There's no business like home business.

It may be the tale of a simple country girl, but when Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles was filmed at Pat Cutforth's home in Wiltshire last year, the size of the operation was anything but modest.

"It was like being occupied by a small army," she recalls. "There were 30 or 40 parked cars, there was a lay-by full of trucks, there was a generator for the electricity, and there were these huge trailers from which they fed everyone.

"Most definitely," she says. "It was great fun. And, of course, the money came in very handy." Ah yes, the money. For handing over your home to a film crew, you can expect to make anything between £750 and £5,000 per (long, 12-hour) day. Even a magazine or catalogue shoot will earn you from £500 to £1,500 a day.

Which is why there has, in recent months, been a sudden increase in the number of home owners contacting agencies that specialise in finding film locations.

"Everyone's looking to generate extra cash, and hiring out your home is an obvious way of doing it," says Sarah Eastel, whose agency has many hundreds of bricks-and-mortar hopefuls on its books. "In the past, perhaps, a lot of people have just thought about doing it. Now they're taking things that stage further." So what kind of star quality must your home display, in order to get taken on by an agent?

Biggest asset, it seems, is being within easy reach of London. "It's where most of the filming is done," explains Louise Myers, of Soho-based Location Works. "We do represent some properties in Cardiff, Bristol and Manchester, but to be honest, a place outside the M25 has to be something really special for us to take it on." Other desirable features include high ceilings, large rooms (enough to accommodate at least a dozen crew and cast), plus plenty of parking space. And not too much character.

"What production designers are looking for is pretty much a blank canvas," says Eastel. "Minimal, contemporary styling, polished floors, white or cream-coloured sofas, lots of natural light. Something stylists can come in and dress to their own specifications." A place, in short, like Di Ablewhite's.

When she and her husband Peter set about building their riverside Nottinghamshire home four years ago, Di made a conscious decision that she would try and recoup some of the construction costs through hiring the house out for location work.

"We built the front of the house in an old-fashioned Georgian style, and the back to a more modern design, so, in effect, we have two very different-looking locations under the same roof,"
she says.

"The other day, we were hosting a shoot for Slimming World magazine. They were photographing two gentlemen slimmers, and were able to make it look as if each of them had been photographed in a different house." Although not quite as busy as she'd be if she lived inside the M25, Di still gets regular bookings of £700-£1,000 per day, and she boosts this still further by offering on-site catering, at £5-£6 per head.

"I'm always on hand, always ready to help," she says. "So long as the crew are happy with the shots they're getting, I'm happy, too." By contrast, mother-of-two Gillian Milner has perfected the art of making herself, and her children, scarce.

"We've bought this London guidebook and go off on lovely, little outings up to town, whenever the house is needed for filming," she says. "Either that, or we camp out at Starbucks." Not that she resents this enforced nest-vacating. In fact, the main reason she and her husband bought their house, in Streatham, was to make money by hiring it out.

"It used to be owned by this wealthy property developer, and it's like some perfectly preserved shrine to the Seventies," says Milner. "There's even a soundproofed, Seventies-style disco in the basement. And we don't have a problem when it comes to redecorating, either. We buy direct from this fantastic website called www.wallpaperfromthe 70s.com.

"On average, we get about one booking per week. In recent months, there's been a lot of filming; we did The Supersizers Go Seventies (Giles Coren and Sue Perkins doing period-eating), we had James May's Toy Stories (the Top Gear presenter recalling Seventies playthings), and we did a six-week shoot for an ITV drama called U Be Dead (starring David Morrissey and Tara Fitzgerald). Oh, and we've just done the front cover for GQ magazine." Which goes to show that although décor-wise, the general rule of thumb is that bland is best, you can still make money from a house with sufficiently dramatic and distinctive appeal (plus luminous purple walls).

However, charm isn't everything, and if your house-hiring isn't going to end in tears, you need a watertight agreement drawn up between yourself and the film company. Which is where the agents come in.

"Not only do we negotiate a fair market price on your behalf, we also draw up a contract which requires the film company to take out insurance against damage to your property," says Sarah Eastel. "We want to know exactly what props and equipment they're planning to bring into your house; are they going to use a smoke machine, for example? And we introduce our own specific conditions: that nothing should be nailed into the walls, that flowers used in the shoot shouldn't have stamens (the pollen can stain), and that if the script calls for someone to drink a glass of wine, it should be white rather than red [stains again]."

In return for which, she (and most of the other companies in the field) takes 15 per cent commission. "You could conceivably do it without an agent," says Eastel. "But there are an awful lot of pitfalls." And she should know, having worked on some of the biggest location shoots in British film history, including Sense and Sensibility (at Mompesson House, in Wiltshire), Pride and Prejudice (Lacock Village, also in Wiltshire) and the evergreen Hugh Grant-Julia Roberts classic Notting Hill (Kenwood House, in Hampstead). Indeed, as well as representing individual home owners, she also handles all the properties owned by English Heritage; which means you have to contact her if you want to hire Stonehenge.

Recently, too, she has started getting calls from housing developers, hoping to hire out as-yet unsold (and unoccupied) properties.

"They take the view that if a development has appeared in a film, it will add some extra sales cachet," says Eastel.

And they're probably right. There's certainly no underestimating the thrill Pat Cutforth got from having her house appear in a television costume drama.

"It was such fun seeing the house on television," she laughs. "Even if it was playing a run-down turnip farm. I loved the whole process and can honestly say I wouldn't hesitate to do it all over again.