Meet the movie set: the Londoners who rent out their homes for up to £2k a day

When Nina Watson bought an Edwardian semi in north London she believed it would make a great home for her young family to grow up in. It has turned out to be that, and much more besides.

Buying and renovating the four-bedroom house, bought for £750,000 in 2017, set Watson on course for an accidental career change and a completely different way of life, with models posing with pythons in her living room and hundreds of thousands of social media followers raving over her signature interiors style.

Renting your home as a location for film, TV and photo shoots is becoming an increasingly popular option for homeowners looking to monetise their main asset, although Watson fell into the business quite by chance.

When she and her husband, who works for a local council, moved into the property with their two children aged 16 and 14, it was “very white and beige”. The couple both love design and agreed to give it a full-on makeover.

Watson, who was working as office manager for an animation company, oversaw a slow-burn renovation of the Palmers Green house, installing period fireplaces, commissioning stained glass for the French doors, building a kitchen extension and redecorating in a style she describes as “vintage eclectic”.

She furnished the house with family heirlooms — the drinks cabinet was her grandmother’s — and online bargains including the £19.99 rich yellow three-piece suite she snapped up on eBay, the collection of 1960s Italian lighting she has picked up slowly, and the 1920s Maple & Co bed she found in an antique shop.

For fun, Watson, who hadn’t previously used social media, set up an Instagram account to chart her progress.

“When we decorated the house we did it for ourselves, nobody else,” she says. Somewhat to her astonishment @artdecojewel has since picked up 650,000 followers. Then people started asking her if she could help redesign their homes.

During the pandemic she was able to give up the day job and concentrate on interior design full time.

Simultaneously she was contacted by The Location Guys (thelocationguys.co.uk), which represents filming locations around the country and wanted to sign her up. Naturally she jumped at the chance.

Fees range from “mates rates” of around £450 per day for student films, which Watson likes to support, up to £2,000-plus for corporate clients.

The income goes on household expenses, as well as keeping the house looking perfect.

“I wouldn’t say it is a reliable form of income,” says Watson. “You might get loads of bookings — we had four last week — or none. But my old job was a good job that was not fulfilling me creatively.

“And what I really enjoy is people seeing something in our property and using it as the backdrop for their own creativity.”

Weird and wonderful requests include the fashion brand which asked if they could bring a python into the house to pose with a model — Watson said yes — to the sportswear company that focused on the treehouse in the back garden, to the film-makers who installed a copper bathtub in the living room.

Unlike Watson, using her home as a location was a deliberate, strategic plan for Nicola Gill. With a large, blended family to accommodate, it was the only way she could afford a large London home.

Gill has always loved property and while she worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist she also had a side hustle buying and renovating properties to supplement her income.

In 2014 she returned to London after a spell in Hastings, and was faced with the problem of how to afford a home spacious enough for her, her partner, Pete Wareham, a jazz musician, their four now-teenage children, and two dogs.

Some of her friends had made a success of renting their homes as locations, and Gill decided to follow suit.

In 2017 she spotted a dismal five-bedroom Victorian semi for sale in Catford. “It was terrible,” she says. “It had been used as an unlicensed HMO, every single original feature had been taken out, there were toilets in the bedrooms, a terrible plastic glazed conservatory that was boiling in summer and freezing in winter. It was infested with mice and rats. It was as bad as it could be.”

Nonetheless, impressed by the square footage she could get for her money, Gill and Wareham paid £700,000 for the house and had it stripped back to bare brick.

Going bold on colour was partly personal preference and partly because Gill was aware that a unique house was likely to catch the eye of location scouts.

So once the structural work was done she decorated the house in blocks of vivid colour: from a coral staircase with green trim, to a cobalt blue living room, green and lilac kitchen, and orange dining room.

The £200,000 renovation was slow, delayed first by a rogue builder who had to be dismissed and then by the pandemic. Nonetheless by the summer of 2022 the house was ready to show.

Gill chose The Location Guys to represent her and was thrilled to get her first photoshoot booking within a week.

“I had maxed out my credit cards, and I couldn’t borrow a penny more,” she says. “If it hadn’t worked I would literally have been bankrupt.”

For the first couple of years the house was in almost-constant use, booked a couple of days every week. The income, plus interior design work for clients, was enough to get her debt under control and cover the mortgage.

The past couple of years have not been quite as bountiful, which Gill blames partly on the house having become a bit overexposed in its first couple of years, and partly on the fact that brands are spending less on advertising than they once were.

Bookings have slowed to four to five days per month. But with fees ranging from around £800 per day for a simple photoshoot to up to around £2,800 for a TV commercial, her mortgage is still covered.

But before you start studying colour charts and planning how you will spend the location windfall cash, Gill does have some words of caution.

Her house has to be kept “impeccably clean” at all times — which must be a challenge with four teenagers in the home — and she also has to refresh the decor regularly to make sure it is on-trend.

Although firms pay for any breakages, general wear and tear is on Gill, which means time and money has to be spent on regular maintenance too.

When the house is booked the family has to vacate, which has meant lots of long days wandering around town looking for places to hang out until the job is complete.

The family’s two dogs have to go to a sitter. “It is exhausting and tiring, not money for old rope,” she says.

Not that Gill has any regrets. “We have got a house for six people in London and we don’t work in the City which is extraordinary. OK, it is in Catford, but still it is a privilege.”