs two residential boat moorings — Wenlock Basin and Gainsborough Wharf, both in Islington, commuting to London most weeks for a day or so for work.
“It dawned on us quite early on that we probably wouldn’t be able to live in the homes we were building,” says Double. “We were working with Enfield, which wanted people who live or work in the borough to get priority for the homes, and we didn’t. But we still wanted to get this done, as a model for how small sites could be used for affordable housing.”
Over the past two years the friends have devoted untold hours overseeing the three builds from their new homes, watching them grow out of the ground. The first units will be completed by the end of the summer and they hope the first residents will be in situ this year.
The idea of an unfinished home might sound off-putting, but Chouffot says that he finds the shell homes stylish — think exposed blockwork and pipes and polished concrete floors. “It is a raw aesthetic,” he says. Missing elements include bath panels and bathroom tiles, and kitchens are serviceable but not filled with integrated coffee machines and dishwashers. The future owners — as well as priority for those living or working in Enfield they must be first-time buyers with a household income of less than £90,000 — will be able to finish them off to their own tastes in their own time.
There are three one- and two-bedroom flats, priced from £280,000; five one-bedroom bungalows priced from £288,000, and designed so that they can be remodelled to create two-bedroom homes; and 14 two-bedroom townhouses, priced from £336,000 which have the potential to extend into three-bedroom homes.
Although certainly not peanuts, these prices compare well to open market homes.
A new-build home in the capital currently costs an average of £791,000 according to housing analyst Plumplot.
Separate government data finds that first-time buyers put down an average deposit of £124,000 — buyers of a Naked House home would need from £28,000 for a 10 per cent deposit.
Although they are not directly benefiting from the completion of the Enfield homes, the friends are excited about meeting the people who will move into them — and curious about how they will finish them. They also hope to recruit some of them onto the Naked House board to help steer the company’s future plans to build more homes elsewhere in London.
“Even though it has taken a long time the need hasn’t gone away,” says Bagenal. “We hope what we have done here is create a blueprint we can apply elsewhere. These garage sites are all over the London and they are pretty difficult for developers to use.”
Double also hopes to mentor others with similar dreams of building their own homes — hopefully in a more sensible time frame. “We can definitely work with them, because we have been through the pain,” he says.
For more information on Naked House, visit nakedhouse.uk
