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December 6, 2024
PI Global Investments
Property

‘I always feel one step from being homeless as a property guardian – I’ve had ceilings fall down around me’


Charley Hullah has been a property guardian in London for 10 years. He saw the scheme as a way to live in the city while being able to afford to be creative, which he says is essential for him. “Guardianship has been a way for me to try and not give up on my art,” Charley said. “I have to do it, I don’t really have a choice. It’s just the thing I need to do to stay sane.”

His first properties as a guardian cost him around £200 a month. “Back then, it seemed like a completely alternative way of being in a city,” he said. It gave Charley space to learn skills he needed to develop as a musician and as a creative.




“I thought was really cool then”, Charley, 30, said. “Years ago, if you’d asked me to recommend it, I’d have said yes because it allowed many creative people to do similar to me.”

READ MORE: ‘One moment I’m driving a Range Rover – the next I’m living on the floor under a footbridge’

Charley is currently living in a former council house in North London(Image: Facundo Arrizabalaga/MyLondon)

Property guardianship allows people to live in buildings, or parts of buildings, for a lower rate than normal in exchange for ‘guarding’ the otherwise-empty property. Often these properties can be offices, former residential buildings, or even more unusual spaces like former banks and care homes.

But property guardianship is almost nothing like renting, Charley said. “There are almost no rights. We don’t have a contract like a tenant”, he claimed. Charley explained that property guardians sign licence agreements, which gives the guardian a licence to occupy a room or space within a property, but not access to the whole building.

Charley is currently living in a former council house in North London, but was previously living in an old office building where he had access to just one room within the huge property. Charley said he did not feel safe living there, claiming “ceilings were falling down” and that there were leaks.

He alleged that because the licence agreement as a guardian doesn’t have the same regulations as renters’ contracts do, the guardianship company can raise the rent as much they want, as many times as they want. Charley lived in the office building for around a year, and the rent was raised three times during that period, he said.



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