London rents set to rise almost 20% - Khan

Crashy_Time

london21 said:

In London, I thought rents were the same or going down due to people moving outside London due to lots of people working from home. 

You can work from home in London? WFH doesn`t mean that millions of people will have bought a cottage, and will be able to just sell that and move back to London when the All Clear sounds meaning that London rents shoot up again, that is just media hype and the wish lists of rural EA`s and London landlords clashing as both sides try to ramp up their own best interests.

Newnoel

Crashy_Time said:

london21 said:

In London, I thought rents were the same or going down due to people moving outside London due to lots of people working from home. 

You can work from home in London? WFH doesn`t mean that millions of people will have bought a cottage, and will be able to just sell that and move back to London when the All Clear sounds meaning that London rents shoot up again, that is just media hype and the wish lists of rural EA`s and London landlords clashing as both sides try to ramp up their own best interests.

Luckily, many of us both own homes in the country (I am on the Surrey/Sussex borders) and rent out property in London. 

This sort of luck doesnt happen by accident. You should perhaps reflect on your own situation and on some of the comments on here. Who knows? You might even learn enough to help with the anger against property owners you currently harbour

Crashy_Time

Newnoel said:

Crashy_Time said:

london21 said:

In London, I thought rents were the same or going down due to people moving outside London due to lots of people working from home. 

You can work from home in London? WFH doesn`t mean that millions of people will have bought a cottage, and will be able to just sell that and move back to London when the All Clear sounds meaning that London rents shoot up again, that is just media hype and the wish lists of rural EA`s and London landlords clashing as both sides try to ramp up their own best interests.

Luckily, many of us both own homes in the country (I am on the Surrey/Sussex borders) and rent out property in London. 

This sort of luck doesnt happen by accident. You should perhaps reflect on your own situation and on some of the comments on here. Who knows? You might even learn enough to help with the anger against property owners you currently harbour

The majority of London workers though either rent, mortgage or own a flat/house in London or commutable to London, they are WFH in those properties not from their second home in the country, and young people who have moved back to parents are probably not in a rush to give up cheap living in this economic climate, so I can`t see London BTL being all that great going forward TBH.

AFF8879

I exchanged contracts on selling my London 1-bed flat last week, to move out to Hampshire, and I have to admit the constant daily Rightmove etc newsletters / articles over the past few months saying how everyone is fleeing cities was making me quite paranoid that my buyer would pull out (second time, the first buyer already did!), prices in the city would crash and I’d be stuck here forever! Thank god it’s now going through (or at the very least, I get to keep their deposit)!

Now that we’ve exchanged and I’m thinking a little more level-headed, I honestly don’t see any major reduction outside maybe the prime central areas. Most people are still going to commute at least 2-3 days a week (like I will be doing) and it’s getting to the point where even flats in Surrey, Herts etc are costing as much as / more than zone 2-6 London… so I really don’t think they have much leeway to drop, unless there’s a wider nationwide reduction. Especially when you consider that family homes in London haven’t even dropped in price at all, only flats seem to have reduced.

Grumpy_chap

lisyloo said:

This just doesn't sound right to me.
I've recently moved out of London.
The flat I rented dropped about 20%

Not everyone is going back full time and some people not at all.

Further more some jobs have gone fully remote.

I just don't see it.

This.
There were articles a year ago bleating about how the London rental market had totally crashed because people WFH did not need a flat for the week, people choosing to move out of the central areas as they could WFH from somewhere with more space, etc.
Renters are highly mobile if they choose to be, unlike buyers, and can therefore be more fickle.  As some jobs return back to offices, the demand will increase.
It is the same issue to an 8% increase in average earning as measured for the pension triple lock - with no memory of 2019, the falls in 2020 creates a baseline from which "incomplete" 2021 and forward projections are possible.

zagubov

I'm tempted to agree. I know many people who only have to turn up for work physically maybe one day a week.

Back in the 80s I worked in a central London college where students attended to study one day a week,(it was called day-release study back then).

The remaining four days they were working locally in laboratories in towns and cities from all over south England, as far north as Derby, almost 120 miles away.

If people would travel this far one day a week, I can't see how there'll be enough local demand to push London rents upwards.

woahsoah

Simple supply and demand. Landlords like myself are cashing out reducing the supply (there is no 1 to 1 mapping between renters and buyers), mostly due to house prices and an increasing tax burden on landlords.

Crashy_Time

zagubov said:

I'm tempted to agree. I know many people who only have to turn up for work physically maybe one day a week.

Back in the 80s I worked in a central London college where students attended to study one day a week,(it was called day-release study back then).

The remaining four days they were working locally in laboratories in towns and cities from all over south England, as far north as Derby, almost 120 miles away.

If people would travel this far one day a week, I can't see how there'll be enough local demand to push London rents upwards.

The college placement thing was common in the 80`s, it was often also attached to the YTS scheme with expenses and sometimes accommodation for overnight stays added, not really a comparison for the last year and a half though is it?

zagubov

Crashy_Time said:

zagubov said:

I'm tempted to agree. I know many people who only have to turn up for work physically maybe one day a week.

Back in the 80s I worked in a central London college where students attended to study one day a week,(it was called day-release study back then).

The remaining four days they were working locally in laboratories in towns and cities from all over south England, as far north as Derby, almost 120 miles away.

If people would travel this far one day a week, I can't see how there'll be enough local demand to push London rents upwards.

The college placement thing was common in the 80`s, it was often also attached to the YTS scheme with expenses and sometimes accommodation for overnight stays added, not really a comparison for the last year and a half though is it?

These students were in full-time employment for four days a week and their employers paid for their training with us.

They came from a range of towns where their workplace was presumably commutable. One day a week they'd come in to central London and they regarded it as reasonable. Their employers didn't help with overnight accommodation.

I could quite easily see it as reasonable that someone would be happy to live miles way from a place they only had to attend once a week.

With hindsight, we were unprepared for the flu epidemic which hit us at that time  (1986) - my mentor at the college became seriously ill and we feared for his life. The internet, Netflix, Amazon, Zoom, FaceTime were years away in the future. Distance learning was only just starting out. Working from home was extremely limited, to say the least.

Videophones did exist, but as a novelty item, and, like the original audio-only phones, were initially sold in pairs so you'd have someone to talk to.

Unlike audio-only phones they met the same fate as prestel, betamax, rabbit phones, digital cassettes and laserdiscs.

Tech now allows us to see how much work has to occur in massive buildings with huge potentially infectious workforces. Turns out it it's not as uch as many would have thought.

Crashy_Time

zagubov said:

Crashy_Time said:

zagubov said:

I'm tempted to agree. I know many people who only have to turn up for work physically maybe one day a week.

Back in the 80s I worked in a central London college where students attended to study one day a week,(it was called day-release study back then).

The remaining four days they were working locally in laboratories in towns and cities from all over south England, as far north as Derby, almost 120 miles away.

If people would travel this far one day a week, I can't see how there'll be enough local demand to push London rents upwards.

The college placement thing was common in the 80`s, it was often also attached to the YTS scheme with expenses and sometimes accommodation for overnight stays added, not really a comparison for the last year and a half though is it?

These students were in full-time employment for four days a week and their employers paid for their training with us.

They came from a range of towns where their workplace was presumably commutable. One day a week they'd come in to central London and they regarded it as reasonable. Their employers didn't help with overnight accommodation.

I could quite easily see it as reasonable that someone would be happy to live miles way from a place they only had to attend once a week.

With hindsight, we were unprepared for the flu epidemic which hit us at that time  (1986) - my mentor at the college became seriously ill and we feared for his life. The internet, Netflix, Amazon, Zoom, FaceTime were years away in the future. Distance learning was only just starting out. Working from home was extremely limited, to say the least.

Videophones did exist, but as a novelty item, and, like the original audio-only phones, were initially sold in pairs so you'd have someone to talk to.

Unlike audio-only phones they met the same fate as prestel, betamax, rabbit phones, digital cassettes and laserdiscs.

Tech now allows us to see how much work has to occur in massive buildings with huge potentially infectious workforces. Turns out it it's not as uch as many would have thought.

Younger people are in London for the nightlife, they want a "company culture" where they can hang out and network and go for drinks with people from work, many would develop mental health problems if forced to stay in their home town in front of Zoom all day, and if you think WFH stops virus spread you need to then shut pubs and nightclubs because that is where all the Zoom home workers are now going to catch it.