Are We Actually Better Off Than Most?

[guitarman001]

Was out last night and got speaking to a group of people from down South. Nothing new here.. but basically they were amazed by how low prices are up here. They thought £500-750 for a one-bed flat was great going. Relative to some other places, do we actually have it better than we think...

[repetitive bleats]

Was out last night and got speaking to a group of people from down South. Nothing new here.. but basically they were amazed by how low prices are up here. They thought £500-750 for a one-bed flat was great going. Relative to some other places, do we actually have it better than we think...

i live in the South East - 50 mile commute from London and my rent for a 2 bed flat is still £1400 per month.. So yes.

[catmandu]

Yes, relative to London prices are cheap here. So are wages. All that means is that a Londoner can move here easily but we can't move there easily. Not that I ever would.

[guitarman001]

This is it - if I moved down south my wages wouldn't double, but rental prices would near triple! Perhaps we should shut up and get on with things lol..

[Mikhail Liebenstein]

There is a huge difference in the cost living in the South and Elsewhere - it starts with property and rents, but it feeds into things like beer prices, shop prices etc by pushing up the cost of doing business.

I live about 30 miles outside of London, and a nice 4-bed starts at £750k. I have colleagues and ex colleagues in the North who have house the same size for £250k.

So despite the fact our house hold income is perhaps 5-6 times the national average, we don't feel that rich.

[ccc]

I don't think London is much more expensive than Edinburgh. It is - but not as much as many seem to think.

[jonb]

Was out last night and got speaking to a group of people from down South. Nothing new here.. but basically they were amazed by how low prices are up here. They thought £500-750 for a one-bed flat was great going. Relative to some other places, do we actually have it better than we think...

Unemployment is lower and wages are a bit higher, which makes up for the higher prices. I'm certainly enjoying a higher standard of living in the South East in employment than I was living on benefits in Scotland.

[TTD]

I don't think London is much more expensive than Edinburgh. It is - but not as much as many seem to think.

On another forum, someone posted a link to a grd floor flat of around 42 sq m in Kensington - that was at an asking price of £350,000, which works out at over £8000 pre sq m.

Admittedly, I haven't looked at everything for sale in Scotland, but some that I've looked at in good areas around Edinburgh have yielded figures like £2000 - £2500 per sq m......

[qwerty1984]

I don't think London is much more expensive than Edinburgh. It is - but not as much as many seem to think.

Pricewise, crappy London area = Nice Edinburgh area

Nice London area = silly money

http://www.winkworth.co.uk/sale-rent/property/WNKWIM000336

And I'm talking Nice e.g. Wimbledon, not Mayfair, Chelsea or other prime areas.

[Si1]

i live in the South East - 50 mile commute from London and my rent for a 2 bed flat is still £1400 per month.. So yes.

this always surprises me - as an ignorant northerner - I can seem to find 2 bed flats in parts of london for well less than 1k pcm

eg http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION^92825&insId=2&sortByPriceDescending=false&minBedrooms=2&maxBedrooms=2&includeLetAgreed=true&_includeLetAgreed=on

what is wrong with these?

you would probably rent for half the price in comparable areas in Leeds, ie I assume rough areas

but this does not seem to be a barrier to me taking work in London, I suspect i would compromise on space

but maybe in such a large built up area you NEED to pay extra for space?

thoughts???

[Si1]

I can answer my own question - if i want to live somewhere nice, nice house but not too big, in Leeds i am paying 550+ pcm

doubloe that and it becomes 1100+ pcm in London, probably more for truly comparable space, if being crude, and that is starting to cost some...

[dervis]

I can answer my own question - if i want to live somewhere nice, nice house but not too big, in Leeds i am paying 550+ pcm

doubloe that and it becomes 1100+ pcm in London, probably more for truly comparable space, if being crude, and that is starting to cost some...

You have no idea how different London is from Leeds, and most cities come to that.

I don't know what size house you get for your £550 per month, I'll guess maybe a two bed, but that's what you pay here for a half decent room in a house now. A one bed flat is around £750 a month in the cheap areas, such as Croydon or Thornton Heath, and that's if you are lucky. I have a couple of friends renting a one bed ex council flat in Battersea, the tiniest thing I've ever come across, for £1100 pcm.

That's London for you.

Don't want to go off on a rant, but that's one of my huge objections to the sell off of council houses. How was it that some people were able to get so rich off PUBLICLY owned housing, I will never know.

[ccc]

On another forum, someone posted a link to a grd floor flat of around 42 sq m in Kensington - that was at an asking price of £350,000, which works out at over £8000 pre sq m.

Admittedly, I haven't looked at everything for sale in Scotland, but some that I've looked at in good areas around Edinburgh have yielded figures like £2000 - £2500 per sq m......

Kensington ? One of he Worlds most expensive areas ? Well yes perhaps. However other more 'normal' London areas ? More expensive than Edinburgh. No doubt. However not as much as most people would want us to believe. You can buy a one bed flat 30 mins from Central London for 120k. No bother.

Pricewise, crappy London area = Nice Edinburgh area

Nice London area = silly money

http://www.winkworth...ty/WNKWIM000336

And I'm talking Nice e.g. Wimbledon, not Mayfair, Chelsea or other prime areas.

Nice Edinburgh area = silly money.

A one bed flat is around £750 a month in the cheap areas, such as Croydon or Thornton Heath, and that's if you are lucky.

A one bed shitty flat in Gorgie rents for 450-500 per month...

[Si1]

You have no idea how different London is from Leeds, and most cities come to that.

I don't know what size house you get for your £550 per month, I'll guess maybe a two bed, but that's what you pay here for a half decent room in a house now. A one bed flat is around £750 a month in the cheap areas, such as Croydon or Thornton Heath, and that's if you are lucky. I have a couple of friends renting a one bed ex council flat in Battersea, the tiniest thing I've ever come across, for £1100 pcm.

That's London for you.

Don't want to go off on a rant, but that's one of my huge objections to the sell off of council houses. How was it that some people were able to get so rich off PUBLICLY owned housing, I will never know.

thanks for your response - so how come Rightmove lists 2 bed flats at 800 pcm - are they in absolute hell hole areas then? what detail makes them impractical in reality?

[ccc]

thanks for your response - so how come Rightmove lists 2 bed flats at 800 pcm - are they in absolute hell hole areas then? what detail makes them impractical in reality?

People in London and people who talk about London like to tell everyone that it is far more expensive than it actually is. Now we all know it is a very expensive city. No doubt about that. However there are many other comparable areas in the UK and they do not contain the thousands of £100K+ per year jobs for 24 year old's that London does.

A pint in a pub. A banana in tescos. A litre of diesel. A bus ticket. A burger in Mcdonalds. All more expensive in London than in Edinburgh ? Er....no.

[miko]

thanks for your response - so how come Rightmove lists 2 bed flats at 800 pcm - are they in absolute hell hole areas then? what detail makes them impractical in reality?

No looking at your link they are not hell holes , but not the best either , they are on the fringes of East London and Essex. East London is not cheap but the cheaper of the four quarters of London . The border with essex is also cheaper than the places that border the other quarters.

The funny thing with East London and its essex border is that up till about 20 years ago the Essex border and the surberbs were dearer than East London anyone who got out of East London to Essex had made it LARGE . Now it is the other way around and people who did not take up the right to buy their council flat and bought a house in Essex now see their x council flat worth more than the house they bought .

London especially East and South is very very mixed , very trendy expensive houses right next door to sink estates.

If you venture out further to south Essex where I live it is cheaper still and the distance to London is not far I live 3 minutes from the M25 and A13 the A 13 is almost a motorway straight up to town . Here it is more downbeat than rough very scruffy in places but probley as cheap as some parts of the north. You can get a 20 year old flat not the best but not the worst place in the world for £70-80k and rent for £500-£650 pm. I think snobbery keeps the young trendies from moving out this way .

[dervis]

thanks for your response - so how come Rightmove lists 2 bed flats at 800 pcm - are they in absolute hell hole areas then? what detail makes them impractical in reality?

I did a Rightmove search. There are SIXTY, let me repeat that, SIXTY properties currently on Rightmove at £800 pcm in London. That is in the WHOLE of London. Yes, some of them are in scuzzy areas, but some are just in areas that might have rubbish transport links, but might be quite nice inside.

I am slightly gobsmacked myself because that then means that more than £800 a month is being charged for really horrible two beds. That includes places like Thamesmead, the devil's armpit as far as I'm concerned.

I did another search for 2 beds over £800 and the result? thousands. I also did a search for one beds at £800 a month and got over a thousand. There were also 690 studios for £800 a month.

Where rents are concerned, London is bloody insane. I know some people get sh!!tty on here when there is talk about London houses prices bucking the downward trend, but the good news is, its not all of London. That too much of it is way overpriced is bleeding obvious. There have been some lovely reductions in the areas that I'm interested in, that cheer me up no end.

[ccc]

Flicked over yesterday and some property show was on. Searching for a house for a couple in London right at the peak end of 2006-start of 2007 IIRC.

They had a budget of 310 maximum. Wanted at least 2 but hopefully 3 bed flat in zone 2 of London. Cant remember the names but they were clearly very pleasant leafy pretty central London places. Not Chelsea or anything but they looked pleasant enough. I was thinking the prices for this 2/3 bed flats were insane. Even though this was pretty central London and all.

Then I had a think about how much similar flats in Edinburgh would cost at peak. In places like Marchmont, Stockbridge or Comely Bank. I then realised that for a nice ready to move in 2-3 flat at this time you were looking at anywhere between £200-300k +

Yes there are crazily expensive places in London. Nobody is going to debate that point. However it is not half as big as most people think. Rents certainly appear more - with £800 for a 2 seemingly the very bottom.

But then again - a nice 2 bed in Edinburgh fairly central would be something like £700+ anyway. And you can find plenty of 'executive' central flats for £1000+ in Edinburgh very easily.

[Muswell Hillbilly]

Not the bloody Edinburgh/London price comparison again!

As somebody who has lived in both cities, it always strikes me that bubble sale prices in Edinburgh were insane, but rents were not. In London, bubble sale prices were insane, but the rents were extremely high too.

I’m out of touch with London rents now, but a Marchmont or Comely Bank two-bedroom tenement flat probably rents for around 800 pcm now (or 700 pcm in 2007), or sells for 250K. At the height of the bubble they were selling for well in excess of 300K.

After Selling To Rent in one district of London in 2006, we rented a scuzzy 65 m² conversion flat in an oddly fashionable but fairly mediocre area (East Dulwich) and it cost us £900 pcm. The asking prices for two-bed rentals in SE22 are now mostly £1100 upwards (although our asking rental back in 2006 was £975, so maybe rents now are open to negotiation too). The asking prices of such flats for sale now is round about 250K, so about the same as the two-bedroom tenement flats in nice districts of Edinburgh. Also note that the Edinburgh flats have a sensible layout and are more like 90 m² in size.

I used to take the disconnect between sale and rental prices in Edinburgh to mean that the sale prices had much further to fall, in comparison with London where the rents are much higher too. In fact the bits of Edinburgh which I watch have fallen a lot from the dizzy heights of the bubble: flats which were selling for 330K now go for 250K, a fall of 24%, or quite a bit more if you take inflation since 2007/08 into account (although there hasn’t been wage inflation, so that doesn’t really help). I don’t know how far London property has fallen since the peak of the bubble, but I suspect it is a lot less than 24%.

All the flat-haters on here, who dream about having a wee hoose, bear in mind that they didn’t really build flats in English cities, just houses, and the only people who can afford whole houses in London now are the banksters. If you rent in Edinburgh, you have a well-designed, purpose-built flat with the use of a shared garden, whereas if you rent in London, all you get is a little flat that has been hacked out of part of an old house – all staircases in weird places, funny-shaped rooms, no garden access etc.

[robmatic]

You can buy a one bed flat 30 mins from Central London for 120k. No bother.

Someone from elsewhere in the country could find a property like this on ESPC:

Pilton

and tell you that if you can buy a 2 bed in Edinburgh for £75k pretty close to the centre, it's actually more affordable than you seem to think.

You can even get a 3 bed for £70k:

Calder Road

[ccc]

Someone from elsewhere in the country could find a property like this on ESPC:

Pilton

and tell you that if you can buy a 2 bed in Edinburgh for £75k pretty close to the centre, it's actually more affordable than you seem to think.

You can even get a 3 bed for £70k:

Calder Road

We can all pick out specific examples - that was sort of my point.

The examples those talking about London always seem to pick out are these mega expensive places in really popular areas of central London. However there are a lot of places where you can get places for similar prices to Edinburgh within a short commute to the centre of London. With the tube probably quicker than it would take you to get to central Edinburgh from somewhere 4-5 miles out.

I am sure there are also areas of London 30 minutes from central London where you will be surrounded by people injecting skag.

Here you go - 100k about 10 miles from Central London. 3 bedrooms as well.

Thamesmead

I imagine it is an absolute hellhole with violence, drug dealing and burning cars all round. Then again - so is Pilton. You get me.

Here is another - 100k for a one bed flat within 3km walk from CANARY WHARF. A complete hell hole ? No doubt. However it is 3KM WALK and probably 2 minutes on the DLR from Canary Wharf.

One bed

Compare these to your Calder road or Pilton examples. You will see the point I am making. There are a lot of very popular & desirable areas in London that have crazy prices. However when you take these away there are also a lot of other areas, some not the nicest but not bad - and others in horrendous areas - where prices are not hugely different to Edinburgh.

Yet the opportunity to earn serious money, especially at a young age, in London is massively more than in Edinburgh.

Please tell me a one bed flat you can buy in Edinburgh - that is less than 3km from a place where thousands of young people - many in their early or mid twenties - earn £100k +?

That was a rhetorical question BTW - there are none.

Edited September 20, 2011 by ccc

[jonb]

We can all pick out specific examples - that was sort of my point.

The examples those talking about London always seem to pick out are these mega expensive places in really popular areas of central London. However there are a lot of places where you can get places for similar prices to Edinburgh within a short commute to the centre of London. With the tube probably quicker than it would take you to get to central Edinburgh from somewhere 4-5 miles out.

I am sure there are also areas of London 30 minutes from central London where you will be surrounded by people injecting skag.

Here you go - 100k about 10 miles from Central London. 3 bedrooms as well.

Thamesmead

I imagine it is an absolute hellhole with violence, drug dealing and burning cars all round. Then again - so is Pilton. You get me.

Here is another - 100k for a one bed flat within 3km walk from CANARY WHARF. A complete hell hole ? No doubt. However it is 3KM WALK and probably 2 minutes on the DLR from Canary Wharf.

One bed

Compare these to your Calder road or Pilton examples. You will see the point I am making. There are a lot of very popular & desirable areas in London that have crazy prices. However when you take these away there are also a lot of other areas, some not the nicest but not bad - and others in horrendous areas - where prices are not hugely different to Edinburgh.

Yet the opportunity to earn serious money, especially at a young age, in London is massively more than in Edinburgh.

Please tell me a one bed flat you can buy in Edinburgh - that is less than 3km from a place where thousands of young people - many in their early or mid twenties - earn £100k +?

That was a rhetorical question BTW - there are none.

The problem with Thamesmead, apart from it being a complete hellhole, is that it takes a lot longer to get to it from central london than a lot of further away places. Crossrail will help considerably though.

[miko]

Here is another - 100k for a one bed flat within 3km walk from CANARY WHARF. A complete hell hole ? No doubt. However it is 3KM WALK and probably 2 minutes on the DLR from Canary Wharf.

One bed

Im surprised that place is for sale , im sure that that block is earmarked to be pulled down in the Caning Town regeneration scheme.

[ccc]

Thanks for the info Miko. So how can that be up for sale if it is being pulled down ?! Very strange.

Anyway - I know London has mental crazy prices - however the constant barrage of 'Don't we have it so much worse than everyone else in the country' really does annoy me.

There are other places in the UK where people are also mega goosed. At least in London there is the very faint chance you could be earning 100k and driving a Porsche by the age of 25. Everywhere else - close to impossible. Unless you start your own business but that is the same for anywhere.

Anyway - this country is ******ed. I think we all agree on that.

[ccc]

Was just reading a thread in anecdotal. And a post in it summed up the point I am trying to make. Post #11 - from Wooden Top.

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=168957&pid=3110590&st=0entry3110590

Many people see it as only London that has PROPERLY crazy overpriced property. Even today after 3 years of this - people in Comely Bank still want £225K+ for a ******ing 2 bed flat !!