Why are property prices so different in the north?

chelseablue

We're thinking of moving from the South East to the North West next year.

We have a 5 year old son and both work full time (both incomes needed to support mortgage and other outgoings)

If we sold our place down here we'd have around £200k deposit

Currently have 30 years to go on our mortgage, if we moved I don't think we'd be mortgage free but could be in around 10 years I reckon (I'm 36)

We would like to move to a nicer house one day, which I doubt we could afford down here

Husband earns £29,000, looking at jobs up there I think he could earn a similar amount

lisyloo

Just curious but how do the grandparents feel about it?
Does your son have cousins, aunts and uncles?
I appreciate all families are not the same, so good for you if it works out.

chelseablue

lisyloo wrote: »

Just curious but how do the grandparents feel about it?
Does your son have cousins, aunts and uncles?
I appreciate all families are not the same, so good for you if it works out.

Have said to my parents we may move, but haven't said to what area yet.

My Mum may move in with us one day

My brother moved to the Midlands last year so he's about 2 hours away (he doesn't have any children yet)

My husband has 3 brothers, none of them live in our town. My son sees his cousins about 3 or 4 times a year

chelseablue

At least we'll be going to check out different areas up there first; my husbands aunt and uncle emigrated to Australia in 1987 and they'd never been there before ever! :eek:

They still live there so I'm guessing they liked it :rotfl:

Thrugelmir

westernpromise wrote: »

If the first bolded bit is true the second cannot be,

Public sector workers such as the NHS are paid on a National Scale. Know where I'd prefer to live and work if it were me. Friend of my partners has just moved to Truro. No intention of ever returning to the crowded south.

lisyloo

chelseablue wrote: »

At least we'll be going to check out different areas up there first; my husbands aunt and uncle emigrated to Australia in 1987 and they'd never been there before ever! :eek:

They still live there so I'm guessing they liked it :rotfl:

Yes I agree about that.
Before we moved to London we tried a hotel first (least commitment) and then tried several areas using serviced apartments.
Living out of a suitcase for a while but it meant we could trial it first without a big financial commitment.

GreatApe

lisyloo wrote: »

For people that do work, it’s usually a major factor.
If you have transferable skills e.g. driver, plumber it may be easy.
But if you don’t - let’s say you work in airport software, or central government, barrister, hedge fund manager, then your choices are much more limited.

Family is the other biggy.
This might be grandchildren (possibly care), maybe elderly parents (again maybe care) or possibly receiving care from children and granchildren.

You make it sound so simply.
If that means ditching the career, being unemployed and never seeing the grandchildren then it’s hardly surprising is it?

Some people might call this ethnic cleansing.
Personally I wouldn’t object to a carrot approach I,e. Give people an incentive to move.
You do need to be careful moving people who currently provide or receive free or low cost care from family.

where do you think there’s free housing for 1/2 million households.
When I’ve said this before people from the north have said (quite rightly) they don’t want all of London’s problems dumped on their doorstep.

I’d like to see more gradual moves with incentives but I agree you approach is 0% likely.

Well if I was in power and my aim was to reduce prices in London I would do as follows

1: As social tenants vacate or die sell off the homes
Aprox 33,000 such homes would be vacated and sold off
No one is kicked out

2: Set a cap on housing benefits for new claimants of for example £1,000 per month. Not enough for most of London but plenty enough for rUK

The result over a period of 10 years would be roughly as follows.
London would see its social stock decline from 24% to 15% which is closer to the national average. So London has no less social housing than the average in the UK it goes form having more than the average to having the average

London population growth of +100,000 a year is reduced to roughly 0 population growth
rUK population growth goes from ~400,000 a year to ~500,000 a year

Result is cheaper London house prices and rents (same population but circa 300k-500k new builds built over the decade) and marginally more expensive house prices and rents in rUK. But the differential is lower because you shift 500,000 people in London with a housing stock of 3.5 million properties to 500,000 people in rUK with a housing stock of 27 million properties

Additional benefits are less congestion and less need to spend on public transport upgrades in London since there are 500,000 fewer people than there otherwise might be


For those that hate the idea of the government selling off social homes. Instead they could be sold to a private company who could rent them out on normal ASTs for 12/24 months at full going rate. The government can then retain 90-100% of the shares of said company. If they shifted 300,000 properties to said company and say this company charged £10,000 more per property than the council where charging that means said company would make a profit of £3 billion a year which would go 90-100% to the government which could use it to buy rainbows and pomchis for orphan kids

lisyloo

How do you expect there to be lower prices? (In fact at the end you’ve said Rent them out at +£10k).
I’m actually sat in a private flat in a social housing block.
I’m paying a private rent at London market rate which I’m certain is higher than the social housing rent.
How have you made rents/housing prices cheaper or removed any people from the city?

You’ve simply replaced some social housing tenants with private tenants at higher private rents.

GreatApe

Another idea I read about a long time ago but it seems not to have gone anywhere but it was interesting was the idea of building the equivalent of cruise ships and docking them permanently onto areas in the Thames. 2,500 rooms per ship with communal kitchens/laundry etc. A bit like student dorms.

Maybe not ideal for families but would be fine for young workers and you would be right in zone 1

100 such ships could house 375,000 people at an mix of 1 and 2 persons per room

Like with most things, if they were filled with full time workers they would work fine but if filled with the idle would end up as undesirable tower blocks

Maybe more realistic as an 'office' space for 5,000 workers...

GreatApe

lisyloo wrote: »

How do you expect there to be lower prices? (In fact at the end you’ve said Rent them out at +£10k).
I’m actually sat in a private flat in a social housing block.
I’m paying a private rent at London market rate which I’m certain is higher than the social housing rent.
How have you made rents/housing prices cheaper or removed any people from the city?

You’ve simply replaced some social housing tenants with private tenants at higher private rents.

You moved people out by the housing benefit cap

And over the decade have 300,000 fewer homes that fall under that cap since they are charging £15,000 rent per year rather than £5,000 per year

You also have a company paying the government £3 billion a year which is used to give every labor votre a pomchi or two and you can spray paint them in the colors of the rainbow for added cuteness.