Is London living cost affordable?

ruggedtoast

I was earning around the 30s mark, my wife the mid 20s. A bit above normal for our age basically.

We used to live in Zone 2, just South of the river. Paid £750pcm for a small 1 bed loft flat, no lift, no central heating. When we wanted to have a child we moved to Zone 4, small 2 bed house with postage stamp gardn, £1100pcm.

We've moved out to the home counties now as I have another job so no longer live in London. However once the little toaster came along, wifes income cut in half, childcare costs, travelcards, council tax etc, we'd have been eating into our savings just to stand still.

In order to move somewhere cheap enough so we could claw back a little each month, our son would have been growing up around gangs and streetcrime and going to a primary school where English was most kids 2nd or 3rd language. Not really the middle class dream.

You have this curious problem moving outside of London and commuting in however. Rents and house prices drop as you go further out, but not that much, however the price of rail travel rockets. Leaving you no better off and with the real prospect of a rail fare hike leaving you at a big disadvantage.

If you're unfortunate enough to need to be on a Tube you could be looking at up to £400pcm just for a travelcard.

So what do people do, well they rent and hope basically. They hope rents will come down, house prices will come down, that railfares will come down, they'll get that payrise, that a job will come up outside London, that something or other will turn up.

If they are single they flatshare and hope. It can be 'fun and sociable', it can also be a screaming nightmare, depending on who your flatmates are.

London is basically full. The infrastructure it has cannot support the number of people who need to live there. Unlike other cities you cant cut your cloth in London because nowhere is cheap and a great many places are hazardous to your safety.

drc

Fiddlestick wrote: »

So what's it to be, you can have large families draining the coffers of the state or you can have fairness to everyone else but a certain number of people living in state-enforced poverty.

Sorry but I don't agree with this sentence. The state is not forcing anyone into poverty and still won't be if it limits benefits according to number of children. The term "poverty" is overused and politicised to such an extent in this country that it is virtually meaningless. There is very little real poverty in this country (starving children living on the streets etc with only one meal a day as in India or Africa really doesn't exist here) and to blame the decisions and responsibilities of the parent (to choose to have children knowing that they would be relying on the taxpayer to support them) is, if anything at all, "parent enforced "poverty". At some point the state has to stop taking responsibility for peoples life choices and the people have to start taking responsibility for their own decisions like most of the world have to. Any decent parent faced with the prospect of what they consider to be placing their child in "poverty" would do their utmost to find work rather than inflicting "poverty" on their child surely?

kabayiri

I've worked in the outer regions of London but never lived there.

From what I read on here and elsewhere it strikes me that London is in a pretty unique situation compared with the rest of the country. You won't find such extremes between really high earners and ordinary working folk living in Manchester, for example. If more money were to flow into the capital it would simply push housing costs even higher.

It seems that London needs it's own housing policy, different from everywhere else.

silvercar

ruggedtoast wrote: »

I was earning around the 30s mark, my wife the mid 20s. A bit above normal for our age basically.

We used to live in Zone 2, just South of the river. Paid £750pcm for a small 1 bed loft flat, no lift, no central heating. When we wanted to have a child we moved to Zone 4, small 2 bed house with postage stamp gardn, £1100pcm.

We've moved out to the home counties now as I have another job so no longer live in London. However once the little toaster came along, wifes income cut in half, childcare costs, travelcards, council tax etc, we'd have been eating into our savings just to stand still.

In order to move somewhere cheap enough so we could claw back a little each month, our son would have been growing up around gangs and streetcrime and going to a primary school where English was most kids 2nd or 3rd language. Not really the middle class dream.

You have this curious problem moving outside of London and commuting in however. Rents and house prices drop as you go further out, but not that much, however the price of rail travel rockets. Leaving you no better off and with the real prospect of a rail fare hike leaving you at a big disadvantage.

If you're unfortunate enough to need to be on a Tube you could be looking at up to £400pcm just for a travelcard.

So what do people do, well they rent and hope basically. They hope rents will come down, house prices will come down, that railfares will come down, they'll get that payrise, that a job will come up outside London, that something or other will turn up.

If they are single they flatshare and hope. It can be 'fun and sociable', it can also be a screaming nightmare, depending on who your flatmates are.

London is basically full. The infrastructure it has cannot support the number of people who need to live there. Unlike other cities you cant cut your cloth in London because nowhere is cheap and a great many places are hazardous to your safety.

Agree entirely. Though one potential solution is to live far enough out that rents are cheaper and commute on mainline rail services into London. The speed of the transport can mean that, for no longer a commuting time, you can live somewhere more affordable where there are decent schools.

Once the little ones arrived we moved from zone 4 out towards the M25. The commute time was reduced due to fast trains but the houses became affordable.

princeofpounds

It seems that London needs it's own housing policy, different from everywhere else.

Not really, you just need a policy that can take into account more than one situation. It's a matter of design.

So, for instance we could relax the requirement to house someone within the local council's area. We could state that it should be within x miles of their nominated 'home' in the area or in the area itself, whichever is the furthest. This would allow the government to stop paying people to rent in Kensington and instead pay their rent in a place like Southfields, Acton, Tooting or whatever.

That's not a prescription, just an idea that might fix one aspect of the problems. There are probably better ones.

These problems are more noticeable in London because of the extremes, but they do apply nationwide.

The north also tends to feel them less because there is considerable spare housing stock, so the median-level floor of the LHA rental rates is not so powerful a driver of rental inflation. A landlord is always there with a void and a willingness to undercut.

But in areas of full occupancy like most of the London boroughs there is no-one willing to undercut (unless they are prepared to lose a premium to avoid LHA claimants, which is about the only thing that has held the market back). If people are prepared to pay 50p-£1 for an apple, but I know I can sell it guaranteed for 75p, then all those customers paying 50-75p (i.e. the lower half of workers) are going to be excluded unless they also stump up 75p. So now the median level is 87.5p, and I have a guaranteed sale at that level... etc etc...

silvercar

After the war large estates were built in areas that are now considered very decent like Hampstead Garden Suburb in North London and Welwyn Garden City in Herts. They were built to house those that couldn't afford to live in more central places. At first there was resistance to make a move, then people realised the areas were quite nice, demand grew and they became very popular. Now they are extremely expensive compared to neighbouring areas.

I suspect the same thing will happen here; councils will identify a cheap shovelling out" area, that will initially be met with resistance and then it will gain popularity.

ninky_2

i don't think you could have any sort of life on that salary or even a higher one. we're a childless couple with a higher salary and i wouldn't want to bring a child into that situation. i don't think it's fair on children. i'm of the opinion that unless you just selfishly want kids for yourself then you should only have them if you are well off finanacially. love is free but everything else costs and i wouldn't want to be limited to scrapping by for a child.

of course it has to be personal choice as to whether to have children but my judgement is the better choice is not to have them unless you have the funds (and for me that would include being able to support with no state help at all if the need arose as you can never tell what government will be elected in future).

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

movilogo wrote: »

Is London living cost affordable?.

It obviously is for the 7,000,000 or so people who live there.

Otherwise they couldn't live there.

I hear a few tens of thousands may be about to move out though, generating space for some more people who do find it affordable.;)

DervProf

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

It obviously is for the 7,000,000 or so people who live there.

Any of those 7million in debt, by any chance ?

I can afford anything, if I can borrow the money.

tanith

I've lived in London all my life along with most of my family and we are just average earners living ordinary lives as are most of my friends and neighbours... I have no debt apart from a very small mortgage and have never claimed any housing benefit.. I have family who live in social housing and some who own their own home.. we are certainly not rich but bought when houses were attainable.. its different now for my grandchildren who will be very lucky to ever own a home in London....