‘I pay £580 a month to live in a disused care home’: Property guardians show us around

One of our properties, a former care home in Hampstead, featured in a BBC News article this week looking at the growing role of property guardianship in the UK housing market.

The piece reports that somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people now live as guardians across the UK, a number that’s been climbing as rents continue to rise. Guardians typically pay 30 to 50 per cent less than the private rental average in exchange for occupying and helping to look after vacant buildings, though the article is careful to point out that this comes with fewer legal protections than a standard tenancy.

The BBC spoke to one of our guardians, a postgraduate student who has lived at the Hampstead property for ten months, about what the arrangement is actually like day to day, including the standard of the building and how we manage vetting and community life among residents. The article also asked us directly about two guardians who were asked to leave the property over the years for breaching our conduct standards, one involving an allegation of sexual harassment. We told the BBC plainly that we act quickly and decisively when standards are breached, and that this represents a small minority of cases set against guardians who, overwhelmingly, turn out to be considerate and reliable occupiers.

For landlords and property owners, this is a good example of what proper guardianship management looks like in practice. Leaving a building empty is rarely risk-free, whether that’s squatting, vandalism or simple deterioration from lack of use and upkeep. Placing vetted guardians in the property under clear licence terms, with active oversight of both conduct and condition, is how we manage that risk on an ongoing basis rather than leaving it to chance. The BBC’s questions about our vetting and how we handle breaches reflect standards we hold ourselves to across every property we manage, not just this one.

The article also touches on the bigger picture: industry bodies see guardianship as one sensible response to the estimated million or so homes standing empty across the UK, while housing charities have understandably raised concerns about how well protected guardians are compared with regular tenants. We take that balance seriously. It’s part of why licence terms, vetting and looking after our guardians properly matter as much to us as keeping a building secure and occupied.

The full article is on the BBC News website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4kvge1pyvo