It’s tough out there in the London rental market these days: not only do you have to pay hundreds of pounds a month (there have been many depressing recent newspaper articles bemoaning the fact that the average rent in the capital is now £1,126) but you also have to look a certain way, have been born on an auspicious day so as to make yourself astrologically compatible with your flatmates, possess an impressive job title, wear cool jeans, read good books and cultivate arty hobbies.

Well, that’s the experience of a friend who is looking for a room to rent in east London. She is a social worker, working with troubled children, and she has a healthy budget of £700-800 per month to pay for a room. She’s a funny, bright, popular 30-year-old, who also possesses all the boring workaday attributes of a good flatmate: steady income, neat and tidy, willing to buy toilet paper. And yet she has found herself being rejected by prospective flatmates and landlords for not being ‘creative’ enough. It’s not enough to be financially solvent and generally quite a nice person in the current London rental market; you also, it would seem, need to have a job that is deemed cool.

"One ad demanded that those interested in the £760-a-month room provide ‘Chinese and western astrology details'"

‘I contacted a landlord who had advertised a room in his two-bed telling him that I already lived around East London, that I had a lot of friends in the area, that I worked with children,’ she explains, ‘and he wrote back saying that he would rather live with a ‘creative’ and asked if I had any creative hobbies.'

‘What is he expecting? Us sitting around in the evenings doing papier-mâché at the dinner table. This guy described himself as ‘easy-going and sociable’ – I mean, really?’

This experience isn’t isolated: she has come across countless advertisements featuring the word ‘creative’ on Spare Room, which describes itself as the ‘UK’s busiest flat and houseshare website’, while looking for a place to live. Some are even more specific in their requests: one ad on the site, for a ‘bright spacious double bedroom’ in an ex-council house in Hackney, demanded that those interested in the £760-a-month room provide ‘Chinese and western astrology details as we are trying to run an astrological house’.  She let that one pass her by.

On Gumtree, meanwhile, an ad for three rooms in a ‘creative house share’ in Peckham in south-east London explains that the house is currently at a ‘raw stage’ and asks those applying to live in the house to bring skills to help ‘turn it into an artwork’, outlining the qualities they would find useful in people hoping to occupy one of the £430 rooms. ‘Suggested skills that the ideal person would have: carpenter, musician, sculptor, writer, philosopher, acrobat, cosmologist, alchemist, gardener, storyteller, scientist,’ reads the ad, which also explains that the ‘current creatures’ in the house include, ‘Jungle Man, Mother of the Earth, Little Elephant and Peter Pan’.  

Laura Silver, staff writer at Never Underdressed, admits that when she recently advertised a room in her Peckham house on Gumtree she did specify that she was looking for a ‘creative’. 

‘I specified that because me and my housemates, another fashion writer and a performer in experimental theatre, wanted someone that we’d have things in common with and, generalising as it is,  ‘creative’ just seemed like a useful umbrella term for someone who might bring tasteful pictures and intellectual conversation with them,’ she says. 

‘We were hoping to attract someone cool and interesting who had something to offer socially to the house. There’s nothing worse than having someone from a completely alien world to your own move in and then have to make small talk that neither of you are interested in every single day. The depressing thing about London for people in their late twenties and early thirties is that you’ve probably had enough of house shares by now but are unlikely to be able to afford your own flat, so if you can at least fill your house with people you genuinely enjoy spending time with, it sugars the pill a little.’

It does seem like a fair, almost sensible, way to approach the housemate search and my friend, the social worker, says that she will continue to apply for rooms that come with the ‘creative’ clause.

"‘Creative’ just seemed like a useful umbrella term for someone who might bring tasteful pictures and intellectual conversation with them" - Laura Silver

‘I will put myself forward as I do have a creative side,’ she says. ‘My job doesn't reflect that but that's their problem if they are so quick to judge. It's like internet dating – quite superficial and false. A lot of my friends are creative and they seem to accept me despite my obvious creative career shortcomings…’

Laura Silver, who has since been joined in Peckham by a guy ‘doing a masters in arts education at Kings College who works part time at Monmouth Coffee’, says that she would have welcomed a social worker into her home. ‘I would totally live with a social worker if I met them and felt like we shared common ground on other things. Someone’s profession is not important to me … social work might go in their favour – it suggests they’re well accustomed to empathy and considering the needs of others and they are top qualities in a housemate.’

"One girl was dismissed for her ‘trend by numbers’ outfit and expensive designer bag (too boring, too posh)" - Laura Silver

Any social workers applying, however, would have to be well-dressed. ‘I hate to say it, but the first impression someone’s clothes give say a lot about how they culturally align themselves, and I am guilty of assuming details of people’s lives based simply on the cut of their jeans,’ she confesses when I ask her if she judged prospective flatmates on a fashion basis. ‘My other housemates were even worse. One girl was dismissed for her ‘trend by numbers’ outfit and expensive designer bag (too boring, too posh), and two people who turned up to the viewing in flip-flops on a cool day didn’t stand a chance (too Clapham).’

It's enough to make you want to embrace one of 2013's biggest trends and move back in with your mum and dad.