[imagesource: My Auction]

The photos that accompany a property listing are helluva important.

With somebody skilled behind the lens, you can make a rather ordinary space appear habitable. It’s what turns a hovel into a ‘fixer-upper’.

Flogging a seven square metre microflat renders any photography skills obsolete, however.

Last week, we covered the microflat in Lower Clapton, London, which was going for a starting price of £50 000 on auction.

Here’s the latest via The Guardian:

[The flat] has sold for 80% above its minimum listing price at £90,000 [around R1,85 million].

The microflat, located in a Victorian conversion in Lower Clapton, east London, is believed to be the capital’s smallest-ever property, marking a turn towards tiny homes driven by the UK’s housing crisis of soaring rent and property prices.

Image: My Auction

The apartment had a minimum price at auction of £50,000, but sold at 80% higher at £90,000. After its listing it was described on social media as a “posh cell”.

I’ve always dreamt of sleeping in a bed above my fridge and microwave.

There’s a tenant in the microflat at present. Unsurprisingly, they live elsewhere for the majority of the time and spend “just a night or two each week in the flat, for work”.

Image: My Auction

They’re forking out £800 a month (roughly R16 500) in rent for that privilege. You obviously can’t draw a direct comparison between renting in London and what the same amount gets you here in Cape Town, but we’ll do it anyway.

Here’s a R16 500 rental in Gardens, and another in the Foreshore. Neither of them requires that you sleep above your microwave.

ABC News has a breakdown of the bidding process:

The online auction for the flat began at midday on February 22, but the first bid wasn’t placed until the next day at 1:44pm, with an initial offer of 76,000 pounds.

Bidding then escalated by 1,000 pounds with each of the 14 bids, before bidder six swooped in seconds before the auction closed at 4pm on February 23 with the winning offer of 90,000 pounds.

In the microflat’s favour, it generates close to £10 000 a year in rental income. A decade down the line and it’s pretty much paid for itself.

Still, you know, it’s a bit silly that this is where the London property market now is:

If the single bed isn’t big enough, the flat could theoretically fit two queen size beds — although it would take up what remains of the unit’s floor space, and getting them in the door could prove challenging.

Image: Jill Mead/The Guardian

All up, the flat is half as big as an average parking space, has enough space to lay out six and a half bath towels, and is a quarter of the size of the average hotel room.

Stunning.

Now if you youngsters just spent less on the gym, coffee, Netflix, and avos maybe you could get a foot in the market.

[sources:guardian&abc]