Does anyone have their homes on companies as filming locations?

[bignamechangeroonie]

I'm thinking about doing this even though my flat is ordinary. It's got a couple of the things they want; inside M25 (south east London), loads of free off road parking, generous room sizes - all rooms are 18 ft by 13ft.

Anyone do this?

A house I used to have had a large garage and through an agency who approached me I let a company use it to make a short. They left a terrible mess in the house where they kept all their tech stuff. They paid for the cleaning up but the buggeration factor made it not worth it because I was living there.

Oh dear, what sort of mess? Just dirt or broken things?

Rugs kicked up and thrown in the corner, grit/dirt/debris trodden into the wooden floors which had to be resealed and polished, furniture moved, power lines brought in through the casement windows which had to be repainted in areas, curtains tied up in knots to clear space, thick tape stuck to things, vehicles parked any which way on the grass including a generator which blocked access to offroad parking, dirty loos/basins/towels on floor, fingermarks on weird things and half my tea mugs went missing. One actor sat and did his makeup on my blue velvet sofa without so much as sitting on a towel.

that's terrible

If you care about your flat, do not let a film crew anywhere near it! You can get good money for it but there will be dozens of people in the flat and there is always loads of mess and damage (some of which may or may not be cleaned/repaired). Everywhere is a set to them and they just are too busy 'focusing on their artistic project' to give a stuff about your flat and possessions.

We did this and had a great experience. We were told lots of horror stories beforehand which concerned me as I am very precious about the property. However, the locations team were amazing and hired a cleaning team to do a full clean before we moved back in - it was immaculate despite false walls having been built etc. There were the odd few scuffs on paintwork but I said I would deal with them myself even though they offered to sort it.