commuter rail fares - impact on house prices

FTBFun

A friend of mine commutes from Grantham in Lincolnshire into the City. Personally I wouldn't even consider it but there are family reasons plus they can get a bigger house.

ninky_2

ringo_24601 wrote: »

And i complain about my puny 200 quid a month zone 1 - 6 pass..

There are massive savings in house prices to those who commute from further out.. if you want a 3 or 4 bed house within London, it can be damn pricey (especially if you want a reasonable area).

this is true but at least the money you put into paying off a mortgage is yours (and hopefully the property retains or increases in value over the longterm). the money you have to put into season tickets is gone. to me the cost of extra travel should be considered as an extra cost of servicing your housing debt. an extra cost that will only rise.

[Deleted User]

I have found a nifty solution to the cost of commuting... I've found a job that will pay the travel as a business expense. Hurray, I'm now immune to the annual rise in commuting costs.

ukcarper

Lets try an example season ticket Farnborough to waterloo £3140 = £261 a month

3 bed semi Farnborough about £250k at 5% £1478 a month = £1739

3 bed semi Battersea about £500k at 5% £2956 a month

ninky_2

ringo_24601 wrote: »

I have found a nifty solution to the cost of commuting... I've found a job that will pay the travel as a business expense. Hurray, I'm now immune to the annual rise in commuting costs.

depends how the expenses are paid calculated though. if it's like me, as a freelancer i can claim travel against my earnings but that doesn't mean i actually get the entire amount back - it merely reduces my taxable income by that amount.

[Deleted User]

ninky wrote: »

depends how the expenses are paid calculated though. if it's like me, as a freelancer i can claim travel against my earnings but that doesn't mean i actually get the entire amount back - it merely reduces my taxable income by that amount.

It's a salaried job with my home being the 'office' - All travel is counted as a expense, so fully claimable and i should get the full amount back.

Pete111

ringo_24601 wrote: »

And i complain about my puny 200 quid a month zone 1 - 6 pass..

There are massive savings in house prices to those who commute from further out.. if you want a 3 or 4 bed house within London, it can be damn pricey (especially if you want a reasonable area).

Yep.

Our current place in Kent (4 bed detatched, loads of parking/garaging + biggish garden) would cost at least twice as much in the area we moved from in London (Wimbledon) + we have some lovely countryside just a few mins walk away from our doorstep. Also, unlike in London, you can actually socialise with your neighbours and not be thought of as odd!

Pretty much all our London friends who have just started families are now looking to move outside the city. They went from flats into relatively cramped 3 bed Semis with postage stamp gardens and all paying rather more than we did for the pleasure....I guess we just jumped one move ahead of them

Yes the commute to London is longer and more expensive, but not massively so and the mortgage savings/lifestyle you get more than compensates IMHO.

ninky_2

Pete111 wrote: »

Yep.

Our current place in Kent (4 bed detatched, loads of parking/garaging + biggish garden) would cost at least twice as much in the area we moved from in London (Wimbledon) + we have some lovely countryside just a few mins walk away from our doorstep. Also, unlike in London, you can actually socialise with your neighbours and not be thought of as odd!

Pretty much all our London friends who have just started families are now looking to move outside the city. They went from flats into relatively cramped 3 bed Semis with postage stamp gardens and all paying rather more than we did for the pleasure....I guess we just jumped one move ahead of them

Yes the commute to London is longer and more expensive, but not massively so and the mortgage savings/lifestyle you get more than compensates IMHO.

i don't get this thing about the lifestyle. i don't mean to be rude what sort of 'lifestyle' is there in kent? you can talk to neighbours in london too. there are plenty of neighbourhood groups around our way in north london - many of them based around the parks in the area. there's a food coop and community cafe, allotment groups and loads more stuff if you have children. plus we have lea valley and epping forest just a short hop away for outdoors activities. last time i was in chatham (and rochester for that matter), it looked like a bnp street party was in full swing.

that said we've been for lovely walks around isle of sheppey - shell ness and surrounds. but i wouldn't want to live there.

ruggedtoast

Railfares are a nightmare. We realised fairly quickly we were priced out of most areas the tube reaches, then you get the excitement of finding somewhere nice where property is affordable followed by the despondency of looking up the season ticket costs and realising you'd be priced out of going to work. Or finding somewhere affordable to commute from which is already priced into the stratosphere.

I completely ditched travel time from the entire paradigm and ended up just looking at housing and commuting costs. In the end we offered on a small 3 bed end of terrace for £225k where my 2 hour door to door commute would have "only" cost £300 per month.

Thankfully I got a job outside London on the day they accepted the offer, so my commute is a 15 minute walk. Dont miss London one bit.

movilogo

Commuting is what something people adopt as a lifestyle choice.

People can get a job near home which pays less or one which require long/expensive commute with more pay.

The trade off is purely individual choice.

Single people can do long commute but people with family will find it difficult as it leaves almost no time for family (but people do that because they think more money will buy better quality of life otherwise).

Train fares in South East are expensive! But again you can't drive into London and people have no choice.

Or just don't work in London.

Everything in South East very skewed compared to national averages. House price is ludicrous, roads are crowed but wages are higher compared to other parts of UK.

If more and more businesses open offices outside London, then fewer people will need to commute and train fare will come down. Train companies charge that much because they can get away with.