11 house hunters for every home on the market

lisyloo

Can you tell us where it is please?
We're not willing to leave elderly parents right now (struggling to care for themselves) but I'd be interested to know.

Clearly it's because Londoners labouring under some mistaken belief about other areas of the country being grim. I'm not trying to be smart with that comment but clearly something is up.

I personally wouldn't be willing to "up sticks" away from family especially with parents who may need to go into a home shortly. I think people have different views on this, some would just "up sticks", but it's worth bearing in mind that many just wouldn't take their children away from grandparents especially if grandparents provide free childcare.
Many people do have family ties which extend beyond just emotional lines, but also to serious amounts of free childcare.

gadgetmind

Leeds in sunny Yorkshire. OK, some bits are pretty grim, but that's true of anywhere.

And Leeds very much isn't an exception as I know people in Manchester, Sheffield, York and even Liverpool who have "a few bob", in the form of six figure salaries and a few £m in the bank.

Daughter has just bought an ex-council end terrace in Nottingham for £125k. If you drive through some parts of that city, people can clearly afford multiple nice cars and large detached properties, and Sat Bains does well with his Michellin-stared place, despite it being under a flyover near my daughter's house.

Yes, per employee GVA is higher in London, but this is an average. Like for like salaries aren't as different as this figure would suggest, and cost of living is much cheaper in Leeds than in London.

My fresh grads can afford to rent city centre flats, which I doubt they could in London!

cells

lisyloo wrote: »

Are there lots of £100K jobs where you are?
I don't understand the clamour for the low or middle paid.
I understand it for top earners those e.g. £100K jobs, because my perception is that there aren't many of those in the North or indeed elsewhere.
Am I wrong?

there is wealth in every region of the UK as evidence by public schools up and down the country not just in inner London

The £100,000+ pool of jobs in London is low. Probably less than 5% of the jobs.

cells

gadgetmind wrote: »

Leeds in sunny Yorkshire. OK, some bits are pretty grim, but that's true of anywhere.

And Leeds very much isn't an exception as I know people in Manchester, Sheffield, York and even Liverpool who have "a few bob", in the form of six figure salaries and a few £m in the bank.

Daughter has just bought an ex-council end terrace in Nottingham for £125k. If you drive through some parts of that city, people can clearly afford multiple nice cars and large detached properties, and Sat Bains does well with his Michellin-stared place, despite it being under a flyover near my daughter's house.

Yes, per employee GVA is higher in London, but this is an average. Like for like salaries aren't as different as this figure would suggest, and cost of living is much cheaper in Leeds than in London.

My fresh grads can afford to rent city centre flats, which I doubt they could in London!

London is 33 boroughs not just one city. I would hazard a guess that 25 of those 33 have wages and GVA not much more than Birmingham.

Also a lot of the GDP/GVA sums of London come from rents. It costs 3x as much to rent in London than Birmingham and this on paper looks like London rentals are adding 3x as much value even if the building inside and out is identical. On a purchasing power metric London differential with the other cities would fall

Mistermeaner

cheshire for me

Its lovely here, where I live is nice and its an easy commute to the !!!!!! industrial areas where I work and liverpool/manchester airports thati frequent for my european commutes.

lisyloo

So what's the solution?
Everyone to move from London to Brimingham/Leeds?
No wait............

gadgetmind

lisyloo wrote: »

So what's the solution?

Perhaps for people to be a bit more flexible in their thinking and realise that you can enjoy a high, probably even higher, quality of life elsewhere.

Everyone to move from London to Brimingham/Leeds?
No wait............

No, please don't come here as it's clear that quite a lot of those in London don't know the value of money so you'd push up the prices of our beer and houses. Oh, and it's grim.

cells

lisyloo wrote: »

So what's the solution?
Everyone to move from London to Brimingham/Leeds?
No wait............

London has grown more rapidly than the rest of the UK over the last 15 years. That in my view is not good or bad it just is. If you think prices and rents in London should not diverge even mores o than the rest of the UK then the population growth needs to be more even.

If you want the differential of London and the rest of the UK to fall then the population of London needs to grow at a slower pace than the rest of the UK

It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to sell off all the council/HA stock in inner London as it became vacant rather than rehouse pensioners or unemployed families in the stock. That plus a benifit cap for all would lead to a slow rebalacing of population within and out of London

lisyloo

Perhaps for people to be a bit more flexible in their thinking and realise that you can enjoy a high, probably even higher, quality of life elsewhere.

My home is elsewhere and on some counts the quality of life is lower (not all aspects).

It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to sell off all the council/HA stock in inner London

There is no disagreement here at all (not between us anyway). But some other parts of the country do not want the "non-contributors" dumped on them.

cells

lisyloo wrote: »

There is no disagreement here at all (not between us anyway). But some other parts of the country do not want the "non-contributors" dumped on them.

thats not how it works

you don't swap a pensioner in Hackney for a worker in Luton.

The pensioner moves to luton, adding +1 to its population and spending maybe £15k a year largely into the Luton economy.

Meanwhile one of the millions of workers inside London in HMOs living 6 to a house buys the now sold off council home with his GF/Wife that the pensioner has left.

The population of London falls, the population of Luton rises. Spending within London falls, it rises in Luton. Luton is a lot better off as its got the pensioners spending while London is better off with marginally cheaper rents and prices. Becuase the rest of the UK is a lot bigger than London you can do this without it being a zero sum game