You might think an estate agent in East London is taking the piss with it’s latest listing, but you can actually buy a toilet for £110,000.
An upcoming auction features a former public convenience (aka public toilets) on the Isle of Dogs, offering over 1,000 square feet of space with freehold status and a guide price set at £110,000.
Though the property requires complete renovation, it does enjoy a prime riverside location near a DLR station, a park, and the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.
And across London, a Victorian underground lavatory in West Norwood is also up for auction, with a guide price of £150,000
Would you pay £110,000 to own an old loo?
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Yes
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No
The property features distinctive glass brick details that provide natural lighting and former planning permission for conversion into a café, presenting a unique opportunity for repurposing.
And while conversion into a residential or commercial space demands a bold architectural vision, previous transformations across the capital demonstrate the successful and charming reuse of such buildings.
Though they may not appeal to everyone, former public conveniences have been repurposed into cafés as well as bars and hotels, underscoring a broader urban trend of adapting quirky, unconventional spaces.
For example, the WC Bars, located in Bloomsbury and Clapham, showcase the potential for these buildings to become vibrant social hubs.
The Attendant café, operating from a subterranean Fitzrovia toilet, exemplifies how such unique premises appeal especially to young professionals seeking novel experiences within the capital.
Meanwhile, The Netty in Oxford is a former public toilet that has been transformed into a boutique hotel, receiving international attention with features in the New York Times Style Magazine, underscoring the potential for strategic design and entrepreneurial vision to elevate unlikely properties into luxurious destinations.
For buyers less interested in commercial hospitality uses, these former conveniences can be converted into distinctive residential homes or rental properties too, subject to securing the necessary planning consent.
But if you’re feeling inspired to transform the former loos, you’ll need to act promptly.
The auctions for Manchester Road public toilets, E14, and the Robson Road site in West Norwood, handled by Savills, are due to take place on 21 and 22 October.
And they’re not the only unconventional London properties to hit the market in recent weeks, as a double garage located beneath a block of flats in Clapham Common, south-west London, has recently been listed with a staggering asking price of £150,000.
The listing by Noble Estates promotes the property as a ‘large double garage’ and a ‘rare opportunity’, with capacity to park two to three vehicles, situated in a prime spot close to the shops, wine bars, and restaurants of Clapham Old Town.
The £150,000 price tag for a garage space stands in sharp contrast to the housing costs typical of towns in the north-east of England, where entire houses are often sold for a third of the price of the garage.
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