#Podcast: On The Sofa ‘Owning Your Rental’ with Topology London

Clearly a subject very close to my heart, as a landlord passionate about happy tenants and gorgeous interiors, ‘owning your rental’ is a hot take for renters who crave personalisation. In this episode of our On The Sofa podcast series I chat with Amy, below left, and Athina from style duo Topology London, award winning bloggers and online interior course hosts.

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The proportion of UK renters to owners has doubled in the last twenty years, alongside an exponential rise in social media and the proliferation of drop dead gorgeous interior imagery. Design advice is available everywhere and most of us want a home to be proud of, whether we own or rent it.

As young renters in London (Athina) and Berlin (Amy), the self taught duo joined forces in 2015 and have been enthusiastically creating and sharing content about affordable design ever since. Athina was working in the world of luxury furniture and stepped away from employment, wanting to run her own interiors consultancy focusing on much more realistically priced products. She and Amy hooked up, finding themselves on the same wavelength about affordable and accessible design. The 10k sofa was out and the hunt for high street wins was in.

I love their approach. Many years ago as a tenant, way before I bought my first small flat in 1996 with £1 deposit and 100% mortgage, I lived in rented accommodation and made it my own with Ikea artwork and colourful rugs. When I bought my own first rental in 2001, I resolved as a landlord to create lovely spaces for my tenants to enjoy living in and that business model has never changed as I increased my portfolio of property.

However, not all landlords think like me. Though there is definitely an uplift in design thinking now, especially amongst corporate build to let landlords, rental property can often be bland and unimaginative.

Amy and Athina create brilliant content which inspires renters to easily and affordable personalise their often relatively transient homes, so that the spaces feel just that – like homes.

They also work with clients on interior schemes, with a focus on affordable products and clever solutions.

And they’re very keen to share the skills they’ve learned and make their philosophy open to all, with a new series of online courses you can check out here.