House Obsessed: From Content to Construction

As long-time followers of interior designer and content creator Sara Mungeam’s @houseobsessed Instagram account, we were keen to see her latest South East London development for ourselves as it neared completion. We were delighted when Sara chose Aucoot to sell her two beautifully conceived apartments, one of which is still available to view.

We sat down with Sara on a sunny morning in her Meeting House Lane garden apartment, a light-filled space layered with calming neutrals and plush textures, to talk through her canny approach to securing planning permission from Southwark Council, (hint: arriving armed with a folder full of precedents), how to pick an architect and why a micro developer needs to follow both their head and their heart.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I bought a flat. I didn’t have much money, my dad had to act as a mortgage guarantor, so I could buy it for about £80,000. My renovation budget was roughly £2,000, so it was quite a challenge! I loved the whole process, and that’s really when my passion for property started.

I didn’t get the chance to dive into property development until later. But when we bought our first house, we stripped it back to bare bricks. We hired a builder, but did as much ourselves as we could.

I’d been in a corporate office job for a long time, but I never really loved the office environment. That chapter came to an abrupt end, and I had two young kids who were six and eight at the time. I wanted to do something I enjoyed, something that also gave me more flexibility to do school pickups and be around for them. Property felt like the perfect fit, so I decided to give renovation a try.

I knew I could do it well and probably make some money, but I needed some capital. I approached my bank at the time, HSBC, to release some equity on our mortgage, but they said no, because I’d just lost my job. 

Then, at a book club one evening, I mentioned my plans to my friend Kim. She’d just sold her house, had a lump of cash in the bank, and was planning to rent long-term. She said, “I love doing up houses too. Why don’t we do something together?” I had been thinking of doing it solo, but the idea of sharing the costs and spreading the risk sounded great. And actually, it turned out to be brilliant.

It’s a bit of a cliché but being Dutch, Kim just had this incredible sense of Scandinavian style. We really bounced off each other. I brought certain ideas to the table, and she brought this amazing eye for style that I learned a lot from. I was already a bit of a minimalist, but working with her really deepened my love of subtle, Scandinavian-inspired design.

It was a two-bedroom cottage in Brockley. We initially offered in a sealed-bid situation and didn’t get it, but the original winners pulled out because of a big crack in one of the walls, and it came back to us. It felt meant to be. It was a small renovation, about four to five months on site, three months buying, three months selling. We made some decent money, and from there, we did two more projects together. Though eventually, Kim moved back to Holland, and I carried on solo.

I think there are two reasons. Number one is because I had the kids I wanted to be local, so I could get back to do school pickups and things like that.

The kind of person I am and the way I work on projects is that I’m quite hands-on, doing some bits myself, but also, in terms of design, I’m there all the time making decisions, talking to the builders. It would be hard for me to do something remotely.

Even within a small area, knowing your neighbourhood is so important. Different roads, even adjoining ones, can be so different, and you need a real understanding of the area to know the values, what roads will appeal to what kinds of people, and what will turn people off or draw them in.

I realised that, ideally, my focus should be on projects that create additional units or footprints. So I started looking for a plot with space for a big extension or a new build. That’s when I came across The Corner House plot on Rightmove. It had been on the market for a while, with some overgrown garden space around the front and a wide garden at the back. I measured it out and thought, “Yeah, you could fit a house on that.”

I was very lucky with planning. Before the sale went through, I submitted a pre-planning application and was assigned a fantastic planner. Unlike the usual junior planners who defer everything to their bosses, he really engaged with the project, sold it to his design team, and advocated for it with his boss. 

The project was somewhat contentious because I needed to build right up to the pavement boundary, which planners usually dislike. To make my case, I cycled around South London, photographing and noting examples of houses built to the pavement line, creating a bank of precedents. 

Once the sale went ahead, I lined up architects during the purchase process and chose 31/44. Coming to them with pre-planning approval was really helpful, they told me if I hadn’t done that, it would have been very unlikely to get planning, given the pavement-boundary issue and other aspects. In the end, we got planning approved the first time.

I think it’s a bit of an “ignorance is bliss” situation. The more I’ve done and learned about planning, the more risk-averse I’ve probably become. I’m just a lot more aware now of all the planning policies. So, if I came across one of those properties now, I’m not sure I would have bought it or done the same thing. I was very lucky, but it also taught me a lot about the whole process, which was great to have that experience.

Yeah, a hundred percent. There’s also a bit of heart in it, it’s about envisioning what I could do with a property. But if the finances don’t add up, I can’t spend two or three years of my life only to potentially make a loss or end up with nothing.

I’m mainly looking for three key things in an architect. The first is creativity and design. Some practices are more technical, some more creative, and some combine the two. I want someone who can come up with ideas I haven’t thought of, things that make me go, “Wow, that looks amazing.” Also, ideally, I want someone who can come up with designs that aren’t going to cost the earth to build, because there’s always a budget and a bottom line to consider.

The second thing is experience. Have they worked either with the local authority or on similar projects, so they understand the planning process? Getting planning approval is such a big part of the work. For example, on The Corner House, my planner in Southwark mentioned that the design team really liked 31/44, the firm I worked with, because they had done other projects in the area. 

The third thing is chemistry. Do I feel I can work well with them, and vice versa? Sometimes it clicks, sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes I find myself on sites with the whole team, the architects, the structural engineer, the builder, and I realise I’m the only woman on the site. Although I’m working with a female architect on my next project. To be honest, I notice it sometimes, but it doesn’t bother me. Overall, I haven’t found it to be a disadvantage. There are certain times when I think about conversations afterwards and wonder if I would have been spoken to in the same way if I were a man.

I started doing Instagram whilst I was doing The Corner House. It was slow to start off with and then it started to take off.

In The Corner House I wasn’t thinking in that way because it was also new and I was partway through the project, but I’d be lying if I said that having a sort of vision of how it’s going to translate doesn’t have a little bit of an impact.

I think the two are all kind of married up anyway because I’m designing things that I want to look fantastic, and if it’s not translating onto the screen it’s probably not going to be ticking my design boxes anyway. There’s an element of thinking about what the final angles are going to look like as well. But I think I’m designing not for Instagram, but as a kind of side product.

I definitely know a few micro property developers who really care about design and sourcing in a clever way. But then there are absolutely a raft of other developers who are literally putting big white tiles all over bathrooms and things.

I knew it had potential. It consisted of two one-bedroom flats, which were not in a great state. I knew there was scope to do a loft conversion to create a two-bedroom flat and because there was a garage out the back on the ground floor as well. I could see that we would be able to extend out the back, because overall we wouldn’t be increasing the footprint of the buildings on the site that much by taking down the garage and building something more attached to the house.

There was a lot of scope and relatively low risk in terms of planning. We worked with Gruff Architects and actually put in for four units to start off with, including a studio at the back and a smaller flat down here. I’m really pleased that Southwark (council) knocked that back. They said it would be an overdevelopment. I think it would have been, and actually having three generously proportioned units rather than trying to cram in an extra one, with smaller, less generous units, has worked really well.

There have been a few days where I’ve been planting out the front and back, and people have walked past and said, “Oh, is this yours? It looks fantastic. It’s so much better than what was here before.”

I had the same experience at The Corner House as well. Local people going to the pub or living nearby stop and comment, and it’s really gratifying for people to appreciate that it’s improved the area. I certainly think it has, and it’s nice to get that validation from others as well.

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