Average Rent Now £1000pcm & Rising

PasturesNew

pinkshoes wrote: »

No offence PasturesNew, but there's very few people who can live in a bedsit without going insane! I tried it once, and what you save in rent, you lose several times over by going out all the time to save your sanity of those 4 wall which always seem to be closing in... but then again, perhaps you're a social butterfly who is always out and about, thus wisely choosing to save on rent if you're never home!

I am not a social butterfly. I cut my cloth to suit. A 1-bed place (extra rent + council tax) would cost a minimum of an extra £150/month, so that's £1800/year extra cost.

In fact, I don't go out. I work from home, alone. I leave the flat only for quick late night dashes to supermarkets. I go "out" about once every 4-6 weeks for about 3 hours. I am quite literally here 24/7.

The only downside I am finding is that there's no freezer. So it limits what food I can choose/buy and cook as whatever I get has to be eaten by the best before date.

brit1234

£1000 a month for rent is central London prices, far lower over the rest of the country.

TJ27

pinkshoes wrote: »

Not sure what the average rent in Oxford is, but £1000/month sounds quite low. £3000/month will get you a 10 bed house (read "bed" as "box"), which is obviously aimed at students.

Absolutely. That's my line of thinking too. In my city 10% of the population of 300,000 are students. Many are in rented houses, most of which cost well over a grand per month.

Landlords here are very worried about voids, as more students halls are being built, but there are still several thousand houses in my city alone which cost way over £1,000 per month. And it's not a particularly expensive place to live either.

However, due to the halls, next year the good quality houses near the uni will be full and the poor quality ones further away will be empty. I'm no economist but I would have thought that if there are a load of rental properties lying empty will that tend to force rents down rather than up??

Gorgeous_George

SquatNow wrote: »

If I wanted to have kids (which I don't, neither does the misses)...

Good news indeed!



GG

PasturesNew

It seems in Cardiff 3-6 bed houses (excepting student houses) are costing £900-2,400.

In my searches, I found another one of these desperados:

1] Buy it: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-9761418.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy for £800k

2] Rent it from this agent: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-20292602.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=rent at £2,250

3] Or this agent: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-17267812.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=rent

4] Or this agent: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-20338826.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=rent

5] Maybe this one can shift it: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-17249623.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=rent

Maybe it's not worth £800k OR £2,250/month then

(For the price judgemental, this is actually one of the best parts of Cardiff and the house is of historical importance). It does, however, suffer from a small plot and being right on the main road through the area - which is a traffic rat run every rush hour.

PasturesNew

I think one of the issues is that rising house prices and subsequently rising rents, are causing all of us higher taxes as tenants on benefits have needed their rent paying - and other families have had top up Working Tax Credit benefits... all of this helps fuel the silly prices we are asked for rents.

I wonder how Local Housing Allowance compares for each property in each area.

LittleMissAspie

PasturesNew wrote: »

Cambridge has always been expensive. That is why I never rented when I lived there. When I was about 28 I got a mobile home. Also, because you're living in the villages you needed to run a car to get about and get jobs.

Yep. When we were looking for something cheaper, we could have moved out of the city but all the savings in rent would have been swallowed up by the cost of running a car or getting a bus pass. It's actually cheaper to live in the city!

pinkshoes

PasturesNew wrote: »

I am not a social butterfly. I cut my cloth to suit. A 1-bed place (extra rent + council tax) would cost a minimum of an extra £150/month, so that's £1800/year extra cost.

In fact, I don't go out. I work from home, alone. I leave the flat only for quick late night dashes to supermarkets. I go "out" about once every 4-6 weeks for about 3 hours. I am quite literally here 24/7.

The only downside I am finding is that there's no freezer. So it limits what food I can choose/buy and cook as whatever I get has to be eaten by the best before date.

Crikey!! Well, I suppose it's down to personal preference then, as I would much rather spend the extra £150/month on having a 1 bed flat rather than a bed sit. If I worked from home, I'd want an extra room from the office too!!

Out of curiosity, did you grow up in a small or large property? I grew up in a large 5 bed detached house in a small town, so I'm used to having lots of space to roam around in, hence really struggled in a bedsit, and had to go out nearly every night.

Could you not get a mini freezer? I have a big fridge but tiny freezer, but don't really put anything in the freezer other than when I accidentally cook enough food to feed an army instead of 2 of us!

Alleycat

obsessed_saver wrote: »

That's a really tough situation! And sounds quite fragile too. If some bill or other goes up, it could suddenly put you in trouble if you've only got £100-£200 to spare.

It is! We are both reasonable earners I think but still are in a difficult financial situation. We do have a £5000 buffer but that is inheritance that I have only just been told about (feels odd typing that, I've never inherited anything before!) and is our savings. We fortunately had £2500 saved up as we were hoping to buy on a shared ownership scheme this year but decided to rent instead due to the current financial shambles and so that has disappeared in fees, deposit and part of the first month's rent.

Alleycat

barnaby-bear wrote: »

But what is the alternative - they'll never register on any criteria for 'affordable' housing; give up their jobs, family and community links and move to the north east? Move into a 1-bed with their kid? Move to a really dangerous cheap area?

We're on the council waiting list but will never get housed from it unless we became homeless (I used to work in the HPU in our borough until very recently so am only too aware of this unfortunately!). We did just meet the criteria for shared ownership and were going to do that in the next few months, but decided to hold off. Only problem being that by the time everything has settled we may well be just outside of the earnings criteria to qualify (but still well below the income to be able to buy something decent outright).

We were going to rent a one bedroom flat for a couple of years but felt that if we were going to stay somewhere for potentially that or a little bit longer we should go with the two bed. We've spent the past 12 months sharing one room in my parents flat (5 adults and a toddler in a three bedroom flat!) so could do it if necessary I suppose.

I don't want to be working full time. I'm her mum and I want to be able to pick my daughter up from nursery or childminder myself. At the moment she goes to nursery in the morning, childminder until 4pm, then either my mum or my partner collect her from there (partner does 12 hour day and night shifts).