London rental crisis: Two cats advertise a single bed in a Kensal Rise living room for £1,000 a month
The London rental crisis keeps breaking all records, but this sublet advertisement has to take the (fish-flavoured) biscuit.
Two cats in Kensal Rise have apparently gained the keyboard skills to type out an advertisement on Spareroom, subletting a single bed in the living room of their one-bedroom flat — for £1,000 a month.
“We are a couple of Siamese cats that live in a large one bedroom ground floor flat with a private garden on a quiet street in a great location,” opens the listing.
“We live with a lovely couple of humans who take care of us, they think the place is theirs, but it’s ours 😺”
The furry live-in landlords go on to elaborate that “it’s a very large room with high ceilings, which we cats love to lounge around”.
A single bed sits in the corner of the living room, facing two sofas. “The couch can also open into a double,” said the cats. “You even have a desk in the corner if you do some work from home.”
The generous feline property barons stress that their human companions rarely use the communal space. “The female human is not around much so it’s just us and the male,” they said. “Aside from watering the plants he never goes into the living room, so we thought we’d rent it out on a room-only basis.”
There’s also a kitchen, dining room and a back garden, which is modelled by the furry slumlords prowling around an outdoor table. Funky cat accessories can be spotted in many of the accompanying photographs, including a scratching post disguised as a tree and a hammock in a sunny window spot.
Potential tenants must be an “animal lover” and “cool to share with us cats”.
The twee wording belies the increasingly feral situation that the London rental market has descended into.
Private rents in the capital rose 11 per cent between April 2023 and 2024, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
It now costs £2,633 a month on average to rent a home London, according to the latest data from Rightmove. There are now only six postcodes in the whole of London where you could find a room to rent for under £800 a month. In Kensal Rise the average rent is now £2,478 a month, according to Hamptons, rising 22 per cent between 2019 and 2024.
Twitter user Eloise Hendy said the room advert, which she spotted cross-posted to the Facebook group “London sublets”, was proof that “the london rental scene is the wild west”.
Still, if you like cats, it’s probably a better deal than the room advertised earlier this year that required free babysitting services.
