Borrow your deposit

ukcarper

lisyloo wrote: »

Fair enough, there are cheap fiats where there aren't lots of good jobs available.
I don't think there is a housing crisis outside of London and parts of the SE. It's been repeatedly shown that outside London houses are affordable so I have no argument with that.

If one of my offspring came to me with innovative ideas about how to work the system (for want a better phrase), I'd have to stop and think about whether it was risky or an innovative idea and I think the answer would be in the detail.

I'd agree with all of that. Like you I'm not keen on OPs ideas although they might work for some people. With the cost of housing in London and parts of the South East it could pay to take a lower paying job in a cheaper part of the country. The best option I can see is get a job where you can work from home and you only have to go into office occasionally, these jobs exist but are not that easy to find.

lisyloo

ukcarper wrote: »

With the cost of housing in London and parts of the South East it could pay to take a lower paying job in a cheaper part of the country. The best option I can see is get a job where you can work from home and you only have to go into office occasionally, these jobs exist but are not that easy to find.

Depends on the detail and of course what you want to do with your career/life.
If it means going from barrister to barrista then it might be worth paying £20k in rent to get the £100k job. As always the devil is in the detail.
I'm at an an age (40s) where people are peak earning potential so few want to give it up.
The cases I've come across are people who can earn a LOT more in London and spending £10k on train tickets or £20k on a flat is justified by the higher pay and you have to consider it a cost that goes with the opportunity.
Of course what you want to do career wise, family and socially comes into it as well.
For us being in London is a bonus rather than a chore but I'm expecting that to change one day and possibly quite suddenly.

I am surprised about what you say about working from home. I work in software and working from home is common (especially if most of your colleagues are remote anyway) unless you are doing anything Relating to secure data.
I actually prefer being in the office if I have colleagues locally.
What area do you work in? Are there genuine reasons you can't work from home or is it management attitudes that prevent it?

ukcarper

lisyloo wrote: »

Depends on the detail and of course what you want to do.
If it means going from barrister to barrista then it might be worth paying £20k in rent to get the £100k job. As always the devil is in the detail.
The cases I've come across are people who can earn a LOT more in London and spending £10k on train tickets or £20k on a flat is justified by the higher pay and you have to consider it a cost that goes with the opportunity.

I am surprised about what peoyou say about working from home,p. I work in software and working from home is common (especially if most of your colleagues are remote anyway) unless you are doing anything Relating to secure data.
What area do you work in? Are there genuine reasons you can't work from home or is it management attitudes that prevent it?

I've retired now but it would not have been possible to do my job from home, there are plenty of jobs where it's not possible. If you can work from home why do you choose to live in London.
I can see there are jobs where the rewards for working in London can make the high housing cost worthwhile,

lisyloo

ukcarper wrote: »

If you can work from home why do you choose to live in London.

Because I choose to live with my husband who found a good job in London when he had no luck finding one locally. Luckily the pay justifies the extra costs so you just have to consider it another cost like commuting and work wear.
Ideally we'd choose high paying jobs near our home, they do exist but in much lower numbers.
We've considered the options - like 5 hour commute, selling our 5 bed house and buying a 1 bed flat and all options in between but the 2 homes works well for us at the moment (we have strong roots) and don't forget it's a contract so there's practically no employment rights. If it did end tomorrow we can just pack our suitcase and go and our only commitment is 1 months rent. We have had to move once but we did it on the bus so that indicates we're pretty mobile.

I was lucky in that my employer has a London office and they were more than happy for me to just transfer offices.

I have reviewed buying for time to time but the main issue is not knowing how long we'll be here.

ukcarper

lisyloo wrote: »

Because I choose to live with my husband who found a good job in London when he had no luck finding one locally. Luckily the pay justifies the extra costs so you just have to consider it another cost like commuting and work wear.
Ideally we'd choose high paying jobs near our home, they do exist but in much lower numbers.
We've considered the options - like 5 hour commute, selling our 5 bed house and buying a 1 bed flat and all options in between but the 2 homes works well for us at the moment (we have strong roots) and don't forget it's a contract so there's practically no employment rights. If it did end tomorrow we can just pack our suitcase and go and our only commitment is 1 months rent. We have had to move once but we did it on the bus so that indicates we're pretty mobile.

I was lucky in that my employer has a London office and they were more than happy for me to just transfer offices.

I have reviewed buying for time to time but the main issue is not knowing how long we'll be here.

From that I take it your husband can't work from, if so why were you surprised I couldn't .

I hope you don't think I'm criticising the choices you have made, you've made the choices that suite you and that's fare enough.

lisyloo

There are plenty of people that can't work from home. I was just curious really. People (like Matthewainsworth) say it's a solution but loads of people (even in back office jobs) don't seem to be able to do it. Sometimes there are genuine reasons for this other times it seems to be management issues like trust issues.

No I'm not taking anything as criticism. I know we have reviewed and researched carefully, for example living in many locations in serviced apartments for real experience of those areas and transport links and we've kept in a position where we can change our minds. It's my expectation that we'll get fed up of London at some point I just don't know how long it will be.

BTW - we weren't allowed to work from home all the time and there was constant pressure from our US CEO for more presence in the office for collaboration, but it was possible to only go in 2 times a week, which meant quite a few people did 2x2 hour commutes.

System

I think the drive to work at home will be employer led in the end, they won't want to run a building when they no longer have to - in fact if it can be done remotely it might as well be done in India or China, or even automated. The idea of face to face collaboration is a bit old fashioned, but it probably is more effective as long as its worth the costs, it could be partly down to employers wanting to keep an eye on staff. Physical jobs can't be remote until drones improve

lisyloo

MatthewAinsworth wrote: »

I think the drive to work at home will be employer led in the end, they won't want to run a building when they no longer have to - in fact if it can be done remotely it might as well be done in India or China, or even automated. The idea of face to face collaboration is a bit old fashioned, but it probably is more effective as long as its worth the costs, it could be partly down to employers wanting to keep an eye on staff. Physical jobs can't be remote until drones improve

In my line of work (software engineering) there are some jobs that are not done well by staff in India/China. For example international sales, software architecture, programme management - yes they can do coding.
The idea of collaboration came from Marissa Mayer the CEO of yahoo in 2013. You can google and read about that here if you want.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-marissa-mayer-told-remote-employees-to-work-in-an-office--or-quit-2013-2?IR=T

I prefer the office forvarious reasons, but it's nice to have the flexibility to work for home if you have a delivery, doctors, dentists etc.
There are some downsides to working from home for example lack of separation between Home and work! But having the flexibility is definitely ideal and enables you to live further from the office.

System

I suppose library is an option if it helps can understand language barrier being an issue, I'm aware of medical records being merged between sites, I suppose to increase the technology advantage - locally they say they'll try moving towards paperless, but that's a huge task itself and probably best done gradually and baby-first - I've thought that they could do it abroad but a friend pointed out security issues with that. But paperless will certainly reduce the jobs needed sifting through and sending records.

I suppose office hours could be somewhat flexible, although locking up might be a limitation