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

Herzlos

westernpromise wrote: »

If other places are so great why are they cheap? Answer: because nobody wants to live there because they aren't great.

Incorrect. It's because of jobs. There are more jobs in London and it's the only place for some industries due to inertia rather than anything else.

This assertion would carry more weight if you could point to significant numbers of people who've chosen to live in the sticks even though they could afford not to. There aren't any; just footballers, really.

How do you define significant? Can you point to significant numbers of people who choose to live in London because they want to and not because it's where they work?

Another example; a family member lived in London, but moved to Edinburgh while the kids went to school. He put the full sale price into a house in Edinburgh (it was massive) so that he could get back into the London housing market if he moved back. He's still happy in Edinburgh 40 years on.

Cakeguts

westernpromise wrote: »

It's entirely accurate to assume that northerners are poor.

It's not as though people in the northwest can afford to pay £500k for a 2-bed terrace, but cannily choose not to do so. The fact is that almost nobody can raise £500, never mind £500k. Northerners like to applaud themselves for their own thrift of course, but that's because poverty demands thrift.

Property prices tell you everything. If an area is poverty-stricken, house prices will be low, because nobody can afford to pay more than fourpence ha'penny for their house. As GreatApe keeps reminding us, in places like Stoke, a mortgage is less than a social rent, which can only happen if the social renters can't afford to save for a deposit out of what's left after they've paid for their social rent, their roll-ups and their whippet food.

Some areas are poverty-stricken but still have high house prices, such as Cornwall or Suffolk. The locals are skint, but property prices in places like Zennor or Southwold are through the roof. Why is that? Because although the locals haven't a bean, and there are no jobs, there are visitors who do, because the area is desirable.

Hence the price tells you everything. If a place is worth living in and you can get a well-paid job there the property price will reflect it. If it's a poverty-stricken beauty spot property prices will be high because of incomers. If it is skint and unattractive property prices will obviously be low because nobody's going to bid houses up.

Here's a 4-bedroom terrace in Newcastle:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-53551476.html

Here's a very similar 4-bedroom terrace in Dulwich:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-53578770.html

One is 12 times the price of the other. If anyone would care to believe that the dump in Newcastle is better because it's cheap, and that the locals could easily afford to pay 12 times more but are simply too smart, well, that may be why London is an international city and Newcastle isn't.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/11142074/London-is-most-desirable-global-city-to-move-to-for-work.html
More workers around the world want to come to London than any other city, a major survey has found, despite the fact it is now the most expensive place to live and work in the world.

A poll of 200,000 people in 189 countries found that nearly one in six want to come to the capital to work, ahead of New York and Paris.

People from the provinces often think their province is wonderful but that's because living in the provinces has left them with low standards.

Oh but you have missed something very important. The house in Newcastle is a first time buyers property at that price. I know it is a family but first time buyers can afford houses that size to start with.

This is more of a family type home http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-63731884.html There are a lot of properties around the £500k mark

Or this http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-51294768.html

The difference is that they they won't pay over a £million for a grotty terraced house like the one in Dulwich.

kabayiri

London is set to grow by 20% in a decade.

If you think it's overcrowded now, you might be in for a surprise.

I think London should have a core focus on being a working city, and somehow try and retain all the great tourist attractions.

But it can't act like some sort of black hole, sucking in all the workers from around the UK. We need to find some way of creating regional specialisms.

Cakeguts

kabayiri wrote: »

London is set to grow by 20% in a decade.

If you think it's overcrowded now, you might be in for a surprise.

I think London should have a core focus on being a working city, and somehow try and retain all the great tourist attractions.

But it can't act like some sort of black hole, sucking in all the workers from around the UK. We need to find some way of creating regional specialisms.

I actually think it is worse than this. There are other parts of the country with very well paid workers but they aren't people who went to a third rate university and got a third rate degree. I think what is happening is that people who do get degrees like this see that the wages in London look like what they expected to get with their useless degrees and then move to London and then find that they can't afford to live there. I think what London is going to get is more people who can't afford the housing costs. You aren't going to get pay rises in low paid work if there is always someone from some other part of the country willing to do it because they haven't realised that it is low paid.

Graham_Devon

westernpromise wrote: »

If other places are so great why are they cheap? Answer: because nobody wants to live there because they aren't great.

Goodness me - for all your wealth you boast about (though no one has a clue who you are and whether you even own your own sofa), you lack a great deal of education.

Aberdeen is expensive, relative to places around it. How do you work that one out?

Think about it and pop your answer on a post card. It's not because half of Scotland want to live in Aberdeen. What else is there that attracts people to Aberdeen that the rest of Scotland doesn't have? Think about it....

...Once you have the answer, apply the same theory to London and you have the answer....and it isn't what you keep trumpeting in a pompous, arrogant and woefully misinformed manner.

StevieJ

Interesting that the guy who owns half of London actually lives in the North :-)

SingleSue

Herzlos wrote: »

Another example; a family member lived in London, but moved to Edinburgh while the kids went to school. He put the full sale price into a house in Edinburgh (it was massive) so that he could get back into the London housing market if he moved back. He's still happy in Edinburgh 40 years on.

And another example to add to yours...my parents moved from London to Suffolk nearly 50 years ago.

At the time they were toying with buying a property in or around London or here.

My mum's siblings, all bar one moved out of London after mum showed they didn't have to stay...she was one of 9.

My dad's parents also moved from London down to Sussex, buying the largest house they could with the proceeds from their London house (just in case they wanted to go back), taking dad and all his siblings (he is one of 6). None of them have moved back nor do they want to.

30-40 years ago our family was concentrated in London, I spent my formative years getting the train to go visit my nan or with mum and dad in the car virtually every weekend visiting family members there, now you would be hard pressed to find any of my very large family living there. Not because they were priced out but because they realised it wasn't the be all and end all and that life could actually be pleasant elsewhere and that, yes shock horror, other places have restaurants, cinemas, theatres etc.

Mum and dad have never regretted moving away and never once wanted to move back again.

FrankR

Degrees are for tick in box. No matter where it is from or what subject -within reason. If you have a 2.1degree it is tick in box for employer and interview stage. Only the small firm care about degree. Large companies filter application.

westernpromise

Cakeguts wrote: »

Oh but you have missed something very important. The house in Newcastle is a first time buyers property at that price. I know it is a family but first time buyers can afford houses that size to start with.

This is more of a family type home http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-63731884.html There are a lot of properties around the £500k mark

Or this http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-51294768.html

The difference is that they they won't pay over a £million for a grotty terraced house like the one in Dulwich.

Nope, you've got it exactly backwards. The house in Newcastle is essentially identical to the one in Dulwich but it's bog cheap because nobody wants to live in Newcastle. A local first time buyer in Newcastle wouldn't pay the Dulwich price for the terrace because he can only afford about 8% of that. He would buy a wheelbarrow and live under that.

There's no Housing Authority of Newcastle that's decreed that family terraces are for first time buyers. It's simply that nobody who doesn't live in Newcastle wants to buy a house there, and people who do live in Newcastle haven't got a pit to p155 in, so 8% of the London price is all they can scrape together when they do find themselves in need of a family terrace.

These factors combine to make Newcastle housing roughly worthless.

The clue, always, is the price. Anyone who thinks location is X is great because it's cheap is exactly wrong. Location X is rubbish, nobody wants to live there and that's why it's cheap. If housing is expensive somewhere, that means a lot of people are prepared to bid high to live there. High price = desirable, low price = dump.

Of course if you can't get the money together you can't get the money together. I can't afford to buy Apsley House, but that doesn't make it a dump.

It's not all about undersupply, either. Ordinarily prices are high where there's an excess of demand over supply, but you can have almost zero supply of something and it can still be worthless. The Morris Ital is a good example. 175,000 were built and there are about 30 left, but they're still worthless because who'd want one?

Houses in the sticks, same thing.

kabayiri

westernpromise wrote: »

...
The clue, always, is the price. Anyone who thinks location is X is great because it's cheap is exactly wrong. Location X is rubbish, nobody wants to live there and that's why it's cheap. If housing is expensive somewhere, that means a lot of people are prepared to bid high to live there. High price = desirable, low price = dump.
...

It's hard for me to speak for Newcastle, but a neighbour has just moved out around here, and his listed cottage with few bedrooms sold for just under half a million. I bet you could find select neighbourhoods in Newcastle too.

It seems that round here we are seeing polarisation of the market. You can travel only a short distance and pay maybe a third of that price.

London seems unusual in that even grotty areas command big prices. It doesn't make them desirable places to live though.