Property guardianship offers cheap rent but comes with precarious rights

Katrina pays £580 a month to live in a sprawling Edwardian mansion in Hampstead that once housed elderly residents. For that price, she gets a bedroom, bills, council tax, and something else: the company of roughly fifty other people scattered across the grand rooms and corridors of a building that has been empty since 2015. She could not afford to rent privately in London. This arrangement—living in a vacant property in exchange for heavily discounted rent—is what property guardians do, and the number of people choosing it has grown sharply as housing costs have climbed.

The economics are straightforward. Property guardians typically pay thirty to fifty percent less than private tenants, sometimes with utilities included. Katrina's savings amount to about four hundred pounds monthly below the London average. In return, they serve a practical purpose: their presence protects empty buildings from squatters, vandalism, and decay. The trade-off is substantial. Guardians hold what the law calls a "licence to occupy" rather than a tenancy, which strips away most of the protections that standard renters enjoy. Landlords can visit without warning. Deposits need not be protected. Repairs beyond those explicitly named in the agreement are not guaranteed. And eviction requires only twenty-eight days' notice, with no reason needed.

The mansion where Katrina lives illustrates both the appeal and the reality. It sits on 1.7 acres of gardens with grand staircases, south-west-facing balconies, and chandeliers in some rooms. It is also quite run down. Mushrooms grow on the walls. Leaks appear regularly. Pieces of balcony stonework have fallen away. Katrina describes the place as romantic and incredible despite these problems, and she genuinely enjoys the communal aspect—the shared kitchens and living areas, the mix of residents from lawyers to artists, the regular socializing. But communal living brings friction too. Noise disputes arise. The guardianship company that manages the property, Lowe, operates a strict vetting process and has asked two residents to leave for antisocial behaviour, including one case involving alleged sexual harassment.

The precariousness weighs on Katrina's mind. A developer purchased the former care home last year with plans to convert it into flats. She will eventually have to leave, and she has no guarantee of when or where she will go next. "It's really precarious in that sense," she says. "It's not guaranteed to last."

Across the UK, between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people live as property guardians, mostly in major cities and predominantly aged between twenty and thirty-five. The Property Guardian Providers Association reports that applications have risen sharply as rental costs have soared. David Hale, thirty-two, became a guardian nearly a decade ago and has never lived in standard rental housing. He and his wife occupy a large space in a converted primary school in Brixton, South London, for around fifteen hundred pounds monthly including bills and council tax. They save approximately a thousand pounds each month compared to what similar private accommodation would cost. Yet even Hale, who has thrived in communal living, sees guardianship as temporary. He and his wife are saving to buy their own home. "We wouldn't want to share toilets and bathrooms forever," he says. "We also want to start a family."

The industry argues that guardianship addresses a genuine crisis. Over a million homes stand empty across the UK, along with tens of millions of square feet of unused commercial property. By placing people in these buildings, guardianship companies say they are providing affordable temporary housing while protecting vacant structures. The PGPA believes the model could help ease the broader housing shortage.

But housing charity Shelter sees something darker in the trend. Chief executive Sarah Elliott argues that the rise of property guardianship reveals how people are being pushed "further and further afield just to keep a roof over their heads." For most guardians, she contends, this is not a genuine alternative to affordable, stable housing—it is a symptom of a system that has failed them. The question hanging over the entire arrangement is whether guardianship solves the housing crisis or simply masks how deep it has become.