Interior designer and former pop star Pearl Lowe is renting out her Somerset mansion to holidaymakers to cover the 'excessive' energy bills that come with owning a sprawling historic home. For Wiltshire-based therapist Juno Shears, the income from staycationers occupying her five-bedroom former hunting lodge will, she hopes, offset the cost of a family holiday in the Azores; while architect Adam Richards' "sci-fi and Roman-inspired" own building on the South Downs, quite simply, "has to pay its own rather large mortgage".
Middle-class Britons have always used their physical possessions to enhance their lifestyles: think of Edwardian landladies renting out their attics to respectable tenants; or early retirees, who increase their purchasing power during the holidays by swapping homes with their foreign counterparts through home exchange companies such as HomeLink, launched in 1961.
What's new is that ultra-affluent Brits are also taking action: renting out their main homes through vetted villa and holiday brands such as Sawday's; luxury cottage stable Unique Homestays; and quirky bolthole specialist Coolstays. In part, the new willingness of posh people to open their homes to paying guests is down to the rising cost of living, with larger piles (with five bedrooms or more) having seen their annual energy bills rise by more than £3,000 a year since 2020 to rise. and mortgages worth tens of thousands of pounds.
Partly it also has to do with the high cost of the luxury vacations this cohort enjoys. Luxury hotel room prices rose 34 percent between 2019 and 2023, compared to the average vacation package inflation rate of 12 percent, and in 2023, airline tickets were 53 percent more expensive than before the pandemic, the online travel agency said. Kayaking.
The new 'Sawday's set' typically eschews economic sharing giant Airbnb, preferring to rent out their homes through curated holiday villa brands that offer a personalized service for holiday bookers and owners alike, and the assurance that owners with expensive interiors won't have to home will return to wine-stained Ottoman or bachelor traffic cones floating in their ornamental ponds.
It was the cost of living - and the feeling of rattling around a big house now that two of her four children have left the nest - that made Pearl Lowe (a former Britpop wild child who was a singer with indie bands Powder and Lodger) the 1990s) to rent out her seven-bedroom country house in Frome, Somerset, for holidays. "I feel quite guilty that we're in a big, drafty house that we don't really use," she explains.
Lowe rents Pearl's Place, her main residence in Frome - where she lives with her husband, Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey, and their two youngest children, Frankie and Betty - as well as a seaside holiday home in Winchelsea, with Unique Homestays. The Somerset estate, which sleeps up to 14 adults and four children, dates back to the early 19th century and features interiors with quirky artefacts, four-poster beds and maximalist twinkling chandeliers, as well as a gypsy wagon and wood-burning convection oven. bath on site. It's yours this week for €10,595.
"A photographer once called my style 'rock 'n' roll romantic,'" says Pearl, whose eldest daughter is model Daisy Lowe, 35. "I think that's about right: Guests certainly have plenty of fun objects to talk about." to talk. !"
Juno Shears, 43, is keen to flee Blighty with holidaymakers' money. "With two growing boys and [my husband] Since I can work anywhere for a month in the summer, it makes sense to use the house to earn some extra money to cover the costs of a vacation," says Shears. She plans to start renting out Manor Farm House, her family's five-bedroom Flemish brick country home set amid the verdant greenery of rural Devizes, in the summer of 2024 - and has set her weekly starting rate at £4,000. Juno and her husband Chris, a clean energy investor, bought their five-bedroom house in 2018 - "in a bit of a state, to be honest," Shears recalls - from the Crown Estate, which had rented the property to a tenant farmer. The Shears have since invested more than £150,000 in returning the mansion to the grandeur of its Victorian heyday, when it was the fox hunting lodge and weekend retreat of THS Sotheron-Estcourt, a patrician Tory politician.
The Shears chose Sawday's, Juno explains, after remembering discussions about the brand in her youth. "All my parents' rich friends booked through Sawday's," says Shears, whose father was notable 1980s Chelsea restaurateur Harvey Sambrook. "I liked that people who come through Sawday's books are 'Sawday's people' and book with them their entire lives. It gives you more confidence as a homeowner."
Architect Adam Richards, 56, describes Cadence - his four-bed modernist family home in Petworth on the Sussex Downs, listed with Unique Homestays from £5,250 per week - as "a labor of love". Having designed hundreds of homes for others, he explains that this house was his pièce de résistance: "something we can enjoy as a family." Richards lives in the property with his wife Jessica and his three children. The family moved into the house in 2019 after a two-year construction period. Located against a wooded grove, Cadence has a large central kitchen, secret stairs and a special living area for children. It is a short walk from Petworth House. The style, says Richards, references classical Georgian and Roman architecture, but is also modern, with nods to the sharp futurism of science fiction films. The main reason Richards rents out his family home to holidaymakers is to cover the costs of his 'eye-watering' mortgage and the day-to-day costs of family life.
That said, Richards also likes that paying guests can enjoy his design. "When designing the house I really thought about the way it interacts with the landscape and the changing light levels throughout the day," he says. "It's nice when guests appreciate that."
The new Sawday's Set fuels consumer sentiment for authentic and ethical stays. The trend is a rejection of the standard holiday homes of the 2010s, with their white walls, lack of decoration and kitchens with two spoons and a colander (a look sometimes called the 'Airbnb aesthetic'). It is also about a push to spend holiday allowances ethically, in a way that does not worsen housing shortages in rural or coastal areas and is better for the environment. In this regard, what could be better than making the most of another family's glamorous home as a summer retreat?
That is, if you intend to behave well. All three families lock their belongings in attics or children's rooms where holidaymakers don't go, although there will always be an element of trust in letting strangers sleep in your bed. For example, research among Italian home exchangers has shown that people who are willing to open their home to strangers score higher on the psychological traits of openness and adventurousness.
The main benefit of vetted villa brands, although they take a higher booking fee cut (typically 14 to 20 percent plus annual listing fees of around £300, compared to the average Airbnb's 3 percent), is the prospect of avoiding the party. brigade.
Pearl Lowe tells me she was recently contacted by a group looking for a celebratory stay for a 21-year-old's birthday. "I tend to get nauseous when I have bachelorette parties or 21st birthdays here," she explains. However, she was surprised to discover that the group of young women who inquired booked a gentle, women-only yoga retreat. "For a 21st birthday!" Lowe shouts. "I think we need to teach these kids a thing or two!"
