School-bus sized London apartment lists for $1.4M

An English developer is asking $1.4 million for a London home with roughly as much living space as a school bus, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Robin Swailes bought the 290-square-foot detached home in Chelsea five years ago for $825,000, according to the Journal, and spent another $470,000 renovating the one bedroom, one bathroom property.

The asking price works out to more than $4,800 a square foot.

The listing broker is Edward McCulloch.

“I could see the opportunity to make it a really special place to live,” Swailes told the Journal.

Swailes said the appeal of the home, besides the gut renovation, is that it’s centrally located near a major shopping strip and overlooks a park called St. Luke’s Gardens.

The cottage’s new interior was inspired by Sailes’ Lamborghini Urus, down to the Y-shaped fanlight above the front door and wall-mounted Bose sound system. The curved steel staircase leading to the second-floor bedroom cost $35,000, as much as the entire kitchen renovation, which added black cabinetry and Miele appliances.

Furnishing the home ran Swailes more than $60,000, including $10,000 for a purple leather window seat overlooking the park. The bed pulls out of a custom-made walnut wardrobe that was designed to meet the measurements of the bedroom.

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Outside, Swailes kept the home’s original English brick and he redesigned a rooftop terrace by adding railings, hedging and an electric hydraulic weatherproof skylight that serves as the door.

“It was like restoring an old classic car—lots of love and passion,” Swailes told the Journal.
The home was built in the 1800s, according to property records cited by the Journal, and is believed to have been a gravedigger’s cottage for a burial ground in the park, according to McCulloch.

The former owner, who bought the house in 1968, used the bottom floor as a small convenience store and occasionally slept on the second level.

– Harrison Connery