23, back from travelling, and can't afford a house in London

Malthusian

economic wrote: »

There should be no denying that on average northerners are poorer then those in the SE. Now you got to ask yourself if money was no option, where would people prefer to live?

The North.

As I am from the South West, roughly the same distance from either, I am a neutral judge.

I'm willing to bet it would be the SE for by far most people.

No, most people would answer "China". And most people would be objectively wrong, given China is a smog-choked, poverty-stricken dump of a place where you can be disappeared if you look at the wrong council official the wrong way. Argumentum ad populum is a crap argument.

westernpromise

Herzlos wrote: »

No-one has said that Northerners are sitting on millions and choosing not to buy in the SE.

Read post 30 again. That's pretty much exactly what was said.

Just that many feel they get a better quality of life up North

A goldfish probably figures life in the bowl is great, because it can't imagine the ocean.

it doesn't mean that Northerners are poor or inferior. Just that they made a different value decision at some point in their career.

Nobody said it made them inferior. I'm sure you wish someone had said that, so you could get sanctimonious and preachy and do a bit of virtue-signalling, but nobody did. The claim was that property prices are cheap because the collective wisdom of northerners keeps them that way. I have explained how it is in fact poverty that keeps them that way.

If a place has lots of well-paid jobs, property prices will be high. If it has no well-paid jobs but is a pleasant location, property prices will be high. If it is an unpleasant location with no good jobs, property prices will be low. Newcastle is such a place, so it follows that to advise someone to live there because house prices are cheap is bad advice; they're cheap because it's horrible.

The same argument is routinely spun when employers want to relocate you to a dump. In my 20s mine moved me to London but wanted me, for its own convenience, to live in Milton Keynes. This was a compromise location between several of the firm's offices in places like Oxford, High Wycombe, Bishop's Stortford, and Leamington; they figured if they wanted to move me to one of those in a few years, they wouldn't need to pay for a second relocation.

"Property prices there are really cheap!" I was told.

"Yes. they are. Why is that, then?" I asked, and bought in London W9 instead. They tried the same thing a few years later when they tried to persuade me to work in Warsaw rather than Vienna or Istanbul.

A poor but attractive area such as Cornwall can have high property prices, but a rich one will never have cheap property prices.

Herzlos

But if you move the jobs somewhere else, and prices drop, does that place become a dump?

Let's face it; the vast majority of people that live in London do so because that's where they work. If all the new hiring was done in Liverpool, then you'd find over a generation everyone would live there and the prices would be up.

Not that it'll happen. London is fairly well placed as an international business hub.

GunJack

Jeez, why do people think London is the be-all and end-all of this country?? Even if we won £100Mil on the euromillions we wouldn't want to live there..

It's a big, ugly, sprawling, horrible, overcrowded, over-priced (for almost everything, not just housing), gang-infested, tower-blocked, lack-of-parking, etc., etc. place, like most UK cities but taken to an even greater degree.

There are FAR better places to live & work in the UK....

westernpromise

LydiaJ wrote: »

You are assuming that everyone feels the same way as you. You presumably live in London, so you probably know lots of people who also live in London because they like it. But those of us who live elsewhere equally find ourselves knowing lots of people who have never wanted to live in London, and never would. Those people aren't to be found in the places where you spend your time, so you don't see them, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.

In fact, the only people I've ever come across who don't live in London but want to move there are school children who want to go to London as students. I've never met adults who express a desire to live in London if they could only afford it.

Of course, there are plenty of people who regard London/SE as the most desirable part of the country, but there are also plenty of people who don't. I would *hate* living in London, whether I could afford it or not. I find myself in London every few years, and every time I am there, I think, "Well, it's quite fun for a day or two, but I pity the unfortunates who have to *live* here." Then I have to remind myself that many people actually like it and choose to live in London, however inexplicable that seems to me.

Your problem is sample bias. You're surrounded by people who couldn't in a million years afford to live in London, so of course they need to convince themselves they don't want to - what's the alternative?

So they persuade themselves that life in a poor area is perfect. There's one park, there's one theatre, there's lots of poobs, and if the locals want a good meal out, their idea of one is chicken in a basket at the Harvester. Who could want more?

Whenever you ask people from overseas where they most want to live and work London typically outscores most if not every other city in the world.

westernpromise

Herzlos wrote: »

But if you move the jobs somewhere else, and prices drop, does that place become a dump?

Let's face it; the vast majority of people that live in London do so because that's where they work. If all the new hiring was done in Liverpool, then you'd find over a generation everyone would live there and the prices would be up.

Not that it'll happen. London is fairly well placed as an international business hub.

Why would all the new hiring be done in Liverpool? Essentially you're simply saying that London's successful because it's successful, and if Liverpool were successful, it would be successful too. Have a think about the logic there.

Herzlos

My point was that there's nothing special about London, except it's where the jobs are.

If you move the jobs, then London loses all of it's appeal.

Filo25

Herzlos wrote: »

I disagree, with money no option I'd want to live as far away from London as I could. But then I'd rather live on a quiet island if my job would allow it.

In absolute terms, people up North are poorer than the South. That's obvious.
In quality of life terms, people up North compare pretty favourably.

If money was really no object I would want a house in London, one in Italy, one in Southern California somewhere .....

Herzlos

westernpromise wrote: »

Your problem is sample bias. You're surrounded by people who couldn't in a million years afford to live in London, so of course they need to convince themselves they don't want to - what's the alternative?

Sort of, but you're suffering from the converse - you live in London with people who are presumably well off and like living in London. You think living outside of London is only for those who can't afford to live in London, as clearly London is the best because it's the most expensive. Some people just don't feel like it's worth it, and don't fancy the idea regardless of the money.

I'm fairly sure I could afford to live in London if I had a suitable job, but I'd never consider it because I don't actually like London. It's far too busy and not actually that nice. I mean, I like visiting London (you've got a lot of attractions) but I don't think I'd want to go there for the sake of being there.

I can appreciate some people love London, for the nightlife, theaters, restaraunts etc. I'm at the stage in life where none of that appeals to me. There are plenty of attractions up here I can go to anyway.

LydiaJ

westernpromise wrote: »

Your problem is sample bias. You're surrounded by people who couldn't in a million years afford to live in London, so of course they need to convince themselves they don't want to - what's the alternative?

So they persuade themselves that life in a poor area is perfect. There's one park, there's one theatre, there's lots of poobs, and if the locals want a good meal out, their idea of one is chicken in a basket at the Harvester. Who could want more?

Whenever you ask people from overseas where they most want to live and work London typically outscores most if not every other city in the world.

You're not reading what I put. I'm not suffering from sample bias - I'm acknowledging that although many of the people I know feel like me, I'm aware that there are many others who feel differently. You are the one who won't accept that people who don't want to live in London must be deceiving themselves out of a lack of imagination.

Anyway, it's not true that I only know people who can't afford to live in London. On the contrary, my immediate family of origin consists entirely (apart from me) of people who lived in London as young adults to try to get a foot on the career ladder, and then moved somewhere nicer after a few years. One of my brothers now chooses to live in rural Lincolnshire, having moved from London to Nottingham, and then grabbed the chance to get out of the city as soon as his kids had left school and their wasted time travelling to and from school was no longer a consideration. Another brother admittedly decided, after living in London as a student, that Yeovil was too much of a backwater for him, but then moved not to London but to Bristol, and not long afterwards got Airbus to second him to Toulouse where his family enjoy the open air lifestyle that the Toulouse climate permits. Finally, my most un-London brother has spent his working like moving ever Northwards. He started in London, in the Civil Service. It was fun for a while, but after a while he hated the hassle of it - the endless commuting, the traffic, the lack of space, the distance from any decent hill walking. As soon as he heard that the Department of Health was relocating to Leeds, he got a transfer to the DoH so he could move to Leeds. He quite liked Leeds, and stayed for several years, but eventually decided he'd prefer to work in Edinburgh and have a not too bad commute in from a tiny Midlothian village with miles and miles of open countryside where his kids, dog and cats can roam free. Several years later, the opportunity came to apply for a Civil Service post in Inverness, and he grabbed it. Could he afford to live in London? Sure - he's easily high up enough in the CS to do that if he wanted. Would he ever consider it - not on your life!

As for me, I can get to open countryside in 5 minutes' walk, but I can also get to my job in the centre of town in 20min in the car or a bit longer on my bike. That's ideal for me. If I want to see one of my friends, it's easy to get there - none of them lives more than 15 minutes away. I've never been particularly interested in "nightlife" and shopping, or really any of the other things that London does better than other places. Even when I lived in close proximity to such things in the city where I grew up, or the other city where I went to uni, I rarely bothered with them because they bore me. Theatres - occasionally, and I don't mind travelling to one when I do want to go. Restaurants - we do have those outside London, you know, and they aren't all Harvesters. I have plenty of interests, but they lie elsewhere.

[X-posted with Herzlos]