Being a live-in servant may seem like the unhappy lot of those living below stairs in Downton Abbey, but rising rents are forcing many people to take cheap rooms in exchange for cleaning, cat-sitting and teaching IT skills to their landlords.
One advert on easyroommate.com offers a double bedroom in a five-bedroom house in London for £1 a month. Adam Mughal, the landlord, wrote: “I am offering a large clean double room for an IT/business graduate student with a driving licence in exchange for skills. You must have web/mobile development skills.”
He wants help to develop a web application for his business and told the Evening Standard: “I don’t have the resources or the budget to hire a full-time web developer but this opportunity allows someone to stay in London, where accommodation isn’t cheap, and work for me part-time.”
A double room in London costs an average of £692 per month, excluding bills. Private rents in the capital increased by 3.8 per cent in the past year and by 2.5 per cent nationwide.
Another advert offers a single room in Hayes, rent-free, “in exchange for dog sitting/walking and light cleaning”. It says: “This is a good opportunity for someone who is genuinely going through a difficult time or is down on their luck, but this is not a free ride.”
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A double room advertised in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, costs £1 per month “in exchange for school drop-offs and pick-ups” and a double room is available at a hotel in York for £50 per week for someone willing to keep their phone on all night and check in guests who arrive late.
Alison Gibson was asked to leave the London house she had been renting because her landlord wanted to sell. She has spent the past 18 months cat-sitting for friends and living in their homes while they are away.
She said: “Clearly this is not an ideal way for a grown-up working full-time to live. On the plus side, I can still save towards getting a place of my own and more importantly, there’s a lot of heart and friendship in caring for people’s pets.”
Homeshare International, a charity, runs similar schemes. “A householder, usually an older person with a spare room, offers free or low-cost accommodation to another person in exchange for an agreed level of support,” it says.
“The homesharer may provide companionship, shopping, household tasks, gardening, taking the householder to medical appointments, care of pets and, increasingly, help to use the computer.”
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Quid pro quo
Free A 35-year-old Turkish woman posted an advert online asking for a free room in exchange for “15 hours of housework/childcare/teaching Turkish/elder person care” in north London.
£1 per month Double room in three-bedroom house in Dunstable for a part-time student or worker willing to take children to school and bring them home and provide childcare two or three evenings per week.
£50 per week Double en-suite room in a York hotel in exchange for keeping phone on all night and helping guests with late check-in and emergencies.