Another tiny studio going for £780 a month

Generali

PasturesNew wrote: »

Why is it so cheap in London??

I was in a house share 2 years ago at £500/month.

I thought London was expensive? (Never been, don't know the place... but I hear people always saying it's expensive).

Central London is very expensive. Zone 3 & 4 has loads of dull suburbs that are not.

IveSeenTheLight

PasturesNew wrote: »

Why is it so cheap in London??

I was in a house share 2 years ago at £500/month.

Have you changed your perception from the start of this thread or are you being sarcastic?
It's hard to determine without the body language

PasturesNew wrote: »

I thought London was expensive? (Never been, don't know the place... but I hear people always saying it's expensive).

Maybe it is down to expectations.
People may be expecting more than applying a little short term sacrifice to be better off down the line.

SerialRenter

I don't think it's a matter of having unrealistic expectations

I think it's a matter of not being able to see a future where they're in a better position.

I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck in a grotty house share, no personal space, spending most of my disposable income on rent and bills. Only having limited savings and no chance of anything changing in the next 10 years.

It's just depressing.

IveSeenTheLight

SerialRenter wrote: »

I don't think it's a matter of having unrealistic expectations

I think it's a matter of not being able to see a future where they're in a better position.

I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck in a grotty house share, no personal space, spending most of my disposable income on rent and bills. Only having limited savings and no chance of anything changing in the next 10 years.

It's just depressing.

Why do you see yourself as a serial renter with no means of progression for the next 10 years.
That is depressing.

I can tell you from experience that a decade can provide a lot of opportunities.

It's up to you to position yourself and grasp them

SerialRenter

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Why do you see yourself as a serial renter with no means of progression for the next 10 years.
That is depressing.

I don't. I'm on a much better than average salary with a good deposit saved ready for a 2 bed flat in surrey within the next year hopefully.
Although i am a serial renter, having rented many placed through uni and work placements.

I do see a lot of acquaintances from school and uni who have not planned as well as i have, or been unlucky. And whilst i can understand the daily mail world view of "they're buying too many ipads!" or "they have unrealistic expectations", i don't agree that it can be applied to the vast majority of people in my age group.

Financial education when i was in school was pathetic, i was certainly lucky to have a father who taught me to be financially prudent at a young age and to save.
Costs have been creeping up for everyone, which affects those with less disposable income first.
I recommend spending some time reading the debt free wannabe section to actually understand how people end up in a financial mess, it seems to generally be an ignorance of how money and debt work.
Of course that doesn't mean they're blameless, but i believe it does mean something has gone wrong with the education system.

J_i_m

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Ah, here you get into the options.
I saw a program linking up migrants with non migrants.
There was a girl from France, who worked as a waitress and shared with 19 others (I think). She shared her room with another (practically a cupboard) but the rest of the house (lounge, kitchen, bathroom etc) they shared.
If they can do low cost living to get by, why can't others to get to their long term goals.
Why do people expect everything on day 1.

Just to play devils advocate, but this is the kind of rhetoric regularly trotted out on this forum.

It's almost as though people who say similar things think the way they made home is the only definitive way of doing it and that everyone else should have to follow the same example.

Well, reality isn't that straight forward.

Different, backgrounds, different circumstances and different economics call for different routes into home owning.

It's all very well for people who've owned their home for sometime now to turn round and patronise the next generation and say 'oh well in my day we didn't have x y & z and we had to work for it' etc etc.

But this isn't 'your day' anymore, it's the new generation's day and times have changed, so whilst your experience may hold some value it isn't strictly completely relevant to today's circumstances anymore.

So a little less of this youth bashing "oh, they want everything now, there's no working for it anymore" because we're not all like that and some of us are actually trying very hard in an economic climate which is increasingly against us.

IveSeenTheLight

J_i_m wrote: »

Just to play devils advocate........

This thing is J i m, statistically, FTBers have still been buying and I know of many people who have forged their way into home ownership and others that are currently doing so.

there are those that can and do, there are others that can't and won't.

This is not to be patronising or to "bash the yoof", but a simple message that if you really want to achieve your desire in this tough climate, you have to get on with it and position yourself accordingly to do so.

there is absolutely no point (in my opinion) in moaning or hoping that someone will sort something out to correct your own personal circumstance

IveSeenTheLight

SerialRenter wrote: »

I don't. I'm on a much better than average salary with a good deposit saved ready for a 2 bed flat in surrey within the next year hopefully.

Well done, you show yourself as one who has been able to achieve your goals and cite that some others have not planned accordingly.

the point is you can succeed if you put in enough determination.

Of course an issue could still be the lack of supply of properties, but then you could also investigate the self build route.

PasturesNew

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Have you changed your perception from the start of this thread or are you being sarcastic?
It's hard to determine without the body language

Who knows.... I'd have to read/care to work it out

I don't live in London ... and I bought a house the other week.... so often what I post isn't "my" situation ... but "the situation a lot of people are in".

chewmylegoff

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

You are not obliged to go with the agent.
question the charges, know your facts.
You can then seek out better options.

I do not charge potential tenants with credit reference checks.
The cost is so cheap and I have not found one instance where there have been any concerns.

Obviously any potential tenant knows they need to be credit worthy by supplying the documentation for the credit check.

Of course, I may have just been lucky / my area is an affluent area.

I also don't charge for printing out the lease.

the only thing I ask the tenants to contribute on is the check in and check out inventory as this is beneficial to both parties. I pay 50% and ask the tenants to pay 50%. For my latest lease, this was £54.88 split between the two tenants. Which they will also be liable for at check out.

You clearly have no experience of renting in london. You are obliged to go with the agent if you want the property. Because there is so much competition for not very many half decent places, you can't decide you aren't going to look at properties advertised by particular agents and it is not practical to decide only to deal direct with landlords. You have to take what is available and that's why agents can charge such a ludicrous credit checking fee etc etc.

Better to pay the fee than not have anywhere to live...