Customers love our Pocket one bedroom apartment design, but there are plenty of people out there who want an affordable, compact two bedroom home in London. They might be friends buying together, a couple who have plans to start a family, or homeworkers who need the extra room.
Planning policy currently states that a two bedroom home must be a minimum of 61sqm in size, which allows for a household of three adults, and is generally unaffordable to the first time buyer market.
We thought that there might be a better offer for first time buyers looking for a two bedroom home, by using compact design to develop a proposal for two adults – a two bedroom two person offer (2b2p).
Getting the design right
At the end of last year Pocket launched an architectural ideas competition to explore what a two bedroom Pocket home might look like. We created a shortlist architectural practices – some of whom we’ve worked with before, some that we wanted to get to know better, all with a passion for innovative space planning, a desire to help the first time buyer market, and a hunger to set new standards in planning policy.
The 19 submissions were fantastic, and validated our belief in the potential to create amazing compact two bedroom homes within a reduced footprint of around 55sqm.
The media coverage of the competition, at both an industry and national level, was extremely positive, suggesting that there is both widespread interest and support for the ideas explored (https://www.pocketliving.com/news).
The publication that accompanied the competition, which includes all of the entries, is available as an e-book on the Pocket website (https://www.pocketliving.com/homes/ebook).
What happens next
The challenge for Pocket now is to take all of the fantastic design work generated during the competition, and to distil the best ideas into a viable two bedroom design proposal. We expect there to be more than one solution – which was partly why we asked for so many ideas originally, as different boroughs might have different two bedroom needs, but we have been really encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive response from local authorities so far.
We are then planning to partner with some of the forward thinking local boroughs with whom we already enjoy excellent collaborative relationships, to make sure we get the two bedroom design – and associated affordability offer – exactly right before implementation.
In the meantime, we are also planning to partner with Savills on some research into ‘sharer purchasing’ – where two people that aren’t a couple pool their funds to get a foot on the property ladder, as we see this as a key market for Pocket two bedroom homes.
Get involved
Please let us know what you think about the Pocket two bedroom ideas – especially if you are a potential ‘sharer’, or perhaps need a two bedroom home to enable working from home, or even as an occasional second sleeping space.
Feel free to email me, russ.edwards@pocketliving.com, or comment on this blog below. And follow us on Twitter @Pocket_Living for all the latest updates.