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Powderhead
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PostPosted: 15:51 - 14 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

stinkwheel wrote:
I do wonder about the earning more money thing. Does it actually make up for the massively higher cost of living?


Nope. Londoners earn the most (on average), but they don't have the most disposable income.

I believe you'd be worse off in Birmingham than in London (not to mention culturally Wink), but living and working somewhere like Edinburgh would see you with far more disposable income after adjusting for the cost of a pint Laughing
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M.C
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PostPosted: 20:19 - 14 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

Powderhead wrote:
stinkwheel wrote:
I do wonder about the earning more money thing. Does it actually make up for the massively higher cost of living?


Nope. Londoners earn the most (on average), but they don't have the most disposable income.

I believe you'd be worse off in Birmingham than in London (not to mention culturally Wink), but living and working somewhere like Edinburgh would see you with far more disposable income after adjusting for the cost of a pint Laughing

For average workers it doesn't, that's what they haven't worked out yet. 10 years ago rents were reasonable, 20 years ago so were house prices. When all the proles have been priced out they'll be nothing left but hipsters, staring at each other wondering who's going to serve them their espresso.
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Rogerborg
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PostPosted: 22:17 - 14 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

stinkwheel wrote:
I do wonder about the earning more money thing. Does it actually make up for the massively higher cost of living?

The goal appears to be to get a toe on the housing ladder by any means necessary, survive for as long as possible, then sell up and buy half a valley in Ruralshire.

This way, everyone (who matters) will become rich.
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arthurmo
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PostPosted: 18:23 - 17 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

stinkwheel wrote:
I do wonder about the earning more money thing. Does it actually make up for the massively higher cost of living?


We left London and moved to Worcestererererershire 4 years ago. Money wise not a lot of difference as my profession is all moving to working from home but I do go back to London once a week and it all just seems so grotty,packed and full of speed cameras compared to the sticks. Bottom line is you get a lot more house for your money although it is catching up with the SE.

F me that sounds so middle age and boring.
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Robby
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PostPosted: 17:14 - 22 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

stinkwheel wrote:
I do wonder about the earning more money thing. Does it actually make up for the massively higher cost of living?


It varies a lot.

For one thing, the "massively higher cost of living" only applies for rent. Utilities cost the same as everywhere else. Entertainment/going out can be a lot cheaper - for every grumpy story about paying silly money for a pint in a touristy bit of central London, there rest of the city is reasonably priced - the bits where people actually live. Competitive too. Non-chain restaurants only survive by being good. There's also a lot of free stuff, like all the museums.
Public transport means a lot of people don't need a car. If you do have one, insurance might cost twice as much as being in the sticks, but you're doing a lot fewer miles. Ends up being cheaper per-month.
So if bought your home before prices got silly, or during the crash and the mortgage is affordable - like me- it's cheap. Moving to a bigger place in London is out of the question until the next crash, but the silly amount of equity I have means my mortgage rate is very low.
Same story for anyone renting off the council - and there is still a huge amount of council housing in London. My council neighbours are paying around £500-600 a month for a 2-bed flat. Private rent would be twice that.

As for earnings, the majority of career-type jobs pay very roughly 25% more than the rest of the country. So the issue is not that London wages are massively higher, it's that a lot of the jobs are concentrated in London so the promotions happen faster. I could transfer out to Birmingham on a 10% pay cut, but the glass ceiling would suddenly be a lot lower. A couple of promotions and I'd be the highest ranking person in Birmingham, and it would be dead man's boots to get there.

It is worth mentioning that I grew up in the Kent countryside. It was shit. I had to start the car just to go and buy a pint of milk. The nearest town with anything worth doing was 15 miles away. Fun roads, but horses and twats often got in the way. I have no great desire to go back there.
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grr666
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PostPosted: 17:42 - 22 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wouldn't swap my relatively new life here in Somerset with my old life inside the M25 if you bought me a house to live in
and paid me a wage to sit on my arse. It wasn't until I finally moved away from London that I realised that a great many
things about living there made me very unhappy day to day. Nothing specific, just the overcrowding, the traffic,
the noise and smell, the seas of non integrating foreigners, the crime, the sense that everybody I met was trying to
scam me in some way. It wasn't until after I had been away for about 6 months that I had the epiphany that the toilet
called London, overflowing with the shits that call it home had been making me unhappy, guarded, untrusting and
very quick to anger. I don't imagine it would be that different had I hailed from Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham
or even to a lesser extent Bristol centre. I'd go more rural if I could but my breadhead wife and her career Laughing need
access to cities and the business opportunities that they provide. There's still my retirement to get my hands on that
elusive country manor I suppose. Wink
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GSTEEL32
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PostPosted: 18:19 - 22 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

grr666 wrote:
I realised that a great many
things about living there made me very unhappy day to day


Couldn't agree more. I like working there, couldn't stand living there. Moved to commuter-land nearby, but Essex did my box in, but not for the same reason living in Surrey did.

Moved north. 90 miles north.

Longer commute, offset by a complete disassociation with the south between work hours.

Completely different, in so many ways.
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TheMadRatter
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PostPosted: 20:03 - 22 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

grr666 wrote:
I wouldn't swap my relatively new life here in Somerset with my old life inside the M25 if you bought me a house to live in


Took me 15 years to get out of Somerset.... wouldn't go back there if you paid me Laughing but I would like to live farther out from the city than I do now.
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grr666
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PostPosted: 20:26 - 22 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ah yes, but have you lived and worked in inner/outer London, I'm not sure anywhere else in the UK is quite such
an eyewateringly expensive shithole as Londonistan is. I moved away out of circumstance, it wasn't a carefully calculated
decision, my wife (then gf) hails from these parts so she was just coming home. It was a far bigger leap of faith for me,
I walked out of a job I enjoyed and left close family and a few very close friends behind. But damn am I glad I took it.
There's only one of my original group growing up still living in my old stomping ground, he's just had to pay for an ADT
house alarm and an 18 year old was stabbed to death in his street a week ago. It never even made the national news.
Apart from him, without exception, everyone dear to me from back home has gotten the hell out, including my sister and parents.
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M.C
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PostPosted: 20:43 - 22 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robby wrote:
So if bought your home before prices got silly, or during the crash and the mortgage is affordable - like me- it's cheap. Moving to a bigger place in London is out of the question until the next crash, but the silly amount of equity I have means my mortgage rate is very low.
Same story for anyone renting off the council - and there is still a huge amount of council housing in London. My council neighbours are paying around £500-600 a month for a 2-bed flat. Private rent would be twice that.

I thought London was fairly shielded from the 2008 crash? Not for long, local authorities are trying to get rid of their social housing (which will make BCF happy).

Robby wrote:
It is worth mentioning that I grew up in the Kent countryside. It was shit. I had to start the car just to go and buy a pint of milk. The nearest town with anything worth doing was 15 miles away. Fun roads, but horses and twats often got in the way. I have no great desire to go back there.

It's strange how city/country folks often seem to crave the opposite.

My feelings are the same as grr666, city life grinds you down and eats away at your humanity, although my main reason for wanting to leave is having no future, which's strange as people typically move to cities for the same reason.
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Powderhead
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PostPosted: 10:34 - 23 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

GSTEEL32 wrote:
Moved to commuter-land nearby, but Essex did my box in, but not for the same reason living in Surrey did.


What reasons were those? Just interested.
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Robby
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PostPosted: 12:55 - 23 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

M.C wrote:

I thought London was fairly shielded from the 2008 crash?


Bits of it may have been, but around my area (Crystal Palace and Sydenham) the impact was noticeable. My flat was £87k, for a 2 bed ex-council reposession, in a 10 storey block. In mortgage lender land that rings all kind of alarm bells. In my case I was a civil servant with a good credit history, and still only one company would offer me a mortgage, and that was at a fairly high rate. It means very few people would have been able to buy my flat - they were really looking for a cash buyer, but most of them were being very careful, or sitting on a portfolio of hugely devalued properties and not wanting to risk any more.

At the time, 3 bed houses in the area were up for £220-250k, and not selling. Those same houses are now selling in a fortnight at £600-750k.

The bit I don't understand is who is buying the houses and flats now. A flat like mine would rent out for £1200/month, but the mortgage would also cost £1200/month - so the landlord is losing money. Quite a bit of money when you factor in a buy-to-let mortgage costing more than £1200, and all of the other landlord costs.
Likewise, if the flat was being bought by a couple as a first home, and they were both young professionals on around £40kpa, about half of their combined wages would go on living costs. Assuming their wages don't grow that much over their careers - say a ceiling of £60kpa - and that's a third to half of their income, for 25 years, just to stand still whilst living in what should be a first or starter home. Doesn't leave much slack if they want to have a kid or two and one of them go part-time.

So I can understand why people want to live in London, and why those already here like it. It fits me nicely. I don't understand why people would move here right now, when any other city can offer slightly lower wages but much cheaper housing.

At least I'm not in the outer commuter belt, which seems to offer the worst of both worlds. Inflated housing costs because of the London bubble, but also a long commute on the train which costs £300+ per month. You end up spending as much as living around the north or south circular, but without turning much of it into equity.
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GSTEEL32
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PostPosted: 13:50 - 23 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

Powderhead wrote:
GSTEEL32 wrote:
Moved to commuter-land nearby, but Essex did my box in, but not for the same reason living in Surrey did.


What reasons were those? Just interested.


Sure.

Surrey - We lived within the "M25 bit". The infrastructure is actually only designed for about 25% of the actual population that live there. Every basic task, that involved any degree of movement, became a herculean task. As we left, they were planning to build more flats on any inch of space they could find.

Essex - We just didn't get on with the "look at me" attitude. Cars on finance, watches on finance, make-up and designer clothes, all on finance. Backed up by very average jobs, earning very average wages. Bluewater would be awash with lines and lines of brand new Mercedes Benz's, driven by people (with all due respect), who worked on the Bread counter at ASDA.

Yes, I guess everyone has a right to make a choice, but would I want my kid growing up thinking that's normal ?, no definitely not.

I understand, I'm making massive massive sweeping generalisations here, but both area's became unworkable for me and a young family. It was also very much a generational thing. Both in Surrey and Essex, the older generation seemed a lot more realistic and respectful about what they had, how hard they'd worked for it, and how lucky they were to have a roof over their head.

Two generations down the line, however, and it seemed to bring a completely different feeling to both areas.

(So apart from the whole of the south of England, and about 50% of the younger generation in the UK, is there anyone I haven't managed to alienate with this post ?. No ?. Great, I'll get my coat)
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Powderhead
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PostPosted: 16:50 - 23 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

GSTEEL32 wrote:
Surrey - We lived within the "M25 bit". The infrastructure is actually only designed for about 25% of the actual population that live there. Every basic task, that involved any degree of movement, became a herculean task.


Interesting. I'm in Kingston, and I don't notice that at all. Although, having said that, I moved here from Fulham... anything compared to crawling down Fulham Palace Road at 2mph for an hour feels like the countryside to me Very Happy

GSTEEL32 wrote:
Essex - We just didn't get on with the "look at me" attitude.


+1. I know a guy there who's got a brand-new Audi on finance, despite still living with his mum Laughing
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M.C
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PostPosted: 18:46 - 23 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robby wrote:
Bits of it may have been, but around my area (Crystal Palace and Sydenham) the impact was noticeable. My flat was £87k, for a 2 bed ex-council reposession, in a 10 storey block. In mortgage lender land that rings all kind of alarm bells. In my case I was a civil servant with a good credit history, and still only one company would offer me a mortgage, and that was at a fairly high rate. It means very few people would have been able to buy my flat - they were really looking for a cash buyer, but most of them were being very careful, or sitting on a portfolio of hugely devalued properties and not wanting to risk any more.

At the time, 3 bed houses in the area were up for £220-250k, and not selling. Those same houses are now selling in a fortnight at £600-750k.

The bit I don't understand is who is buying the houses and flats now. A flat like mine would rent out for £1200/month, but the mortgage would also cost £1200/month - so the landlord is losing money. Quite a bit of money when you factor in a buy-to-let mortgage costing more than £1200, and all of the other landlord costs.
Likewise, if the flat was being bought by a couple as a first home, and they were both young professionals on around £40kpa, about half of their combined wages would go on living costs. Assuming their wages don't grow that much over their careers - say a ceiling of £60kpa - and that's a third to half of their income, for 25 years, just to stand still whilst living in what should be a first or starter home. Doesn't leave much slack if they want to have a kid or two and one of them go part-time.

So I can understand why people want to live in London, and why those already here like it. It fits me nicely. I don't understand why people would move here right now, when any other city can offer slightly lower wages but much cheaper housing.

At least I'm not in the outer commuter belt, which seems to offer the worst of both worlds. Inflated housing costs because of the London bubble, but also a long commute on the train which costs £300+ per month. You end up spending as much as living around the north or south circular, but without turning much of it into equity.

I wouldn't consider 87k to live in a council block particularly good value Very Happy Going back ~decade further that would have bought you a house. What you describe is the problem with the housing market, but I don't think there's any real appetite to fix the issue, as ultimately if you did build a shit load more housing you'd be devaluing the market. However people on the property ladder can only shuffle around for so long, eventually you need new blood.

Powderhead wrote:
I know a guy there who's got a brand-new Audi on finance, despite still living with his mum Laughing

Nothing wrong with that Very Happy That's what the housing market/high rent situation has created, young(er) people having to live at home for longer, therefore with more disposable income. If you don't have a large mortgage/rent outgoing why not replace it with a car payment?
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Powderhead
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PostPosted: 19:18 - 23 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

M.C wrote:
If you don't have a large mortgage/rent outgoing why not replace it with a car payment?


I guess the accountant in me prefers to pay for something once rather than many times over.

Still, it's good for the second-hand bike market I guess. All those PCP'd Street Triples Drooling
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M.C
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PostPosted: 19:50 - 23 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

Powderhead wrote:
M.C wrote:
If you don't have a large mortgage/rent outgoing why not replace it with a car payment?


I guess the accountant in me prefers to pay for something once rather than many times over.

Still, it's good for the second-hand bike market I guess. All those PCP'd Street Triples Drooling

Oh yeah I agree but that car payment would have gone on the rent or mortgage before. A pal did that actually, lived at home and had nice cars, now he has a house but drives a micra Smile
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Rogerborg
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PostPosted: 01:30 - 24 Mar 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

M.C wrote:
lived at home

This phrase is why we lost our empire.
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PostPosted: 15:11 - 02 Apr 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

stuff your spam up your arse, you cockgobbler.
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chris-red
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PostPosted: 13:10 - 05 Apr 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robby wrote:

At least I'm not in the outer commuter belt, which seems to offer the worst of both worlds. Inflated housing costs because of the London bubble, but also a long commute on the train which costs £300+ per month. You end up spending as much as living around the north or south circular, but without turning much of it into equity.



I live in the Commuter belt, it's 30 minutes, door to door on the bike to my office in Shoreditch.

It also means for half the Price of the 3 bed houses near you I bought a 5 bed with this view out the front (bought Jan 2017).

https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/12195812_10153676889598476_2858611500065654048_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=98248874902b1af1c012a39689445bc4&oe=5B2B99BD

I'm not saying it's picturesque but a dam sight better than looking at houses.

That park more or less extends all the way down to the Thames (with a quick detour through rainham) and I can walk/cycle all the way to Purfleet RSPB with 90% of the journey surrounded by greenery.

For me where I live is ideal, close enough to I can enjoy the benefits, I'm at a show in Kings Cross Friday (straight from work then train home) I'm far enough away that I have at least a little countryside and decent (ish) biking roads.

Also everyone complaining about the cost of a pint in London, go to Spoons. It's that simple, there are plenty about and you can still get a £2 pint.

Expensive pubs are everywhere I was on a canal boat weekend a couple of weekends ago. We went from Reading to Hungerford, the 2 pubs we stopped in were both £4+ a pint.
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dn38416
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PostPosted: 22:57 - 08 Apr 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

GSTEEL32 wrote:

(So apart from the whole of the south of England, and about 50% of the younger generation in the UK, is there anyone I haven't managed to alienate with this post ?. No ?. Great, I'll get my coat)


You haven't placed all of the blame on people what look different, so grr666 will be pissed.
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dn38416
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PostPosted: 21:34 - 09 Apr 2018    Post subject: Reply with quote

No i just think the effects mentioned on this thread are a result of a complex mix of factors. Immigration* is obviously one big one, but in London i think you could take that out of the equation and it's wouldn't fix your housing situation or improve amenity levels overnight. There are plenty of home-grown nutters and free-loaders,not to mention the wall of money that would continue to wash through the place.

*Including Northerners down here and not taking our women.

Anyway idc forget i said anything.
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