London flat advert written from the perspective of cats and offering mattress in living room for £1,000pm goes viral
6 June 2024, 11:27 | Updated: 6 June 2024, 11:38
If you thought the London rental market could not get more perplexing, two cats appear to have gained some computer skills and are advertising a £1,000pm sublet for their living room.
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The two cats, from Kensal Rise, are advertising the room in the one-bedroom flat on Spareroom, and are understandably requiring any applicants to be an "animal lover".
The listing said: “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.
“We live with a lovely couple of humans who take care of us, they think the place is theirs, but it’s ours 😺”
The post has been mercilessly mocked online after going viral with one user concluding from the cats' offer: "The London rental scene is the wild west".
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The feline landlord describes the flat as a "very large room with high ceilings, which we love to lounge around".
The room has a single bed with two facing sofas. One of the couches also opens into a double, the cats explained.
“You even have a desk in the corner if you do some work from home.”
The cats continue to explain that their human owners rarely use the communal space - adding that the "female human is not around much so it’s just us and the male".
“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.”
The room also comes with access to a kitchen, dining room, and back garden. Two cats can be seen in one of the images demonstrating the outdoor area.
The main requirement is that any potential tenant be "cool to share with us cats".
It comes amid growing horror at the state of the rental market, particularly in major UK cities such as London and Manchester.
Figures show that the average rent in London is now £2,119 per month, a 6.4% growth compared with the last 12 months.
Meanwhile, the average rent across the country is now £1,220 per month after an 8.3% growth in the last year.
There are fears that rising rents are pushing prospective tenants into compromising situations in a bid to keep their monthly outgoing down, with particular concern for the state of some London properties.
It comes after one listing earlier this year required daily babysitting as one of the conditions of renting a room for £400 a month in south London.
The listing stated that an Italian family were looking for a live-in tenant to babysit their "very sweet" children at their Clapham property for three hours a day from Monday to Friday.
So if you're a cat lover, it might be worth taking the felines' offer.
