Swap your London flat for a French chateau: meet the start-up helping Londoners work from home in another country

The digital nomad lifestyle has long been an aspiration for millennials, a generation notorious for their lack of physical ties to places and things.

However, for those tethered to workplaces and day jobs, the life of a laptop-toting, sun-chasing global citizen has been little more than a daydream.

Now entrepreneur Tom Brooks, 35, aims to change all that, as the world faces a new coronavirus-scarred reality with growing numbers of us continuing to work from home for the foreseeable future.

Brooks and his business partner, Ant Steele, 27, have set up Yon Living, an opportunity for space- and sun-starved Londoners to swap their city flats for a room in a spectacular 17th-century French chateau on a medium-term, work-from-anywhere basis.

“A few weeks after lockdown I was moaning to an investor about being locked away at home and not being able to work with other people on the company I was founding,” says Brooks.

“He told me about the chateau of a friend of his that was empty and suggested Ant and I could go and stay there. So as soon as we could get flights we went out and installed ourselves in the middle of the French countryside.”

There was still a lot of spare space in the grand, 12-bedroom building near Agen in the south of France, so the pair asked if they could invite more co-workers out as paying guests to live and work on the estate.

Within six weeks Chateau Naudou was filled to capacity with rooms fully booked until mid-September for Londoners paying up to £1,500 per month for the biggest en suite room. In normal years the chateau is rented for about £10,000 a week in high season.

Ryan Collins, a 31-year-old wealth manager who lives in a flat in Elephant & Castle, was among the early guests thrilled to find his new office was a 20-acre historic estate, complete with swimming pool, a tennis court and plenty of picturesque nooks in which to make calls.

He planned to go out for two weeks but ended up staying for eight, paying £600 for the first month he was out there, rising to £800 for the second month.

“It is another cost on top of my London flat,” he admits. “But I am saving so much from working from home, not commuting and not going out after work that it’s doable.

“It really felt like I lived there, there was a really respectful vibe, no drama, everyone there became friends. We were all working on our own things, people were sitting around the pool with their laptops during the day, and it was really interesting to get different perspectives on my work from people in other industries.”

To try to ensure this level of harmony, prospective guests are vetted via a short phone call with Brooks or Steele before they go out to the chateau.

“It’s a case of vetting both ways. It’s a community, we share amenities including the kitchen and bathroom and people are here to live and work so we all have to get along,” says Brooks.

“It’s a diverse community but you need to realise it’s not a hotel. You’re coming to co-work and co-exist rather than just for a holiday.”

At the moment their demographic is aged between 25 and 38, working in tech, finance, marketing, recruitment or finance, partly because the concept was initially marketed via Brooks’s Linkedin.

Yon now has a second property — a farmhouse in La Rochelle with a cinema and a games room, also now fully booked for weeks to come – while in the pipeline is a place in Corsica and another in Italy.

People can stay for a minimum of two weeks. There is no maximum stay, although what happens next summer is something of an unknown quantity if the busy season for chateaux picks up.

Brooks says they are currently offering a full refund to anyone who changes their mind about staying because of Covid-19 or who is affected by any future travel restrictions.

“More and more companies are implementing long-term remote working. Why would you live in a small flat in London paying £1,500 a month when you could live in an amazing place with access to amenities you wouldn’t be able to afford on your own?”

One reason is that your company might not be thrilled about you working abroad. Firms can be subject to additional tax and social security obligations if they are deemed to have employees residing in another country.

Income tax rules can also become complicated for Brits working in countries for longer than 183 days in a 12-month period, so anyone considering a prolonged chateau stay should bear these things in mind.

Brooks says they're currently working on finding solutions to the above but in the meantime, the average stay is between two weeks and a month and so this won't be a problem.

And Brooks and Steele, who suspect this way of life could catch on for an increasing number of Londoners, plan to find properties in countries throughout the world.

“Obviously it’s very early days so we need to see how this plays out but the dream is that Yon Living becomes a type of living,” says Brooks. “You could become a member and move between properties. It’s about getting away from the city — this isn’t us getting one in London, one in New York. We’re interested in secondary places where you can get away from the hustle and bustle and mix work and travel.”

If that happens, then many of those who spent lockdown working from the luxurious chateau near Agen will be keen.

“I’m itching to go back. I’d love to do it longer term, I just need to get my wife out to see if she likes it before we commit to working remotely indefinitely,” says Ryan Collins.

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