The Reality of Renting in Britain today....

PasturesNew

Until I buy a house I don't feel able to join things, do things, make plans, buy things. I don't want to be carting my stuff here and there.... I don't want to start a course I can't finish, I don't want to join a club I have to leave.

I just wish I knew where I wanted/needed to be. I don't think it's where I am, but I know I'll be renting something/somewhere next month. I just wish it wasn't so cold ... a 200 mile jolly for a week to look around at some places'd be good if it were summer.

Fluffi

The problem with the girl in this article is she is can't be bothered to move out of zone 2! She can't afford zone 2 prices so she needs to consider moving out to 3/4/5/6 where the rents are cheaper!

She says her budget is £600 and a zone 1-2 monthly travelcard from 2011 is £106pcm. So she is saying her total travel plus rent budget is £706 pcm but she can't find any rooms under £600!

However there are lots of house shares and even some small flats for £400 (basic) -£500 (bit nicer) out in zones 3-5 and its not a lot extra in fares! From 2011 a zone 1-4 travel card will be £151.30 and £180.50 for zones 1-5.

So best case you can room share + travel in zone 4 for £552 pcm! Saving nearly £150 a month! Worst case in zone 5 it would still only be £681 pcm! Yes she might have to spend an extra hour a day on the tubes/buses/trains to get to work - that's the real world! The good news is last tube trains don't just serve zone 2 ... they go all the way to the end of the line so you don't have to live in zone 2 to have a good social life!

I have no sympathy at all! The vast majority of people just can't afford to live in zone 2 at any decent standard when they are making a lot more money than her! Why does she think public transport system is so busy in the mornings?!? :mad:

Jowo_2

There's an article here along the same lines

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/dec/04/priced-out-london-rental-market

Events executive Michael Li, 26, says that after being beaten to a number of more salubrious rooms, he is considering moving into a South London flat in such a state of disrepair he is convinced it was a former crack den.
"I'm not looking for somewhere palatial. I just want to live somewhere decent with people I like at a good price; the problem is that so does everybody else," he says.

michaelvintner

There are plenty of place a lot cheaper than this. For example Catford, you could get a half decent ond bedroom flat for £600 to £700. It's in zone three and has two train stations and plenty of bus routes to Lewisham. If you take the train you can be in Charing Cross in 25 mins. I lived there for 10 years and while I will admit it is not the best place on the planet it far from the worst.

My brother lives in Brockley (on the London Overground) and rents a one bedroom flat for £550 a month (that is mates rate though) the flat is a bit dated and could do with a bit of modernising but even on the open market it would go for around £650 a month.

There is noway on earth I would ever pay £700 a month to rent one tiny room in a shoebox with 3 other people in central London when for the same price I could rent much better further out and just get up 30 minutes earlier.

olly300

michaelvintner wrote: »

.

There is noway on earth I would ever pay £700 a month to rent one tiny room in a shoebox with 3 other people in central London when for the same price I could rent much better further out and just get up 30 minutes earlier.

But you, me and their other critics don't suffer the entitlement complex that these writers suffer from.

mcc100

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

I have a second property but I don't rent it out.

Shortly after we paid off our mortgage, an elderly relative had a tragic change of circumstances. She moved in with us in our first house, we bought a second house in town (whoch we were planning to do anyway) and moved there, and we let her live in our old house completely rent free. It was the right thing to do.

Now I could rent the house at market value and rent her a flat, and make a profit, but that's not really the point. She enjoys living there, nice house, quiet rural location, has made friends with the locals, etc.

I'm shocked.

By the amount of time spent on this forum trying to ramp up house prices, I assumed that you must be in the same situation as GHOULS R US ........ owning a large number of BTL properties and being in a desperate position in a falling market.

thequant

Jowo wrote: »

There have been a number of threads on MSE that are based on news articles from young single working Londoners who feel priced out of today's rental market.

And the comments on the threads and on the news articles themselves indicate that while it may feel specific to their generation right now, London has always been an expensive city to rent in and those on less than affluent salaries will always struggle to secure cheap centrally located accommodation of a high standard.

There is nothing new in someone in London being unimpressed with the types of accommodation they can afford versus the type of accommodation that they seek and that since there is high demand and low supply, competition for vacant accommodation is intense.

It's just that they lack perspective about it - that it's been like this for decades and that they have to either increase their budget or decrease their expectations.

Certainly when I lived in a city outside London 25 years ago, I earned about £80 after tax and paid £35 per week in rent, plus a share of bills on top, in fairly ordinary to grotty accommodation. Thing is, I thought it was the norm and as I didn't have fabulous expectations and the internet didn't then exist, I had no impulse nor any means to whinge about it. I mean, I simply didn't feel sorry for myself, it didn't occur to me that I 'deserved' more...

Totally spot on, its expectations that have changed not London.

Problem is with todays "yoof", is that they think because they have a degree in meedja studies from a third rate ex poly they are in "intelectual elite"

Despite working in some sh!tty admin job, but because they work in an office and wear a cheap suit to work unlike their parents somehow they are "professional" and have made it.

On a night they drink cheap bottles of wine from sainsbury, somehow they beleive they are "cultured" and when friends are invited around for a meal, their working class parents are never mentioned.

personally I blame 3 things for this sorry state of affairs, the TV program "friends", easy credit via credit cards and the "middle class" dream thatcher gave their parents in the 80's which has now sadly been passed onto their children.

Thankfully its difficult to pay rent with a credit card, if it wasnt then central zone would be full of these people trying to live well above their station.

Jowo_2

Both the Guardian and the Evening Standard article show that the tenants are shocked not just by not being able to secure cheap accommodation in the central London, but also that they are heavily vetted by their prospective flatmates and are subjected to an interview or evaluation process, the cheek of their prospective flatmates meeting multiple people to choose the most suitable one...

It seems not to have occurred to them that they are competing for accommodation in pretty much the same way they are competing for jobs and competing for partners - i.e. the usual supply and demand equations where there is more demand than there is supply...

Love the one who rues how easy it seems for fictional characters in an American television programme

"The characters sharing a flat in Friends all managed to live in a massive, central property while not earning very much. That was never a very likely scenario, but in London today it's definitely the landlords who are getting the last laugh," she says."

Turnbull2000

Must be tough for tenants. Two choices...

1. Continue to make money for your landlord and live with the knowledge he/she can chuck you out on a whim and basically dictate your lifestyle.

2. Accept the HPC never really happened, that both Tory and Labour will make every effort to sustain and boost prices, but buy anyway to ensure you're not a second class tenant citizen.

Though I'm sure the BTLers with their record low rates and rising rents wont mind if there's a steady, deluded stream of HPC renter hopefuls. A bitter pill for some on this forum no doubt.

nearlynew

Turnbull2000 wrote: »

Must be tough for tenants. Two choices...

1. Continue to make money for your landlord and live with the knowledge he/she can chuck you out on a whim and basically dictate your lifestyle.

2. Accept the HPC never really happened, that both Tory and Labour will make every effort to sustain and boost prices, but buy anyway to ensure you're not a second class tenant citizen.

Though I'm sure the BTLers with their record low rates and rising rents wont mind if there's a steady, deluded stream of HPC renter hopefuls. A bitter pill for some on this forum no doubt.

and which of those 2 did you choose?