Cosy room in calm,clean&creative multi-lingual circus&acting house 2 bathrooms,diner,lounge,garden

One double room at £367 per month available in large, newly renovated creative household sharing with multi-lingual acting/circus/politics students.

I have one medium sized (2.6m x 4m) double room available in a 6-bedroom house in Hackney. I will be showing the room Mon 11th April in the evening and perhaps also up to Sunday 17th March if needed. The room is available from 4th May at the latest, but you can move in as early as 16th April if needed. We have four guys and a girl so need another girl to even out the numbers more. Sorry to discriminate but balance is important.

You will be sharing with myself, a 29 year old multi-lingual journalist turned acting/circus student who is very free-spirited, trains five hours of circus a day, does Parkour in his free time and tries to do Yoga every day; Felipe, a chilled out and hilarious Columbian professional handstand performer, Gary, 28, an acting student from Dublin; Marco, an Italian director of short films; and Valentina, a fantastic freelance photographer who loves music.

Although we are all students, this is not a student party house as we are mostly fairly active and busy, but kitchen rendezvous are common. If you like to get wasted and jump up and down at 1.00 am, this is not the house. I, personally, love to have very deep and conversations and take them right to the end: no taboos, no fear of offence, just a fascinating exchange of two open consciousnesses. Life is beautiful and fascinating in such situations.

The ideal flat-mate would be a multi-lingual creative and physically active type who is easy going, open minded, tolerant, considerate and clean and tidy. I would love to have someone involved in physical performing arts to train/stretch/work out routines with. I do about 5 hours of exercise a day, eat very healthily and don’t drink. I am applying for a place on a full-time circus course next year so all my efforts are focuses on this. I have in the past been a massive drinker and smoker but my lifestyle is so different now that my current timetable would likely clash with the carefree type partier I used to be, so bear that in mind when considering living here. I work very hard and play very hard but these days ‘playing hard’ is more about free-running and dancing than staying out all night. I really love an active life-style and now I am a freelancer, I will never go back to an office job. I speak French, Spanish, Russian, Italian and German and have traveled and worked in quite a few different countries so I like being in an international and varied environment.

We have a cleaning system and rota in place and I can’t emphasise enough how important this is for flat harmony. The idea is not that cleaning is an end in itself but that once an agreed system is in place, we can forget about it and nobody has to be bothered by other people’s mess and dirt day after day so we can all enjoy each other’s varying personalities.

The following two paragraph may seem a bit anal but are fundamental:

To try and maximize compatibility, here are the kind of things we have agreed on: tea-towels are only used for drying clean things, not cleaning, we do our washing up straight away and leave the sink clear of food after use, we check that we are leaving the surfaces clean of grease or dirt after cooking and wipe down frequently, we leave the kitchen table and surfaces free of stuff so they’re easy to clean, we walk around in slippers or indoor shoes to keep the floors clean, we put dry dishes away frequently, we rinse down the bath and sink after using the bathroom and leave the floor clean and dry for the next user by using a bathmat. Everyone likes to have a party or a big meal with friends now and again but for me that doesn’t mean that the house should get trashed. Also, any flatmates too busy to get involved shouldn’t have to spend the next day in a dirty house/kitchen as a result.

What all this means is that we can walk into the kitchen and bathroom and use them without having to clean or tidy first. It means we can put a book on the kitchen table without worrying about it getting wet or covered in butter because someone spread their bread without a plate and then left the grease mark. Basically, it means that we all take responsibility for our own mess and can just concentrate on using the shared space to get on. If you think that this sounds over the top then that’s understandable. Some of my good friends are like that. But it means that we shouldn’t live together. I don’t expect anyone to arrive and blindly follow the system we have developed. If you have a suggestion to change or improve it, then that’s great. The only thing that will not work is if someone’s attitude is: “It doesn’t matter”, and ignores the fact that someone is doing their cleaning for them.

Smokers are fine (I used to be one) but need to agree to smoke only outside, not out the window or in rooms, including during parties. As there will be four guys and one girl, we need to fill the last room with a girl to balance the house. I’m so sorry to be one of those ‘looking for a girl ads’.

A group of people are moving out so four out of the six in the house will be new people so you should be on an even keel when it comes to getting to know each other and creating a functioning community of individuals. The most important thing is that each individual in the house can pursue their chosen lifestyle and socialize within the house as much or as little as they want. I am trying to create a relaxed, considerate and open vibe. Help us do that.

The house has just been completely refurbished to a reasonable standard and has laminate flooring throughout. It has: 6 bedrooms over two floors; a large lounge with ridiculously crap but new sofas; two small bathrooms with bath+shower attachment and a toilet each; a kitchen diner arrangement with many cupboards, a new oven, and enough space to serve as a communal area in itself, which is where we normally socialise; a concrete backyard with scruffy flower bed and a utility room with washing machine and room for drying clothes. Now the weather is getting warmer, it will be legendary out on the patio for barbecues.

The photos you see are the following: the house and our ‘leafy’ road; the Lego lounge; the kitchen, one of the bathrooms, the available room: which is a respectable 2.6m x 4m, a bollard in Valencia… , and me doing a back-somersault on South Bank.

Bills, which are on top of the £367, have been around £30-50 due to the cold weather but should drop to £30 or much less now it is warm. One potential influencing factor will be council tax. We currently all have student exempt status but if my student status changes, then the other tenants have agreed to pay the extra £20 per month each if necessary. If you take the room you will also have to agree to this. As I am the only one on the tenancy agreement, I cannot be ‘invisible’ for council tax purposes. The place is such a bargain that even with a possible extra £20 it’s still cheap. There is also £5 a month to be paid by direct debit to me for phone and internet.

If you decide to take the room you will need to immediately pay one month’s deposit, to allow me to pay the people vacating their room, and pay the rent in advance by the 15th of April, which will vary depending on when you move in. This will mean your rent will be paid until the 20th May. We pay the rent to the agent on the 20th of every month in advance from our rent account and we each pay our individual rent into the rent account on the 15th (5 days early). I am about to renew the contract for the house and there is always the possibility the landlord will bump the rent up a bit, but I don’t think that will happen, and if he did, I don’t think it would be by much each.

I am the only on the tenancy agreement as I found the house. The only extra right I claim for that is the right to choose who moves in and to deal with the agent. I also insist on a fair cleaning system. I have signed a licensee agreement with the other flatmates, which effectively makes them joint tenants, and so jointly liable for the rent. The rent is shared equally between all, with the four bigger rooms paying £380 instead of the £367 for the two smaller rooms. Whoever gets the room will sign a licensee agreement with me and all the other licensees from the 20th April.

To be considered please make sure you reply to this post with an accommodation profile including things like: what your main interests are on a day to day basis, what you are like to live with, how you deal with cleaning in a shared house, and what you are doing right now in London.

I can’t wait to hear from you. Get in touch if you have any questions.

Cheers,

Paul x