The London property market’s answer to Ghostbusters is Cityscope, an agency founded by Harris 12 years ago. Among the buildings currently on its books are Francis Bacon’s former home in South Kensington; an old sausage factory in Rotherhithe; a house inside the railings of a London park; and any number of modernist visions in white concrete and glass.
But why do people seek out unconventional homes? Charlie Booth lives with her husband, Tim, at the Old Bakery in Streatham, south London, where her eight-piece jazz ensemble, Charlie Bicknell and the Little Big Band, practises. It’s a long beamed echoing space along the first floor of an old factory, complete with metal swing and ancient lift.
For me it’s a little, well, industrial, but not for Charlie. “We love having concerts in our home,” she says. The space is also handy for her work as an aerialist: she can practise twisting and swinging off sheets hung from the beams. Tim also uses the space to test gadgets for potential sale on his website, Iwantoneofthose.com — everything from miniature helicopters to action skateboarding games.
But life moves on. “We have loved living in this home, but now we have a baby,” says Charlie. “You wouldn’t hear the baby crying across the space.” They are selling the 3,490sq ft flat for £895,000 through Harris’s agency after an offer by Leah Woods, daughter of the Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie, fell through.
Harris, who got into the business of selling unusual properties when he realised the capital was full of people desperate to avoid living in two-up, two-down terraces, recently sold a flat with a boxing ring, another with a rock- climbing wall and a third to a couple who pushed the dining room furniture out of the way on their first viewing to practise their ballroom dancing.
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Inevitably, he attracts celebrities. “One client turned up in a cavalcade of seven blacked-out Range Rovers, with his feng shui expert and yoga teacher to check out every place,” he sighs.
As we bowl along in Harris’s 4x4, viewing some of the London homes on his books, he enthuses about 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington, which is coming to market for the first time since Francis Bacon’s death in 1992.
The unusual thing about Bacon’s house is its history, he explains. “He lived there for 30 years and painted a lot in the studio there.” The painter’s decision to bequeath it — part of his £11m estate — to one of his oldest friends, a handsome Cockney barman called John Edwards, made headlines at the time.
The studio was moved lock, stock and barrel to a Dublin museum and the house has been remodelled, but touches of the interior as it was in Bacon’s lifetime remain, such as the stained-glass windows of Bacon at work done by his friend, Linda McCartney. When the house goes on sale this month for £2.25m, Harris expects it to be snapped up.
To Cityscope’s website flock people like music producer Francesco Cameli who, two years ago, did an internet search for “weird/interesting properties” in his bid to escape the “dull Victorian terraces” every other estate agent was showing him. Cameli’s search led him to buy “the ultimate party house” in south London through Cityscope, with rooms so big you can play Frisbee in them, plus dial-up music, mood lighting and all manner of whizzy gadgetry.
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But now he, too, is selling up. His girlfriend has moved out, and living in a party house with two fluffy cats and a lodger doesn’t have the same appeal.
From the outside, Cameli’s home in Kings Avenue looks like any other Edwardian property in Clapham. But open the front door, and you walk into an enormous room, with guitars mounted on the walls and flickering, Greek temple-style fires. Upstairs, the master bedroom has been carved out of three normal-sized rooms.
But be warned: there are drawbacks to buying a quirky home. Cameli, 31, paid £1.25m for the house and he’s having to sell for the same amount, despite London’s rising market. “I had it on for £1.3m for a while, but nobody was coming through the door,” he says.
“So I dropped the price a bit and we started getting viewings. Everyone is blown away by it, but so far nobody has gone for it I am a bit miffed nobody wants it for £1.3m.”
Harris admits that because a lot of his properties are so individual, their target market is small. “Sometimes they are not the easiest to sell.” But when was being different ever easy?
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Cityscope, 020 7830 9776, www.cityscope.co.uk