Damian’s sticker says his budget is £1,000 a month and he is looking for somewhere to live “nearby”. Nesh’s announces he has £1,500 a month to spend and wants to live in the East End. Julia’s badge shows she is searching for someone to pay £888 a month for a room in London Fields, Hackney.
They are among about 50 tenants and landlords milling around a basement bar in Shoreditch, east London, wearing their budgets on pink and white lapel stickers, and imbibing a drink or two as they try to find people they might share a house with.
It is a scene being repeated in bars around London, and beyond, every week at “speed flatmating” events – like speed dating but with a front door key thrown in.
About 15,000 people a year now attend these find-a-flatshare functions, according to the website Spareroom.co.uk, and they are spreading fast. There are flatmating nights at locations all over the capital, and now in Manchester and New York too.
Each location is different, says Matt Hutchinson, who set up Spareroom in 2004 and runs the events.
“At the ones in the Docklands, people often don’t turn up until the end as they work late,” he says. “In west London, people were a lot more reserved and we had to herd them together.” And in New York? “People don’t tend to drink – it’s much harder to get the venues because you can’t guarantee the bar spend.”
The Shoreditch event is full of mainly young professionals – media types who want to live in London’s trendy, but increasingly expensive, East End.
The number of speed flatmating nights – and the number of people turning up – have both grown since the credit crisis.
At first, there was a post-crisis mortgage shortage squeezed first-time buyers out of the market. More recently it has been soaring house prices that have locked those in their 20s and 30s out of the property market. In Shoreditch even the budgets at the bottom of the scale were enough to repay a reasonable sized mortgage. But without a big deposit to put down, most of these people would still struggle to get a home loan.
As one of the few people at the event wearing a white sticker – signalling they had a room to fill – Julia is not short of attention. “There are always more people looking for rooms than people with rooms – they tend to get swamped,” says Hutchinson.
Each event is ticketed and the organisers try to get a good balance between seekers and providers, but homes are often snapped up before the date night comes round.
According to Spareroom, there are 10 people chasing every room in the capital, and tonight’s crowd reflects this. There are just a smattering of white stickers against a sea of pink. Sometimes, says Hutchinson, they get homeowners looking for lodgers, but usually it is renters looking to replace a departing housemate. On this occasion, that seems to be the case, although there are also two professional landlords with 25 rooms to fill who are trying to boost their profits by cutting out letting agency fees.
Hutchinson says for many people forced to share, going to a stranger’s home can be daunting. These events allow people to meet on neutral territory.
One flatmater, Hannah, describes how she once ran away from a rental property in Hackney she had gone to see after finding a notice on the door warning against raising weapons against the householder.
The imbalance between househunters and those with property available is not, however, all bad news. Flatmating nights also allow people to “buddy up” and find people to go househunting with.
Hayley, a primary school teacher who recently moved to London from Canada, has a budget of £600 a month and is looking for somewhere to live near her job in Stratford, east London.
“In the kind of place I want to live, I couldn’t afford to live on my own,” she says. So she is seeking either a room or a like-minded househunter.
Adverts in the letting agency across the road show the financial benefits of living with other people. Two flats are up for rent on Phipp Street in the heart of Shoreditch – a one-bedroom flat costs £395 a week while for £475 you get two bedrooms.
Move further out to Bethnal Green and a house with four double bedrooms is going for £695 a week.
For some, who could afford their own place, it is the social aspect that is particularly appealing. Ben, who arrived in London to start a job only last week, is wearing a sticker showing he has £1,000 a month to spend. “I’d hate to live on my own, I need people around,” he says.
So far Ben’s househunting has convinced him of one thing. “The rental market is crazy,” he says. “I’ve looked at a few places in Shoreditch, Islington, Aldgate and Angel and all the places are shit. Either the place is vastly different to what’s shown on the website or the housemates aren’t compatible.”
Generally, people don’t seem fussy – most are open-minded about where they live and who with – but there’s one little luxury they almost all lust after: a living room.
For many landlords, a living room is a room that could be a bedroom, and they are fast disappearing in the flatshare market.
But the would-be flatmaters want space where they can just sit. Several say the only reason they are looking for a new place is simply because there is no living room where they are currently living.
“If you want it to be somewhere you live, not just somewhere to sleep, then you need a communal space, ” says one. “You have to have a living room,” says another. “Not just a big kitchen.”
Julia’s flat has a living room, but it turns out that she is the one moving out and she has strict criteria for who will replace her.
“I’m looking for someone in work clothes because my flatmate is a lawyer. It has to be a woman. But a lot of people’s budgets are too low,” she says. “It’s hard. It’s like I’m matchmaking for my flatmate.”
As the night wears on, it looks like it has worked for two women – one with a room, one without – who were already bonding before they discovered a shared birthplace, and for others who seem to have successfully buddied up for a joint search.
Fortysomething Wayne, from Wales, and looking for somewhere to live while working in London during the week, is less lucky. This crowd is too young for him. “My wife would kill me if I found a place with two 25-year-old women,” he says.
But he is not giving up – he grabbed his coat and sped off. In search of some older potential flatmates at another flatmating event taking place at the same time a couple of miles away in north London.
