Buy a broom cupboard for £50,000

As properties go it is a touch compact, perhaps. But the location is excellent, the facilities all lie conveniently to hand and it certainly would not cost much to heat. That may go some way to explaining why this Kensington broom cupboard is on sale for £50,000.

Measuring 7ft by 6ft 3in, the room is even smaller than the average prison cell. There's barely enough room to swing a mouse, let alone a cat.

Even if someone was desperate enough - or small enough - to want to live there, they couldn't. The room does not have the necessary planning consent.

It is, however, situated on Gloucester Road. In the view of the estate agents this justifies a price tag of £49,950, or more than £1,000 per square foot. That makes it even more expensive than the notorious Knightsbridge broom cupboard of the Eighties property boom, which measured 11ft by 6ft and went on sale for £36,000.

The selling agent, Tim Hamilton-Miller of Phillips and Southern, was at least refreshingly honest about his wares. "This is a first-floor storage room above an estate agent's shop," he said. "The room is 7ft x 6ft 3in and comes with a WC and basin. We are selling it as a storage room. It does not have and will never get planning permission to use as a residence, and nobody should be buying it expecting to move in."

The owners used it to store equipment to clean the flats above but it is now surplus to their requirements.

The tiny room does, however, have a window, power point and phone plug. There is nothing to stop an enterprising buyer from adding a desk, chair and computer and using it to write a literary masterpiece, or run their nascent financial empire. Mr Hamilton-Miller does not, however, recommend this without consulting the local council.

"It could suit somebody who wanted either a store room or a study, or somewhere to put their head down if they were up in town for the night - subject to the necessary consent from the council. The client will certainly be looking at offers on that asking price. We are not being greedy."

They are, however, asking for cash buyers only.

It is not the first time tiny properties have gone on the market at far from tiny prices. As well as the famous Brompton Road broom cupboard, a minuscule flat went on sale for £72,000 in 1997 and another for £90,000 in 2000. Since then, a garage in Marylebone was sold for £50,000 and another in Scarsdale Villas, W8, fetched £110,000. Secure underground parking spaces in central London are costing £25,000.

Any potential buyer should heed a word of caution: the original Knightsbridge broom cupboard came back on the market 10 years later and sold for a mere £25,000.