Grand Designs couples turn to Airbnb to reclaim the costs of their dream homes

Aspirational architects and optimists alike have been flocking to television crews to showcase their property dreams since the 1990s and as a result, Grand Designs has a become flagship programme for Channel 4.

Now celebrating its 20th year, Grand Designs has always been a sure way of parading both skill and creativity, but it is infamous for its narratives of fraught couples overspending on their builds and being left surrounded by bare walls and muddy foundations.

A number of people are now turning to online holiday letting websites like Airbnb to make reclaim the costs and earn some extra money, with homes and rooms appearing online just weeks following their broadcast and others advertised at a premium.

For some, an appearance on the notorious property show with over two million viewers affords them the luxury of listing their homes for three times the price of similar houses in the same area.

The Telegraph has found that at least 10 percent of homes featured on the programme are cashing in on their creations by specifically marketing them online with the description: “As seen on Grand Designs”.

And it works - the draw for fans of the show is the opportunity to stay in a Victorian water tower in South London, the annexe of a cob house and sleek homes in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, that they have pined for themselves.

Monty Ravenscroft’s eco-friendly home with a sliding glass roof proved a hit on the show in 2005, and shortly after, he learned the power of the programme.

The actor and design engineer, along with his wife, Claire, threw open the doors to their South London home to allow lovers of modern architecture to explore every nook and cranny of the Peckham property.

“We had 100 people come into the house every hour. Some were waiting up to 45 minutes to be come in,” Mr Ravenscroft, 51, said.

“I’ve done the Open House event now for 15 years, and we generally get about 800 people on a single day. The programme gave it great publicity.”

The couple, who still live there, began converting a small strip of urban land into their dream home in 2003, eventually spending £170,000 on the build which was completed a few years later.

The house has proven particularly popular with cash-strapped Londoners eager to maximise space.

Now, the three-bedroom property, which even has three bathrooms (one next to a bed) and numerous buttons and gadgets (one lowering the cinema screen), is rented out for £255-a-night.

For couple Alex and Cheryl Reay, everything changed when the thatched roof of their 17th Century cottage in the New Forest was on fire, leaving them homeless.

They have managed to transform the impact of that smouldering thatch fire in 2004 into a profitable second income-stream after their renovation created a Hampshire holiday rental.

The £300,000 rebuild featured in a Grand Designs programme in 2007, and the couple, along with their daughter Biba ‘Phoenix’ Reay born three days after the fire and who all live at the property, rent the annex out for between £1,295 and £1,495 a week.

“I would say the majority of people who come to stay have seen the story on the television programme,” Mrs Reay, 50, said. “But, we made that £300,000 investment back over three years renting the annex out as a luxury rental for families.

“We used to have a DVD of the programme, but because we gave it to those guests who hadn’t seen the programme to watch it ended up getting a bit scratched from over usage.”

Although, Mrs Reay believes her prices are competitive and based on the property’s true commercial value, she admits “Grand Designs gives it an attraction and perhaps a slight increase in rental charge.”

The couple promote the rental on their own website, which features video clips from the programme.

Although the Ravenscroft and Reay families originally set out to keep their home to themselves, Angelo Mastropietro, 41, discovered an 800-year-old cave in Worcestershire and decided to give holidaymakers a taste of their primitive past, turning it into a business after appearing on Grand Designs in 2015.

“The Rockhouse is a very special place and I wanted others to have the opportunity to experience it,” he said.

Mr Mastropietro added that appearing on the show has helped publicity and that two people have even offered to buy the property. He said: “People often get in touch to congratulate my achievement … some guests have seen it on Grand Designs, see it advertised and book the experience.

“Others are simply drawn to its unique magical charm and character and watch the episode afterwards.”

Where are they 20 years on?

Kennington Water Tower

One person’s dream home doesn’t always sell to others, is the lesson learned by auction house owner Leigh Osborne, 46 and his partner, Graham Voce. The couple set their sights on a Grade II listed water tower in South London after spotting it from the window of their apartment.

They bought the tower for £380,000 in 2011 and starred in the 100th episode of Grand Designs a year later, which followed their £2million transformation of the 100ft tower into a five-bedroom home in Kennington, over nine floors, complete with a borrowed lump sum from Mr Osborne’s grandmother.

Mr Osborne told The Telegraph that since it aired, he has become famous with people stopping him on holiday and tourists from around the world regularly appearing outside his flat to take photos, even seven years after it aired. “It’s like that scene from Notting Hill when he opens the curtains and there’s all the people stood outside,” he said.

But despite the popularity with design fanatics, they found their appearance on Grand Designs hasn’t helped to sell their home. Mr Osborne said he tried to sell Kennington Water Tower in 2013 for £6million before slashing the asking price by £2million because it wasn’t snapped up - something he puts down to no one knowing the actually knowing the value of the unique building.

With no signs of true buyer interest, they continued to advertise the top three floors on Airbnb, offering stays in for £99 a night, although one night in the Victorian water tower will now set you back £140. When Mr Osborne found his commute to West London getting longer, he put his home back on the market last year for £3.5million but it was later removed from sale despite a negotiator for Sotheby’s claiming at the time that creative individuals had been viewing the property and liking what they saw.

Mr Osborne added: “I took it off the market and I’m going to wait until Elephant and Castle is developed. If you come out of the tube now, you think ‘where are we?’”.

Hand-built ecological home

An electrical fault and flammable construction materials led to a New Year’s Day nightmare for the Dale family who were left homeless and staying in a holiday rental property with their two children rather than their dream home. Simon and Jasmine Dale spent six years and just £27,000 on building their eco-house with reclaimed materials and the help of volunteers in Lammas, a sustainable community in Pembrokeshire where the right to build is conditional - they had to be self-sufficient on their plot of land within five years.

But that was cut short as their home, labelled as “the cheapest house ever built in the western hemisphere” on Grand Designs in 2016 was partly constructed using straw, meaning a fire on January 1 2018 destroyed the entire house. “The fire was caused by a freak electrical fault,” Ms Dale said. “I was in the house just a few moments before the fire broke out, and there is a junction box downstairs with many electrical wires.

“I returned to the house and the whole thing was just full of black smoke, there was nothing I could do. I watched the fire service knock down what was left.” Although the house was originally so cheap to build, the family didn’t have insurance and said it would cost them £500,000 to get the home back to normal quickly. Instead, family and friend have begun fundraising online to help the Dales rebuild their property. Since, they have raise over £35,000.  

Medway Eco-Barge

There are countless stories of people running away from home, but it is not often that a home runs away from you. For London couple Christopher Miller and Sze Liu Lai, this was a reality. The couple appeared on Grand Designs in 2007 with an unusual project - they planned to renovate a houseboat in Essex and make it eco-friendly before taking to a life afloat with their children.

Constructed from recycled materials and with plans for its own windmill, the 100 ft long boat cost £80,000 to build but became tarnished with problems after the couple left it moored in the Thames estuary in Essex when they ran into cash flow issues. Unable to finish the project, the barge was left for vandals to destroy and it became almost derelict, with reports that squatters had moved in. It was even branded as “more of a floating Scrapheap Challenge” than a houseboat by Kevin McCloud.

The problems didn’t stop there though and rather than staying put in the estuary as planned, the eco-barge drifted and washed up on a beach in Westcliff-on-Sea in 2011, to the shock of the locals who organised a tugboat to remove it. At the time, Mr Miller told The Telegraph that although he had abandoned the project some time ago, he had considered revisiting it. But damage caused by vandals meant it was not an option. He said: “They caused around £70,000 worth of damage and unfortunately as a result of that damage it seems the boat has come free from its mooring”.

St Martin’s Church

He embarked on building his dream home in which he would lead a quiet life with his family, but one divorce, two heart attacks and a cancer diagnosis later, Dean Marks, 48, from the West Midlands has had quite the journey. Mr Marks saw a vision in an 18th Century church in Tipton and decided to single-handedly convert it into his new home, a labour of love that took him 22 months.

But after he appeared on Grand Designs in 2007, Mr Marks moved into the Grade II listed church with just his daughter Abbie, after his wife divorced him after the filming, quoting his dedication to the project as one of the reasons for the divorce. His bad luck didn’t end there - Mr Marks suffered from two heart attacks, which he attributes directly to exhaustion from converting St Martin’s Church taking its toll and admitted to The Telegraph that “it was actually a whole body shut down”.

Four years ago, Mr Marks’ health took a turn for the worst and he was diagnosed with testicular cancer which spread around his body, so has taken time out to enjoy his home with his new partner, Michelle and their family. It was all worth it though according to Mr Marks. He said: “That’s life, I’m getting on with things. “I know what I wanted it to look like and I knew what I could achieve, so I did it on my own. When you start bringing teams of people in, that brings on massive costs and I didn’t have the money to pay that. “I paid £12,750 for it and it’s valued at £1.3 million now.”