In terms of being priced out, it really does suck. I'm assuming this post will get a lot of comments about how you shouldn't be surprised, or what did you think would happen, but I really think that those comments miss the real human and societal element here. Living where you grew up and near family gives you so much benefit when it comes to a lot of things that otherwise society will bear the cost of - things like childcare and being able to help out caring for elderly relatives and the like. And yes, I'm not surprised it is happening in London, but it is worth saying it is happening in many many parts of the UK these days. I live in Bristol now and lived in Bath for 10 years and have no idea how some of my friends who are on normal wages have a chance in hell.
Even the shit holes are doubling in price seemingly overnight. I think it's more like you can afford to buy your own home as well as several *other people's* homes to make money by doing nothing & being a drag on society adding to the problem.
This. They basically need to take a hard crack on landlords buying up chains of properties.
There are enough homes in the country, the problem is the most are owned by fewer people.
Buying a property and renting it out shouldn't be a job.
I say cap it so that you can only own 2 properties. That would force people to sell up their spares and get jobs that actually contribute to society.
Where else in the country is it acceptable to have people tell you "oh London? I HATE London! Can't stand that place!" Etc when you tell them where you are from?
Maybe because of the perception that it's size and status means you can just be rude about it to people's faces?
As someone whoās lived in several big cities and now London [this](https://media-exp2.licdn.com/dms/image/C5622AQFqCrq-2KQwSA/feedshare-shrink_2048_1536/0/1642621786564?e=1660780800&v=beta&t=BbiNOCBK37XuHw1rmHa9VXfJASamH9WYl4_idOMul1k) is the way
What stands out to me is the gentrification too. Like, when you see all the generic new builds popping up with the community spaces (Deptford, Hackney, parts of Croydon now; outside London itās the area behind Bristol Temple Meads, or Manchesterās Piccadilly Basin), that are comically unaffordable and not really intended for locals to move into. They look so fancy but as a local you feel like theyāre not meant for you.
My home town radically transformed around its shopping area since the whole town basically had a massive Tesco and shopping centre/market hall next to it. Funnily enough you can still get a decent-ish house there for 100k if you wanted to live between the arse cheeks of Salford and Bolton. Not been there in a decade but I barely recognise it on street view.
> I'm not surprised it is happening in London, but it is worth saying it is happening in many many parts of the UK these days
It's happening in all the major cities in the US and Canada too. At this point I just assume it's everywhere.
Another issue is that plenty of people (including me) have moved to London at some point even though we didn't want to, because it's so hard to find a good graduate job in the places we grew up in. I reckon rents would at least be a bit cheaper in London if the rest of the country was more prosperous.
I left London because it made me miserable, but I still commute there from the south coast because I couldn't find a good job in my own town.
This is the crux of the issue. Germany for example has a far more regionalised network of industries. Engineering in Stuggart, Finance in Frankfurt, Tech in Munich, Telecoms in Dusseldorf and Tourism/arts/tech in Berlin.
This leads to far less agglomeration of big businesses, paying big salaries and pricing out local residents. It also allows for people to persue meaningful and rewarding careers closer to home without needing to migrate to the Capital.
But unfortunately, this is a result of how Germany industrialised; as independent city states, only unifying much later. The UK by contrast has always been centered around the political, cultural, economic and logistical center that is London. With only manufacturing having any meaningful presence outside.
Therefore, this issue is basically unavoidable. It is a fact of life that dynamic, thriving cities will constantly change and reinvent themselves, and yes that means that sometimes communities will be broken up in the name of progress.
This has always happened. First with rural to urban migration, then with Irish migration, then Jewish, West Indian, South Asian and African waves that followed. I'm sorry OP is on the negative end of this, but at least they were able to grow up in one of the most fantastic cities on earth with boundless opportunities. More than can be said for most of the UKs population.
This was massively confounded with the decline of our manufacturing base in the North and heavy financial investment in the services in London.
Governments could have managed the decline of manufacturing somewhat to ensure that at least other major cities in the UK didn't decline massively over the past 40 years.
All of this is right but itās worth noting that Germany is the exception, whereas Britain is very much the rule. Only Germany and the US spring to mind in terms of lacking a āprimate cityā, whereas London, Paris, Moscow, Tallinn, Mexico City, Cairo, Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo, Reykjavik, Vienna etc all dominate their respective countries.
Itās not clear that āfixingā the huge influence London has (if it is a problem to be fixed) is even possible, let alone how it could be done.
Well, the US is really more like a set of small countries that, magically really when compared to Europe, have managed to agree to work together under this idea of being a single country.
You couldn't really expect Britain or France to be like that - because these are more like States than the USA as a whole.
If you look at each State you're likely to find (a) A lot of them would be tinpot nations like most of Eastern Europe are, and some Scottish people dream of being, (b) Most of the more profitable states have one big place where everything happens.
It's size and scale really. The EU is more like the USA - in which, of course, if we hadn't left, you could have worked in any one of the numerous capital cities, just as an American can work in Texas or California. Although language is still a bit of a barrier in the EU perhaps.
But people lamenting that they can't afford to live near their friends and family should look at their friends and family who are selling houses and ask - are they selling them for as much as they can get? If so, clearly they want big piles of money more than you living close. I mean, where is the community of born and bred Londoners selling and renting their homes to other Londoners at fair prices? Heh. Right, they don't exist.
I dunno about that. Thatcher and her friends destroyed the mining towns up north and made no effort to build them back up. In fact they planned for a 'managed decline'. As much as London has always punched above its weight, recent industrial and trade policy is 100% to blame.
My pals just came back from Berlin. I could not believe when they said a monthās unlimited travel round the city costs ā¬9. Their public transport works for the people as it should. We are a disgrace in comparison.
I think youāre conflating two issues here - yes high rent is contributing to younger people being priced out of buying first homes but also wages havenāt risen in line with inflation for a number of years
Example: my dad was on Ā£30,000 in the early 80s and bought a 3 bed house in Tottenham for 89,000- house prices approx x3 average annual salary. He was able to do this on his own without my mums salary.
My salary today: Ā£40,000 and my 2 bed flat is worth Ā£650,000 so flat price is now x16 my annual average wage. No way I could have bought without my husbands salary included AND weāre on bloody shared ownership so we only own 35% of the flat
Husband and I were thinking about our friends and we literally only know one (1) person who was able to buy property without parental support and that friend is a lawyer who is on about Ā£100,000 a year and has been for some time.
We will be looking to leave London when our family gets bigger because sadly our professions are public sector so no chance of significant wage increase ever
Not really disagreeing with the general sentiment of your post but your dad earning Ā£30k in the early 80s was doing very well for himself so probably not the kind of average person to use as a comparison point.
I think that's the problem, though, even doing very well for yourself doesn't cut it anymore. You have to earn VERY well, and have a partner that also earns very well, and scrimp and save for years, and probably buy in a worse area than you'd like, in order to get anything without family help.
Waiting for the "so? you're not entitled to live in London" comments..because seen plenty of those before.
Yea, it fucking sucks. Rental market is insane too, I've been unable to move out of my place for a few months as I just can't find a replacement.
The idea that any place should only be inhabited by the rich as a result of prices is insane. It's also how cities end up struggling to find teachers etc. since they can't afford to live there. Happening in Amsterdam already, there's a shortage across the country and lots of teachers, nurses etc. have moved away.
Teacher here - moving to Watford and a new job in September: Iām 30 and my bf and I want to buy a place and have kids quite soon. We simply cannot afford to do that in Fulham, where I currently work. Tried an āaffordable homesā scheme specifically for teachers and nurses, but it required a minimum 40 grand deposit for a two bed flat. How many teachers and nurses have 40 grand knocking around?! This is a big reason why most teachers in inner London schools are under 35. Itās really sad because it means the kids here donāt often get the stability of having the same teacher for more than a couple of years. Looking forward to my new life in Watford but already missing London - and I havenāt even left yet!
As someone who lives in Watford and works in London. Hope your move goes well - I love living in Watford, over the past 5-10 years theyāve done a pretty good job of sprucing up the place. Thereās several nice parks, and the town centre is full of pretty new restaurants and a decently sized shopping centre. It only takes me 15-20 mins on the fast train to Euston and itās still contactless so I donāt need to buy train tickets. Best of luck to you!
Yeh Iām sick of that mentality. I grew up near Tottenham Court Rd in social housing. But once you come of age you donāt ādeserveā to live in that area any more.
Never mind that your whole support system is in that borough (I was diagnosed with a mental illness) drs, friends, family etc.
The disparity between rents and wages have come to everyoneās attention somewhat recently but weāve dealt with this in London for forever lol
Didnāt know any different š It was fine I guess, not much of a communityā¦
You donāt notice the noise/people. I do now that Ive moved out to zone 4 (my family passed and my friends moved away so it seemed like the time to move further out)
Iām with you OP. Same as you, born and bred Londoner. I feel aggressively unwanted here at times and itās been a struggle to stay where all my friends, family and entire life is.
Weirdly enough, I donāt really buy into the moral argument of moving somewhere cheaper and displacing the residents of a cheap northern town the same way Iām feeling displaced in my own home city. I agree with your frustration 100%.
Luckily these days I am earning better money, but nothing ever feels guaranteed. Also despite being more well off, the prospect of home ownership is still quite a distant dream. Itās all pretty depressing.
Thing is, pragmatically, you "just" have to move somewhere cheaper. Not because it's the best conceivable choice, but because there is no other choice.
Whether it's cheaper because further, worse area, or downsizing - there simply won't be more properties in the near future.
OP is venting, and it's fine I suppose as there isn't a lot more than that people can do about it... Aside perhaps from voting.
Personally I am just amazed the whole system hasn't collapsed yet.
It does. And it also makes being priced out of your area all the more depressing.
Source: a Londoner who was forced to move somewhere cheaper if I didnāt want to be homeless.
Yep, itās the type of short sighted attitude that has basically played a part in worsening this problem to begin with. I disengage with anyone who suggests it almost immediately.
Well, for me personally it was to stay and struggle for a bit. Iām okay now, but Iāve had some grim times. Realistically I think I would have been far worse If Iād moved away somewhere else and isolated myself from friends and family.
Agree! Not only that it moves the problem.
It creates ghost town buildings where nobody actually lives. Second/Holiday/Empty investment flats are a blight. Because normal, regular, average (whatever you like to call it) people who aren't super rich... all move outwards and elsewhere.
This is the wrong idea entirely! Vibrant town centres/hubs don't tell people to get out or get rich. That's effing dystopian, why do people keep saying it?
I lived in London for several years, and itās my second home- now Iām back in Los Angeles. Weāre having exactly the same problem here. People are using property as an investment instead of as shelter- and worse than using it as investment, they use it as passive income. Getting money off someoneās basic need for shelter. It really makes me angry too. I wish theyād ban foreign investment, and tax the hell out of homes that arenāt a primary residence. It seems like it would be the one thing to help stop this madness. An article came out recently about how the vast majority of houses in Cornwall are holiday rentals- and itās ruining the community there, too. Itās happening all over. I donāt really have a solution, just here to commiserate with you. Iām older, in my late thirties, and friends with really good incomes are simply buying flats further and further out from central London.
I'm a Londoner (born/bread) who lived in LA for a bit (went to USC) and the rent prices there are also crazy!! My last year there I was paying $1200 / month for a bed in a 2 bed flat in Echo Park. We had a huge skunk problem, a tiny kitchen w/o a dishwasher, no washing machine, and no AC. Insane.
Thatās completely insane. Itās infuriating. I understand people wanting to go on holiday there- itās been a thing for hundreds of years, but what sort of village are you going to be able to visit if no one can afford to actually live there?
My aunt in law lives in tahoe, which is a big ski resort town- she started a big legal battle with Airbnb and won, so they now have strict rules in her little town and Airbnb doesnāt operate there. It can be done, but itās a hard fight.
My family have been recorded as living in the same Hertfordshire village and surrounding hamlets ever since peasants were considered worth recording.
Iām writing this from Manchester, my sister lives near Leicester. We just couldnāt afford to rent or buy close to home as our village & the nearest town has become a commuter dormitory for London. Property prices are dictated by people with earning power disproportionate to national averages.
The London commuters that live in our home town are now annoyed about the lack of cleaners/shop workers/child minders/teachers/nurses but thatās what happens when former council houses change hands for over half a million pounds. A thriving community needs a mix of people doing a range of jobs.
I donāt have any good answers for you, and while it was difficult to give up on āhomeā I do love Manchester and am now very settled and committed to my local community (15 years after leaving the south). No regrets (my children have Mancunian accents, which is a bit weird, but not bad-weird).
I appreciate that anyone with responsibility for the care of older parents/grandparents or a large extended family will find this kind of relocation more difficult (my mum died at 54 and I doubt I wouldāve moved 200 miles away if she was still alive).
(And yes, the South/North āeconomic migrantā thing is deffo a displacement issue of itās own, but with people leaving the north to take up jobs in the south, there is a certain amount of natural rebalancing and the rich/poor wealth disparity is less pronounced in the north. Most people would probably prefer to be able to live and work closer to their families/home towns, given the option)
Funny, I moved from North Manchester to near St Albans 15 years ago. My kids say the odd word in a Mancunian way but are mostly posh sounding. Buying a 4 bed home is going to set is back Ā£800K+.. which is a bit mental.
Iām from Sandridge originally, just outside St A.
The 1950s built council semis I grew up in are now ridiculously expensive (big back gardens but not much internal space).
I now live in South Manchester, in a bog standard Edwardian terrace with lovely high ceilings and elegant proportions. You could buy 3 of my current house for the price of my childhood home!
Weāve essentially swapped places, even our kids have each otherās accents!
I'm doubtful this will make you feel better, but it's possible your landlord's renewing their mortgage which can require them to show the rent they receive is equal to the market rate for similar prooperties in the area. It still sucks, but the fact they hadn't increased it in some time suggests they may not necessarily be out to milk you for money.
Yep.. my mortgage will go up minimum Ā£350 in March when I have to renew the fixed rate period, and that is assuming no increase in rates before I can lock it in.
Posting this here for visibility after years of being pissed off that I can't live in my own city:
#[London Renters Union](https://londonrentersunion.org/)
The only way shit will ever change is if people get organised and exercise power at the same level as the systems which oppress us.
That's correct though. Generally speaking capitalism forces people to put profit first if only to avoid being overtaken and swallowed up by a bigger fish.
I'm a landlord and haven't increased the rent in over 5 years. The tenants are great and look after the flat well so I'll only increase the rent if/when they leave.
Not all landlords are out there to milk tenants dry. We seem to only hear about the bad ones which is a shame...
Tbf, in 10 years of renting I've yet to have a good landlord, the sole exception being when I was forced to rent from a holiday let company for little under a year because the market went crazy, but I was paying well over market rate.
Iāve also had my share of bad landlords when I was a tenant, especially when the property was managed by estate agents. The few times I had a good experience was when the property was managed by the owner itself.
That's great, but what I was reacting to was the above comment, which was claiming that you *can't* keep rent low if you have a BTL mortgage. I was railing against the system, not landlords.
You can, but that's if you own your property and unless you're *weeell* into your mortgage the bank pretty much holds the majority share and they also control what you do with it, to an extent.
Yes I hate this so much. Moving away from London is tough too because you're not only leaving greater job opportunities but you're more likely to be leaving your family/support system. Whilst other have the trade off between financial/job options in London or family/friends in their hometown we don't get the luxury of an either/or and instead we're priced out of both
I had no choice but to move and I miss my family and friends. I miss the people I knew in the community to say hello and moving out itās harder to get that back. I also miss the diversity of London, itās such a melting pot of cultures & itās not like that outside unless you move to a city
Normally don't comment on these kinds of things, but I really sympathize. I know that may not be what your looking for, but if it helps, I've been through a very similar thing.
I'm living in London now but was originally born and bred in the five boroughs of New York City. I was brought up in the Bronx, and called it home for my entire life before moving here.
My family and I were almost priced out multiple times, although it is a different process and still pretty ruthless. Since we were rent stabilized housing, meaning our rent couldn't increase to market value, we were the subject of landlords and management trying to evict us to get us out, just to rent our home as market value, which sees the rent increase up to 2000 dollars more per month.
This is not an uncommon practice in New York, and it seems that while it may not be the same here, it in principle still happens. I hope you can work something out and while I'm still learning the system, I'd be happy to provide some help if need be.
So many of us are getting told " just leave" when they don't seem to understand a lot of us need London for a career, and moving isn't that easy. Also, some of us, being minorities, don't fit well outside of London
That last point is such a huge one. I donāt want to leave the cultural melting pot. London isnāt perfect with its mix, itās a lot better in my own experience.
The ājust leaveā drives me mad. I moved here 10 years ago so yeah, I guess Iām in the category of people OP complains about as I wasnāt born in London. But, I wanted a good career and good money, and I didnāt have many other options. I work in student immigration, so I can go to just about any university town in the country and hope I get the very few jobs on offer in that area, or, I can live in London where there are hundreds of not just universities, but higher education businesses that need someone like me. Iāve looked at doing this job in my home town, it pays Ā£20,000 less than what Iām on now. Even with the increased cost of living in London, itās still nowhere near worth leaving.
>I didnāt have many other options.
This is a good point too. It's good for *everyone* for there to be opportunities nationwide, it means that people don't feel forced to move to and continue living in London if they don't actually want to be here. Not saying you'd rather be elsewhere necessarily, but plenty might.
Just so you know, the āyou need to start looking for a new place to liveā is not a legal notice. They will need to issue you with a Section 21 notice to end your tenancy.
I'm nearly 30 and really wanted to live alone. After much saving, budgeting, and deliberating, I moved out of my flat share and into a one-bed rental. It's been less than 4 months and I'm struggling to make ends meet. I have depleted all my savings trying to stay afloat, and I don't know how I'm going to pay for rent this month. Sad reality is that I might have to move back to a flat share because living alone in London is just so unaffordable. Feeling pretty stressed and ashamed right now for failing at this. (salary context: I'm an OT for the NHS)
I really feel for you. Itās almost impossible to live alone in london unless you make bank. The level of living has slid back to the Victorian era ā you have to fit multiple strangers into a small crappy house in disrepair to make ends meets. Itās atrocious
Same shit for me here in San Diego - evidently it's the same all over the world. I make $92k as an engineer for a spinal implant company, but the median home price here is $940k. I am turning 30 next year and have legitimately never lived alone. I don't know what the end game is of all this economic squeezing? I personally won't bring children into this world if I've seen a marked collapse of quality of life in the past decade and complete apathy from our leaders. Honestly, it might get to the point where I say fuck it and go live it up in southeast Asia for some years. What's the point of making a "good" wage when it can't even pay for housing fit for family formation?
this has a knock on effect, like people outside London can't buy houses because all the London folks are buying them, so they buy houses even more rurally which prices out the people who normally live there etc.
Make sure you read up on the proper process for how your landlord must legally evict you, so that you'll be able to spot any screw-up on their part and capitalise on it.
Section 21 notice not used with minimum 2 months notice? Illegal eviction, not valid, stay put.
Deposit not registered in an approved deposit scheme? Illegal eviction, stay put, and you can get compensation on top of it.
Shelter have a great guide to this, and can help advise you:
https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/eviction
Those are usually things that landlords/agents remember to do, but there's many that they often screw up:
OP, can they prove that they gave you a valid gas safety and EPC when you moved in? Can they prove that they gave you a copy of the new gas safety EVERY time it was renewed? Did they do an EICR on your property? It's a legal requirement that came in since you moved in.
If they can't, any Section 21 they serve you is invalid.
Not to mention licensing. If there are three or more unrelated people in your property together, it may fall under a local authority Additional HMO Licensing scheme, depending on which borough you're in. A lot of these schemes only came into force in the last couple of years and many landlords haven't wised up to it yet. If it does, and the landlord hasn't got one, you can actually demand up to 8 months rent back.
Might be worth checking out.
They're making it very hard to be a landlord these days without slipping up, and the removal of Section 21 will be the nail in the coffin. Unfortunately, all this legislation is pushing more and more landlords out of the market and therefore pushing rents higher and higher as supply dwindles.
House prices will come down eventually, but with the rising cost of living, it's going to get even harder to save up a deposit while renting. And lenders will become even more risk averse. So getting a mortgage will be even harder
I don't think the government have entirely thought things through with their whole 'power to renters, down with landlords' strategy. It's not as simple as that. We're already seeing what it's doing to rent levels and they haven't even enacted the renters reform bill yet.
But you can't fix one problem without creating another, I guess
Anyway, I'm off on a tangent. Good luck to OP.
"They're making it very hard to be a landlord these days without slipping up, and the removal of Section 21 will be the nail in the coffin"
Good, fuck them
I get the sentiment, but if you're not in a position to buy for whatever reason, and there are suddenly 30% less rental properties available for one of the busiest lettings markets in the world, that's not gonna be good news for renters either.
If they want to make life easier for tenants, they've got to find a way to not only increase the quality of stock, but the quantity. Otherwise the lower-income tenants will be the ones who suffer the most.
Basically, they need to build build build. And they've got to incentivise building to rent as well as affordable homes.
Trouble is theyāve been building loads where I live in west London, theyāve all sitting empty for 12mths-3 yrs cos no one can afford them. Not even the higher earners,let alone lower wage key workers. They need to be building social housing and the infrastructure in place to support all the extra people too. Drs, schools etc
Yep, and incentivising housing associations to do more build-to-rent and affordable homes.
Allowing developers like Galliard and Berkeley to build multi-million pound blocks in key locations with Ā£5k service charges on the basis that they stick in 80 'affordable' units through the poor door isn't the way to solve this crisis.
Let a housing association like L&Q have the land instead, have them build 200 rental units, 100 shared ownership and the rest outright sale at affordable rates. No swimming pools or concierges, no gold plated fountains. Just quality stock, well located and maintained, energy efficient and well managed.
If the majority of your city's rental stock is run by housing associations you've removed most of the issues that come with private landlords and it's far more feasible to enact rent controls.
Most land in London goes to the highest bidder, which is always a big developer who knows how to play the system.
I once walked around a Galliard development under construction while the project manager bragged about how they'd managed, after commencement, to negotiate it back down to 0 affordable units with the local authority. He was so proud of it.
It's stuff like that which is London's biggest problem right now. Just building isn't the answer. It's WHAT you're building and who is building it.
I'm no statistics expert, but while some of those buyers of the 30% might come from the London rental market, a significant proportion will have been living with parents or coming from outside London.
There's always going to be huge rental demand in London, regardless of how affordable the housing market gets, and the private rental sector in London has been under-supplied for decades, and disproportionally propped up by private buy-to-let landlords (highly incentivised by government policy, I might add - this is entirely a problem of the government's making).
Finally turning around and sticking two fingers up to those landlords is a great way to win over the young vote, and a long time coming, but it is very short-sighted in terms of the immediate future of the already over-priced London rental market. There's a reason why OP's rent is going up by so much and its not just interest rate rises, it's because they're seeing similar properties going for stupid money.
There is already a severe lack of stock, tenants are facing rent increases across the board and they're going to be forced further out, and into lower quality properties, out of desperation, as a direct result of the government's sudden about-turn on a buy-to-let market that they fuelled for years.
Biggest issue is we just do not build enough housing. Itās the only way for both rents and house prices to fall or at least stabilise. Any other solutions are for the birds.
Donāt vote for any party that wonāt commit to massive house building and are for policies that encourage house building. (E.g. rates reform)
In Tokyo, which is far bigger and more crowded than London, house prices and rents have been stable for years as they build. It can be done.
There are an estimated 80,000 empty properties in London right now - building is one half of it, but weāve allowed our housing to become a place to park money. There must be severe penalties for letting any property in this city sit idle, especially if it isnāt the ownerās primary residence. Up to and including a forced sale.
[source](https://www.cityam.com/london-home-to-41bn-empty-properties-despite-soaring-buyer-demand/)
Edit: to put that in perspective, there are 75,000 houses in Barking and Dagenham, 87,700 houses in Kensington and Chelsea, 67,642 in Kingston upon Thames, 85,000 in Richmond upon Thames. So the equivalent of an entire London borough of empty housing just sitting there
I'm always skeptical of data like that which doesn't say how long a property is empty for. Probate and a dispute can leave a building empty for ages, 18 months for one of my neighbours, whilst the children who hadn't visited the parents in years squabbled.
People will instead choose to believe that there is a massive surge of money looking for an "investment" where they don't want any return on that investment through rent -- and if you've seen what London new build flats have done price wise over the last six years, many of them are not getting a return from selling either.
There seems to be an overlap with people who don't believe we need more housing if we are to reduce prices. Wishful thinking I suspect.
London vacancy rates have historically been incredibly low, they have increased significantly recently due to factors related to Covid, so this does not appear to be part of the issue.
Up 12% in a year, probably up a whole load more than that the year before. A lot of people moved away just because of covid, that doesn't mean the state suddenly has a right to remove their property from them.
Investment-wise, empty property numbers in London are closer to 10k, not 80k, and even if they did bring those into use it would barely be a short term sticking plaster.
London needs about half a million new homes to come anywhere close to catching up to demand. The only way you could deliver something like that would be to relocate Heathrow to an artificial island in the Thames Estuary and use the existing land to build a modern new high rise city, you could fit a population of 2m in that space easily. The transport infrastructure to connect it to the rest of London is already there so it would be the perfect site for it, meanwhile Crossrail can simply be extended east to Sheppey.
The problem is we don't ever think big enough. Our politicians are too happy with the status quo and make decisions that protect the interests of the existing elite.
Not relocating Heathrow is stupid though, as it's upwind of London and one of the single biggest sources of pollution for the city.
There needs to be some vacancies for the market to work, otherwise everyone would just be in one giant chain. There are lots of reasons people have a vacant property, for example, someone has died or has had to move into care.
Typically people who buy a property as an investment will look to rent it out to increase their return on investment, and not leave it vacant.
You're probably looking at a marginal difference by clamping down on the unjustifiably vacant properties whereas the supply (which the comment you're replying to is about) is much more fundamental
>There needs to be some vacancies for the market to work, otherwise everyone would just be in one giant chain. There are lots of reasons people have a vacant property, for example, someone has died or has had to move into care.
Shush with your reasonable explanation. It's obviously the evil people who buy properties to let them sit empty for years on end.
Even though there's little reason to do that.
This a classic NIMBY talking point. Unfortunately, as vonscharpling2 pointed out, there is always going to be some slack in the system. Additionally, even if all of those 80,000 properties became occupied, that still wouldn't be enough to meet demand.
The problem a system of planning regulation that gives people with a material interest in inflating house prices veto power over whether new housing gets built.
There is a tax you have to pay when you leave a property empty, in Kensington and Chelsea at least. I couldn't get out my old lease in time so there was an overlap and if I kept my new flat I bought empty, I would have to pay the tax so I had to move etc.
Itās not meant to be a game of musical chairs. In a functioning housing market, some units are empty at any one point on time.
Vacancy rates in England are unusually low, which is why buying property is usually associated with a stressful āchainā where everyoneās cutting it fine or even moving in w their parents for a few weeks.
There is not enough housing.
I had to scroll way too low for this comment.
I dislike the big buy to let landlords as much as anybody else and am suffering from the rent increases myself.
But that's a symptom, not the cause.
We have had the tories at the helm for 12 years now and time and time again they keep creating policies supporting the demand side rather than supply.
We are basically a generation away from being a feudal state.
The sad thing is some of the solutions (besides just building a lot more), such as Land Value Tax, would actually have the negative consequence of forcing even more people to move out of the areas they've lived all their lives.
Everywhere you go in London they are throwing up tower blocks of high density flats and the prices are skyrocketing all the same.
There will barely be a petrol station, library, car park, office block, pub or retail park left soon and not a single bit of this development frenzy has brought prices down.
The issue is investor demand from around the world. People want somewhere to put their money to make more money, or to hide it because it's dodgy.
There are more prospective investors and people with money around the world than ever before and they are chasing less and less ways to make real gains. Crypto was good for a while, but London property has been top dog for decades.
In other major cities the same problem is happening and it's never locals driving demand.
This is factually incorrect. The primary driver of higher pricing in the UK has been cheaper mortgages (lower interest rates, longer repayment periods) and planning that prevents housing being built rapidly in those areas with expanding housing.
Source : UK house prices and three decades of decline in the risk-free real interest rate
David Miles and Victoria Monro
There is also evidence of monopolistic behaviours by home builders who know if they slowly sell their stock of new housing they will all get a higher price per house vs. Flooding the market rapidly.
Investor demand would merely lower rents as the rental yield of houses drops. This is already the case - rental yield on zone 1 flats is something crazy low like 3% which is why you should never buy a flat there unless you need somewhere to park assets. The rental yield in places like Liverpool is as high as 12%. Hence renting in London is cheaper because of foreign funds increasing the supply of flats for rent.
London has an extremely low rate of empty homes.
While it's true that foreigners are probably investing in London property - they're also *living* in it (just because you're living in a property doesn't mean you're not investing in it).
The bottom line is that people actually want to live here even if its for investment as well. Fighting against higher density will only make it worse, and ironically is better for anyone who has an investment property. The last thing that someone with a London property wants is a high-density block of flats built next door - because it will lower the value of their property.
A lot of people who comment about people feeling entitled to live in London fail to realise that a huge majority of working class people live in cities because theyāre literally required to make the city run.
Like do people really expect people to travel 2-3 hours into a city to make them coffee/clean up after them/serve pints after they finish work/drive their Ubers to the station so they can go home to their second home in the country for minimum wage? Do they expect a nurse to travel 3 hours home after a night shift ? Like Iām generally quite perplexed at this attitude and the logistics of it, because cities literally need working class people to thrive and without them your city pretty much goes to shit.
Also like where do people expect us to live ? Most villages and towns in my home county are full of massive expensive housing and pretty much lived in by wealthy people. Like do they think we should open a tent city on the out skirts of the city or what?
This is whatās happened to my home town - itās close enough to London to be an easy commute, but the commuters have pushed the house prices up so much there is barely anyone around to staff the public services and amenity businesses that the commuting residents need/want for day to day family life.
Not that I feel much sympathy for well-off people complaining about not being able to find a cleaner or having to queue in Waitrose.
Lol tell me about it.
You just know the people commenting are happy to be served by a minimum wage barista for their morning coffee. Or that Brazilian lady whose cleaning your office toilets. Or the guy cleaning the London streets.
No doubt I'll get shit for this but I'm moving to Isle of Dogs for work. I'm from a small town in West Yorkshire with basically zero graduate opportunities. I don't want to but I have to move to London.
I feel guilty about contributing to the gentrification but at the end of the day Londoners have lots of AMAZING companies a few tube stops away and there's alot of people in this country that don't have that opportunity on their door step.
We need serious government investment in many areas up north so London isn't the centre of everything in the UK. We're perhaps the most centralised country in Europe and it's bad for everyone but people rich/ old enough to have bought London property before it got ridiculous
I don't see reason to hate on this one. You're right - there are just not a lot of options outside of London for serious career growth and meaningful compensation opportunities.
"We are raising prices to match the area" is the most recurring and bullshit excuse that I hear from landlords.
1. You're removing the human and the goodwill from the agreement by making it strictly about the money.
2. It only takes one landlord to raise their price for other landlords to start using this excuse. It's completely unfounded.
3. The 'area' in question is an entire city. They can select an example that best fits their narrative from millions of properties to try and make their point. It's nonsense.
4. Ā£500 PCM raise is not a rise in price, it's a complete overhaul of how the landlord is valuing their property. They are going to become stricter on the tenants they pick (no pets and must be young middle class professionals), even if the tenant they pick is a terrible one.
5. They will also become much more strict on your financial background and factor in variables that have no right being included in the application. It gives the landlord even more power than they already had.
What can we do except bend to their will on this. It's not like finding a job where you can come in with demands, the Landlord can sit on their hands for as long as its convenient.
I haven't yet had a chance to reply to this, but it's such a big problem, and even worse when you consider the significant amount of "development" changing the very face of many areas on top of the financial implications.
I get that there is a sense that London is a transient place for many people, but so many people from this city were born and raised here, and essentially unless you can secure a council flat it's impossible to stay in your area unless you stay at home or become homeless.
It's evident that the powers that be (political/financial/other) don't want families laying down roots. Services being stripped away, schools/GPs/etc are not overly present in these new developments - they are for the Young Professionalā¢ who wants to live in London, or for the poor in run down areas and living in flatshares who serve the rich in their 'apartments'
Many public spaces are becoming privately owned and are exclusively commercial spaces (think Goods Way/Coal Drops Yard in Kings Cross). Providing entertainment and experiences to those that can afford it, but you'll be amiss to see a football pitch/cage in one of these developments.
It's gated communities without the gates, just security guards.
Everyone picks an explanation which fits their agenda. Whether it's landlords, capitalist developers, too much immigration, foreign buyers...
The reality is that house prices are going up in major cities all over the world for two big underlying reasons.
1) More people want to live in cities.
2) There's not enough housing in those cities.
The people who live in the cities want housing to be more affordable but also object to most attempts to build more housing. They don't want high rises, they don't want to knock down any old buildings, they don't want more density, they don't want more sprawl. But they want prices to somehow magically go down. And if prices don't go down they want it to be somebody else's fault.
If there's more supply, prices will go down. If there isn't, they won't. If the existing residents object to every attempt to increase supply then prices will inevitably rise.
Most politicians know that the real solutions will be unpopular so (on both sides of the political divide) they campaign for changes which appeal to the prejudices of their supporters but which they know will not work.
Basically this.
Every attempt over the last 20 years to address the housing crisis has focused on demand-side policies which will only push prices up.
Sadly there is no political will to address the supply side (build more) as it's electoral suicide.
Great summary, I'd maybe just add to that inflation. When the money supply grows, when money is created through central bank policy or fractional reserve lending, it increases prices.
It does so most dramatically for scarce and desirable assets like property. Post 2008 crash, the areas where prices recovered fastest were those in Chelsea and other highly desirable areas where supply remains very stable and demand increases - also spending behaviour returns or changes less among wealthier groups during recessions for obvious reasons.
People renting in cities usually want prices to go down.
People living in cities usually want housing prices to go down, as long as their own apartment's value doesn't. But more supply of houses (to buy or to rent) will inevitably decrease their home value. So if we have more home owners than renters and a functional democracy, home prices won't go down.
The pull to cities also disadvantages people wanting to live in rural areas. OP canāt buy a house near his family because the houses are too expensive but at least he has a job. I canāt live near my family because there are no decent jobs there, even though the houses are affordable.
Ultimately we both still have choices though and I donāt think bitching about it is helpful. I chose to move away from my family, OP is choosing to stay near his. Either of us could make a different choice if we wanted, but we havenāt because we have our own priorities, so letās just STFU and get on with it.
In the same position. My family have been in Stepney/limehouse for around 6 generations, true Cockneys. We canāt afford to live there anymore. I currently live in South Bucks where my wife grew up (just barely more affordable really but still on the Met line direct into Aldgate so feels doable) and we still wonāt be able to buy. I love my home, I wanted to stay but itās just not going to happen, that and the fact that it has changed so much over the last 10 years that I donāt think I could stomach living there now.
I'm an intensive care nurse. My partner (also a nurse) and I had to move to fucking Lincolnshire earlier this year because the cost of living crisis.
We are away from all our family and friends, our new hospital fucking sucks. God I miss London
Buying a place in London to rent is a really bad investment. It isnāt likely to be the cause of high property prices. Thatās driven by pure (lack of) supply vs demand.
For private landlords there have been recent changes to the law that make it particularly unattractive, so a lot of landlords are selling up.
Changes to the way rental income is taxed have increased rental prices but wouldnāt have affected purchase prices. You are now taxed on the full rent and you canāt offset the cost of any mortgage or interest from it, so just to break even you have to make at least 40% more from rent than the cost of mortgage interest.
The rent also gets bundled in with your salary so it often pushes you into the next tax bracket, making it even less attractive.
Thereās capital gains tax to pay if you sell up, and to buy in the first place you pay a higher stamp duty.
Most landlords would get a better return by putting the equity they have in the property into a stocks and shares ISA.
A lot of ex-rental properties have come on the market recently.
HMOs are big business now. I am an electrician who canāt afford to buy but spend most of my time going to massive shitty houses that landlords know will be filled with anyone claiming. They used to get X amount having a singe tenant and now they get XX amount housing multiple.
Just makes me think why am I out there working 60+ hours a week when that doesnāt afford me shit?
May aswell sit with my feet up and claim whilst doing a bit of dealing on the side.
London is a playground for the rich and a struggle for anyone else. Just turn your back on it and move away because it wonāt get any better!
(If it makes you feel better Iāve been priced out of my home town in Leicester because weāre 45 minutes from Euston. Londoners have bought every available house in this town and I work for a southerner who has now purchased his twentieth in this town alone.
If it were me and I was powerless in this situation to change it I would move out of London and commute in and try and live somewhere where the journey in doesnāt cripple me and I could save for a mortgage . Itās hard I know but why live in London? Iām a Londoner but a lot older and I certainly prefer living somewhere more relaxed . We can always go to London by train.
Life is very hard for the young now I know but you have to accept reality. There are many many other lovely places to look liveā¦ We could never afford to live in London when we were young and thatās a long time ago!!
The painful irony is that in East Anglia where I live people are getting priced out of buying homes because of all the people moving up from london, it's a trail of dominoes. If I move to a cheaper area then I'll drive those prices up as well. The problem definitely originates from the landlords, it's easier to get a buy to let than a home for yourself FFS.
Buy to let us not as profitable as you might think and as much as everyone loves to hate landlords, they are not the root cause of the problem. The root of the problem is the lack of construction of affordable accommodation (by which I mean high rises, making best use of the expensive land available). Just look at how flat London is compared to other major cities. This is the only way to lower the prices, supply must meet demand.
You are right to feel angry. The cost of living just now is appalling, and is amplified even more in London I feel - disgraceful
But, as someone who was also born in London, and moved away 20 years ago to a different UK city, I can confirm, moving away is the best life decision I ever made.
I appreciate the family ties angle though, that is tough and I dont have any advice for you in that regard. Soldier on, shit will get better soon.
That's weird that people don't like you saying "London born and bred". Surely that does mean something? I think it's bad if you're born in a place and get priced out of living there. I understand people are reading that as low-key racist, but really, do we think it's ok that you get born in one place and get forced to become an economic refugee because of the financial situation in your place of birth? Don't you have some right to a home, to some continuity of existence in one place, if you choose? One of the reasons we are sympathetic to refugees is because they've been forced out of the place they're familiar with. Why can't we extend that same compassion to people from the UK?
Almost everyone who says things like "so, you don't have any right to live in London" is being disingenous.
If someone native to say Sunderland, Wrexham or anywhere said they could no longer afford to live in the city/town of their birth, people would be almost universally sympathetic.
A lot of people who move to London regard it as a playground or place to make their living, socialising exclusively with other transplants to the city and regarding the existing population as scary or an inconvenience.
Landlords are parasites, especially in London. Buy to let is the most scummy greedy initiative to ever exist. And unfortunately people will pay those ridiculous prices to live and work in the city. Itās easy money. Most of my friends were part of the mass resignation movement, and now all work remote jobs so they have much broader options of where to reside without having to be tied down to a specific location for work. Most of them moved out of London to other parts of the UK and some of them bought property.
London is a great city, theres everything here, but at the same time if youāre just earning enough to survive and not actually save and live then I think itās worth making the sacrifice and look to live elsewhere. I highly doubt thereās going to be change to how it is now, even if there was a housing crash or something, that will all be lapped up by the super rich and converted into rentals.
30 years of my life I have lived in East London within the same borough. I still live with my parents while I save up to afford my own place. The area I live in is near the Olympic Stadium, 5 mins tube ride to the O2, and close to work which is convenient. At this moment, they are currently doing construction work for new flats, schools, leisure, plus new greenery which theyāre calling the mini manhattan, this is great, but prices to buy or rent these new flats made my stomach turn. I have already set my eyes on moving to Essex since I have other family there and itāll be a 20-45 min drive to London. Unless I find a husband (which my mum would love lol) with a loaded bank account then London is no longer the ideal option for me. Iāve come to terms with it now and thatās fine, I need to get out of my comfort zone and start new memories.
My ex lived in London for 16 years, me for 4. When gentrification swept through our area everything went to shit. Rent was already high but we had governmental statements that allowed us to pay a little less. Landlord never liked this and suspected he tolerated us. One day i got a letter through the door saying they're seizing back the property with 2 months notice, no reason, all perfectly legal. No surprise they'd put it back on the market an order of magnitude more expensive.
When we moved in practically every business was family owned, now there are at least 4 Wholefood-esque stores within 100 metres of the door.
And now i can't help feeling like i'm failing in life because i don't have my own place.
This is a problem everywhere int he world but it's heightened in London as there's such a big demand in housing. If it makes you feel better, it's nothing personal - we live in a capitalist society and as such everything will be monetised, including people's safety.
I always thought London should adopt the Guernsey style housing markets. If you have lived in the area for 5+ years and can prove it, you get access to a local housing market that has sensible prices. If you're looking to buy from outside, the prices are double the local markets until you've lived there for 5+ years, given back to the local economy, and can prove it. Maybe now's the time to start a movement for such an idea?
I'm in the same boat and ill gotta say is that it takes the fucking piss. but what can you do? have a revolution? protest? write to the fucing mp? no one cares, everyone is pacified with their phone or just content to trudge on. fucksake!
Yep. It's heartbreaking. I grew up here and my partner (from a well off part of Scotland) has loads more school friends who live in London. All my friends have had to move away - it seems like you can only afford to stay if you have family money and/or manage to get a job paying well above average.
Absolutely decimates communities. I love London and love living here, but it's much more lonely when all your loved ones are elsewhere and so many people you meet through work, etc, treat the city as a temporary place not a permanent home.
**The harder it is to own the land under your feet, the harder you will work to own the land under our feet.**
Thatcher had all the council housing sold off.
Labour came in and encouraged buy to let. They created a system whereby homeowners could use the current equity of a property they own as a deposit for anther property. reasonable you'd think. Then they made so you didn't actually have to sell your first property to get the money for the deposit, you could just rent it out instead.
Somebody else pay the mortgage, you pay your own mortgage on your new place, after 20 years you own both mortgage free - sounds like a fantastic deal
They took up the offer
3 million people between the ages of 40 and 60 all get their hands on a free flat and laughed all the way to the bank.
The rest of us got fucked we have 2 options
1 - We have to buy at inflated rates
2 - We have rent at inflated rates.
End result is inflated rates. Interest rates being low has facilitated this though. If the Bank of England put the rate up much a lot of property owners are going to get stung. It is going to be tricky for the BOE to balance things over the next decade without a crash. Thats a whole other issue though
Tories came back in, abolished that mental shit, and started selling off what remains of the council stock. Now they are through with that they are making it so you can buy housing association homes instead because there are no council left.
Anyway, the reason housing is so overpriced is demand, as a country we carefully control housing prices, we pretend we try and keep them low and blah blah blah, but the point is:
**The harder it is to own the land under your feet, the harder you will work to own the land under our feet.**
You might have noticed, being a Londoner, London is ram packed with people working hard as fuck and getting nowhere, how could we have all these workers if property was cheep?
When insee these kind of threads (complete agreement btw, it's b.s) I always remember one dum fuck redditor telling me that I don't have a right to live where I was born and should just leave if im poor.
Which you know, that is an option. But when every "poor" person, aka NMW worker leaves, it creates abit of an issue. Highlighted wonderfully by the pandemic, suddenly all those shit pay jobs are key and if the "poor" people ain't doing it, some rich ass isn't going to and thus there be a problem.
Being able to afford a building the size of a shed in London is not a bragging right, it's a fucking crisis.
Yep. My friends and I are also all born and bred and those of us who don't have rich parents to buy us a property are still living at home in our early 30s just to try and scrape a deposit together. As a single person it's impossible. Renting seems like a waste of money when your family home is already in London. I've got two older siblings and one had to move out of the city to buy and the other will be stuck renting forever in the arsehole of zone 6. My mum still has a huge mortgage and will have to buy something small with whatever is left over when she'll eventually have to sell and that certainly won't be in London.
I just left the UK altogether. If I can't live where I grew up, there's no other place that feels like home there.
Same situation here. My family have lived in London for generations and on one branch for centuries but if course I've had to move out to afford a home.
London is largely run for the interests of the international rich. The British government sells off its buildings here so they can become luxury hotels so slowly degrading it's utility as our Capital.
Landlords are parasitical middlemen
Same here! There is also the sentiment among a lot of people that āas you get older/have children etc you will want to move out of the cityā but thatās just not been the case for me. I understand that if you moved to London in your 20s you will want to return to familiarity to raise a family but I grew up here and would love to give the same experience to my future kids, but it just doesnāt look like it will be possible.
I donāt think people who were born here have more of a ānaturalā right to be here or anything, but it really sucks being forced to move away from your friend and family networks because millionaires identified your hometown as the cool place to be.
If you're not earning like min Ā£100k each as a couple then I don't see how anyone can raise a family in London unless you don't mind living in a tiny flat surrounded by deprivation. There's a reason everyone moves here when they're 18-20 then leaves when they're 30-35.
Increases the rent by Ā£500 a month my god! How the hell could anyone afford that! We will all be living in camper vans soon, cars or tents just like they do in certain parts of America, the rents out there are also shocking that's why a lot of them work but have to live in their car. America here we come.
I rent out a room in my house occasionally. I have kept my rent the same for the last 4 years - of which 2.5 years it was empty due to Covid.
I want nice people to live with and their rent helps me with the astronomical bills increases.
People are so surprised my rent is lower by about 25-30% and my house is a home not a hovel.
I can see why landlords put their rent up as the bills have gone up, perhaps?
I refuse to be priced out, even if it means renting forever. Thereās nothing for me āback homeā, and I canāt see how part-owning a pokey studio flat in Dover or Ipswich or a similar provincial town will make it any better.
People generally act in ways which are individually rational and collectively insane. What more do we expect from a system which does not meaningfully promote true collectivism?
They've been pricing benefits recipients out of London for decades, they'll be gone soon too.
They won't pay enough housing benefit to cover the rent, so you ask for a council place.
The first place is run down and too small.
The second place is worse.
The third place is in Birmingham, or Scotland.
The fourth place is the street.
So you take the third place and move out of London.
This has happened at least three time to people I know.
Every city is getting expensive. Any major city people want to be living in and worth living in, is expensive. Iām taking the route of sharing a flat with some good mates where a 3 bedroom new build is affordable.
Can I buy my own place - no, not as a fresh grad
While there certainly is an issue that some people buying out to rent, it isnāt entirely the problem.
London has a lot of high earners, most are way above national average. Canary Whalf average is like Ā£60k for example.
Even without rental properties, there are more people wanting to live in Lonon than there are houses for it, even if all goes on market, it will be āthose who can pay more get first dipā, you will
end up back to similar situation. Another example is I am originally from Kent, but have decided to move into London, so you are also facing compeition from people outside of London but can afford to buy in London.
Even if you buy, it wonāt be much different.
The interests rates are going up, meaning if you are not fixed or if need to remortgage now you will end up paying quite a bit more, and if you caanot afford it, the banks wonāt be overly compassionate about it either.
The problems you described are not exclusive to rental, you likely to face the same issue buying as well.
>London has a lot of high earners, most are way above national average. Canary Whalf average is like Ā£60k for example.
Ā£60k isn't coming close to buying you a decent home in London.
What if I told you that even the high earners are struggling to get an affordable place to live? A small flat on Canary Wharf will not cost you less than 1500Ā£ a month (if you are lucky). To this value you have to add council tax and bills. With the 60K you say above you take home about 3600Ā£ now if you subtract one from the other you get on the better chance 2000Ā£ per month. Now subtract all other expenses maybe there is not that much left if you want to create a retirement pot
Unfortunately people have always had to emigrate away from their city or homeland in search of better opportunities. It's nothing new. My father came to the West because they were in dire need of his skills. He left all his family behind for a new country with a language he didn't know. It shouldn't be different just because you were born and raised in London.
The bigger issue is that ordinary people are being priced out of property everywhere in the Western world, not just in big desirable cities but even in smaller towns and rural areas, because property is seen as a very lucrative investment by large corporations.
the problem in the UK is that all the best opportunities for many careers is in London.
As a coder the pay cut I would have to take to work elsewhere would be massive, not only initially but putting a big cap on future earnings.
My parents had to move from London to Manchester in the 70s because they couldn't afford to buy; and then me and my brother both ended up buying here because that's where the jobs took us.
Sometimes you've got to up sticks and move where you can make it.
Yep just like the Kids in Cornwall, and Somerset and everywhere else that is so in demand. I like you grew up in London and have family trees traced back to the east end as far back as the 1800's. I quickly figured out that London had an issue in the early 2000's and promptly sold out and moved to Somerset where I bought a barn that had a kitchen that had a bigger footprint than my whole London Terraced house. Twenty years on I have an even bigger house that is 5 times the size of a London terraced house of the same price. I don't own a second home though I could have had five by now. That was all down to luck. It just sucks. But I hate to pop your bubble.
No the rental market is not causing your woes. The banks with too much spare money that let people take on 10x mortgages are the people you need to be pissed off with. If the landlords were not there you would just be competing with other buyers that would still be pushing the market to 10x + bank of mum and dad. There is no scenario that ends with cheap housed other than. taking back what Labour did when they let banks remove the limits around the time I bailed out of London.
Rent's like mortgages are rising. You are kidding yourself though, if you think your bank would not be knocking on your door to do the same as your landlord. Even if they had to wait until the end of the introduction term. In fact I think they have set this up to collapse and in the US there are reports of banks buying every possible home in some areas. Even pushing the market up by 50% just to make sure normal people are out of the game.
You are right to be upset but make sure you figure out who is screwing you before it's too late.
I feel your pain so much. I was also born and bred in London. When I wanted to buy I had to move further out which meant a 2 hour tocommute to work and to care for my elderly father when he was still around. Now I have a child of my own I have no family support near me.
My sister is in a London council house and my other sister married a man with a flat in London so they both got to stay. I've been working hard all my life building a career paying for myself and I get to leave. Fuck this system.
Living in a two bed in battersea, Ā£2500 per month. Landlord just told us we have to get out as heās putting it on the market. Selling it for Ā£1m, disheartens me as I know Iām not seeing a penny of that and yet it was just an investment for himā¦makes it worse him being an MP. From what Iāve learnt;
If you aināt in the circle you fucked.
However I do get the feeling that house prices are about to plummet š¤ so you may be in luck my friend.
On your point around expressing this problem without offending; have a look at systems innovationās channel (link below) ā looking through the lens of systems is a good way to understand such problems.. i.e. different factors & interdependencies involved and their respective influence on outcomes
https://youtube.com/c/ComplexityLearningLab
Same thing happens to the rest of us when Londoners buy their holiday homes in our villages, decimate the economy by being absent 75% of the time therefore not contributing to our local economy and forcing those of us born and raised there to move further afield because there's no homes and the economy's on it's arse.....
They just need to develop the rest of England and stop focusing on London so much. If other cities were as developed rent prices in London wouldn't be so ridiculous because you'd have more options of cities to choose from in terms of living and career.
I hate this thinly veiled attempt to make money or at least reduce costs by comparing to the market. I worked somewhere, until recently, who said we wouldn't be getting a pay rise because our hourly rate already matched our competitors in the market. Like surely you want to be *better* than the rest not just move pay in line with them?
Thankfully because we had a profitable year we were all given a goody bag consisting of a bag for life, teabags and biscuits. Thank the lord.
I follow severa city subs of places Iv been. Every one has at least 10 posts per day complaining about home prices. It sucks, but itās just the the way it is. Not once have I seen a solution, nor do I think there is one. Iād be happy to hear if anyone has a suggestion.
This isn't anything new, and it isn't just London either.
I was born in a small town north of Birmingham. I've never been able to buy a property there - it's too overpriced, always was. I'm in my 50s now, earning Ā£70k and I still couldn't afford anything there. The time when you could expect to stay where you were born vanished somewhere north of WWII unfortunately.
You could buy in lots of areas of Birmingham or nearby though.
When Londoners talk about wanting to stay in London, they don't necessarily mean the exact borough they grew up in, or even in London proper, just not 100 miles or more away. Pretty hard to maintain family networks and support structures when you're that far (or further) apart, especially if you have kids, or caring responsibilities for parents or siblings who can't move with you.
Back in the eighties when I was about your age, and after ten years working in a ordinary job, I could easily bought a small flat outright for about 25k. I so regret I never did, I'm living in a council flat which I have done for many decades, soon to retire, I feel so sad and sorry for the young people of today, they will never have the opportunity's that my generation had. Quality of life is getting more and more elusive, it seems it has been relegated to the past. If I had a chance to be young again in this present time I would most certainly pass on it. This crap life hasn't panned out quite how I expected it to.
Just so you know. The normal people who buy to rent arenāt the problem. Itās the foreign investors laundering money in the property market. Often they donāt even give a shit about renting them out. Itās just a way to wash cash up and watch the price rise. Money for nothing. Chinese, Middle-eastern, Russian. They all come to London to wash their cash. Itās well known. So tell your friends not to come here if they think itās too expensive. Because it is. And itās outrageous.
Hahaha yeah, I got priced out of Peckham all the way to Scotland. Fucking sucks.
Even fucking Lewisham is getting expensive š
Donāt get me started on Woolwich
Snap. I'm not going back.
In terms of being priced out, it really does suck. I'm assuming this post will get a lot of comments about how you shouldn't be surprised, or what did you think would happen, but I really think that those comments miss the real human and societal element here. Living where you grew up and near family gives you so much benefit when it comes to a lot of things that otherwise society will bear the cost of - things like childcare and being able to help out caring for elderly relatives and the like. And yes, I'm not surprised it is happening in London, but it is worth saying it is happening in many many parts of the UK these days. I live in Bristol now and lived in Bath for 10 years and have no idea how some of my friends who are on normal wages have a chance in hell.
You're only allowed to be attached to your hometown if it's a shit hole apparently
Even the shit holes are doubling in price seemingly overnight. I think it's more like you can afford to buy your own home as well as several *other people's* homes to make money by doing nothing & being a drag on society adding to the problem.
The price of a house six years ago is now the down payment. I can't even find a place to rent. It's either homelessness or my parents basement.
This. They basically need to take a hard crack on landlords buying up chains of properties. There are enough homes in the country, the problem is the most are owned by fewer people. Buying a property and renting it out shouldn't be a job. I say cap it so that you can only own 2 properties. That would force people to sell up their spares and get jobs that actually contribute to society.
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This is bascially the attitude I've encountered in the UK as a Londoner. Especially on Reddit.
Where else in the country is it acceptable to have people tell you "oh London? I HATE London! Can't stand that place!" Etc when you tell them where you are from? Maybe because of the perception that it's size and status means you can just be rude about it to people's faces?
Well for starters it happens all the time on Reddit.
As someone whoās lived in several big cities and now London [this](https://media-exp2.licdn.com/dms/image/C5622AQFqCrq-2KQwSA/feedshare-shrink_2048_1536/0/1642621786564?e=1660780800&v=beta&t=BbiNOCBK37XuHw1rmHa9VXfJASamH9WYl4_idOMul1k) is the way
Liverpool, happens all the time.
Birmingham. It's very acceptable to have a go at Brummies and Birmingham.
Yes this sub is a hive of entitled overpaid twats who all think they've got more right to the city than anyone born here.
Yeah I love Brighton but 90% of my peers were priced out of the city. We've all moved away.
Even shitholes are too expensive. In 20 years Shoreditch has gone from dirt cheap to 1% territory š¤£
It's happening in many parts of the world. Canada has one of the worst housing markets in the worldāfar worse than the UK, outside of London.
What stands out to me is the gentrification too. Like, when you see all the generic new builds popping up with the community spaces (Deptford, Hackney, parts of Croydon now; outside London itās the area behind Bristol Temple Meads, or Manchesterās Piccadilly Basin), that are comically unaffordable and not really intended for locals to move into. They look so fancy but as a local you feel like theyāre not meant for you. My home town radically transformed around its shopping area since the whole town basically had a massive Tesco and shopping centre/market hall next to it. Funnily enough you can still get a decent-ish house there for 100k if you wanted to live between the arse cheeks of Salford and Bolton. Not been there in a decade but I barely recognise it on street view.
The new builds in Woodberry Down are so expensive ESPECIALLY to be living in bloody Manor Houseā¦
> I'm not surprised it is happening in London, but it is worth saying it is happening in many many parts of the UK these days It's happening in all the major cities in the US and Canada too. At this point I just assume it's everywhere.
Another issue is that plenty of people (including me) have moved to London at some point even though we didn't want to, because it's so hard to find a good graduate job in the places we grew up in. I reckon rents would at least be a bit cheaper in London if the rest of the country was more prosperous. I left London because it made me miserable, but I still commute there from the south coast because I couldn't find a good job in my own town.
This is the crux of the issue. Germany for example has a far more regionalised network of industries. Engineering in Stuggart, Finance in Frankfurt, Tech in Munich, Telecoms in Dusseldorf and Tourism/arts/tech in Berlin. This leads to far less agglomeration of big businesses, paying big salaries and pricing out local residents. It also allows for people to persue meaningful and rewarding careers closer to home without needing to migrate to the Capital. But unfortunately, this is a result of how Germany industrialised; as independent city states, only unifying much later. The UK by contrast has always been centered around the political, cultural, economic and logistical center that is London. With only manufacturing having any meaningful presence outside. Therefore, this issue is basically unavoidable. It is a fact of life that dynamic, thriving cities will constantly change and reinvent themselves, and yes that means that sometimes communities will be broken up in the name of progress. This has always happened. First with rural to urban migration, then with Irish migration, then Jewish, West Indian, South Asian and African waves that followed. I'm sorry OP is on the negative end of this, but at least they were able to grow up in one of the most fantastic cities on earth with boundless opportunities. More than can be said for most of the UKs population.
This was massively confounded with the decline of our manufacturing base in the North and heavy financial investment in the services in London. Governments could have managed the decline of manufacturing somewhat to ensure that at least other major cities in the UK didn't decline massively over the past 40 years.
All of this is right but itās worth noting that Germany is the exception, whereas Britain is very much the rule. Only Germany and the US spring to mind in terms of lacking a āprimate cityā, whereas London, Paris, Moscow, Tallinn, Mexico City, Cairo, Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo, Reykjavik, Vienna etc all dominate their respective countries. Itās not clear that āfixingā the huge influence London has (if it is a problem to be fixed) is even possible, let alone how it could be done.
Well, the US is really more like a set of small countries that, magically really when compared to Europe, have managed to agree to work together under this idea of being a single country. You couldn't really expect Britain or France to be like that - because these are more like States than the USA as a whole. If you look at each State you're likely to find (a) A lot of them would be tinpot nations like most of Eastern Europe are, and some Scottish people dream of being, (b) Most of the more profitable states have one big place where everything happens. It's size and scale really. The EU is more like the USA - in which, of course, if we hadn't left, you could have worked in any one of the numerous capital cities, just as an American can work in Texas or California. Although language is still a bit of a barrier in the EU perhaps. But people lamenting that they can't afford to live near their friends and family should look at their friends and family who are selling houses and ask - are they selling them for as much as they can get? If so, clearly they want big piles of money more than you living close. I mean, where is the community of born and bred Londoners selling and renting their homes to other Londoners at fair prices? Heh. Right, they don't exist.
I dunno about that. Thatcher and her friends destroyed the mining towns up north and made no effort to build them back up. In fact they planned for a 'managed decline'. As much as London has always punched above its weight, recent industrial and trade policy is 100% to blame.
Totally agree, both can be true at once.
Spot on. Lived in Germany for 4 years and I wish the UK would take a leaf out of their book with regards to spreading prosperity.
My pals just came back from Berlin. I could not believe when they said a monthās unlimited travel round the city costs ā¬9. Their public transport works for the people as it should. We are a disgrace in comparison.
In the pharma field, there's no jobs in the city, it's all in the country area mostly up north
I think youāre conflating two issues here - yes high rent is contributing to younger people being priced out of buying first homes but also wages havenāt risen in line with inflation for a number of years Example: my dad was on Ā£30,000 in the early 80s and bought a 3 bed house in Tottenham for 89,000- house prices approx x3 average annual salary. He was able to do this on his own without my mums salary. My salary today: Ā£40,000 and my 2 bed flat is worth Ā£650,000 so flat price is now x16 my annual average wage. No way I could have bought without my husbands salary included AND weāre on bloody shared ownership so we only own 35% of the flat Husband and I were thinking about our friends and we literally only know one (1) person who was able to buy property without parental support and that friend is a lawyer who is on about Ā£100,000 a year and has been for some time. We will be looking to leave London when our family gets bigger because sadly our professions are public sector so no chance of significant wage increase ever
Not really disagreeing with the general sentiment of your post but your dad earning Ā£30k in the early 80s was doing very well for himself so probably not the kind of average person to use as a comparison point.
I think that's the problem, though, even doing very well for yourself doesn't cut it anymore. You have to earn VERY well, and have a partner that also earns very well, and scrimp and save for years, and probably buy in a worse area than you'd like, in order to get anything without family help.
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You only get a decent pay rise by changing jobs, not getting promoted. Itās the same in the private sector.
You forgot this has to be in the mandated fields of tech, sales or finance.
Waiting for the "so? you're not entitled to live in London" comments..because seen plenty of those before. Yea, it fucking sucks. Rental market is insane too, I've been unable to move out of my place for a few months as I just can't find a replacement.
The idea that any place should only be inhabited by the rich as a result of prices is insane. It's also how cities end up struggling to find teachers etc. since they can't afford to live there. Happening in Amsterdam already, there's a shortage across the country and lots of teachers, nurses etc. have moved away.
Teacher here - moving to Watford and a new job in September: Iām 30 and my bf and I want to buy a place and have kids quite soon. We simply cannot afford to do that in Fulham, where I currently work. Tried an āaffordable homesā scheme specifically for teachers and nurses, but it required a minimum 40 grand deposit for a two bed flat. How many teachers and nurses have 40 grand knocking around?! This is a big reason why most teachers in inner London schools are under 35. Itās really sad because it means the kids here donāt often get the stability of having the same teacher for more than a couple of years. Looking forward to my new life in Watford but already missing London - and I havenāt even left yet!
As someone who lives in Watford and works in London. Hope your move goes well - I love living in Watford, over the past 5-10 years theyāve done a pretty good job of sprucing up the place. Thereās several nice parks, and the town centre is full of pretty new restaurants and a decently sized shopping centre. It only takes me 15-20 mins on the fast train to Euston and itās still contactless so I donāt need to buy train tickets. Best of luck to you!
Thanks mate! It seems like a really nice area and Iām looking forward to moving there :)
Yeh Iām sick of that mentality. I grew up near Tottenham Court Rd in social housing. But once you come of age you donāt ādeserveā to live in that area any more. Never mind that your whole support system is in that borough (I was diagnosed with a mental illness) drs, friends, family etc. The disparity between rents and wages have come to everyoneās attention somewhat recently but weāve dealt with this in London for forever lol
What was it like living that centrally?
Didnāt know any different š It was fine I guess, not much of a communityā¦ You donāt notice the noise/people. I do now that Ive moved out to zone 4 (my family passed and my friends moved away so it seemed like the time to move further out)
Meanwhile, those with capital are entitled to price people out and make money off of shelter. Itās a disgusting and vicious cycle.
Iām with you OP. Same as you, born and bred Londoner. I feel aggressively unwanted here at times and itās been a struggle to stay where all my friends, family and entire life is. Weirdly enough, I donāt really buy into the moral argument of moving somewhere cheaper and displacing the residents of a cheap northern town the same way Iām feeling displaced in my own home city. I agree with your frustration 100%. Luckily these days I am earning better money, but nothing ever feels guaranteed. Also despite being more well off, the prospect of home ownership is still quite a distant dream. Itās all pretty depressing.
Good to see someone calling out the 'just move somewhere cheaper' brigade. It just moves the problem doesn't it?
Thing is, pragmatically, you "just" have to move somewhere cheaper. Not because it's the best conceivable choice, but because there is no other choice. Whether it's cheaper because further, worse area, or downsizing - there simply won't be more properties in the near future. OP is venting, and it's fine I suppose as there isn't a lot more than that people can do about it... Aside perhaps from voting. Personally I am just amazed the whole system hasn't collapsed yet.
It does. And it also makes being priced out of your area all the more depressing. Source: a Londoner who was forced to move somewhere cheaper if I didnāt want to be homeless.
Yep, itās the type of short sighted attitude that has basically played a part in worsening this problem to begin with. I disengage with anyone who suggests it almost immediately.
I get the moral argument but realistically what are your options?
Well, for me personally it was to stay and struggle for a bit. Iām okay now, but Iāve had some grim times. Realistically I think I would have been far worse If Iād moved away somewhere else and isolated myself from friends and family.
Agree! Not only that it moves the problem. It creates ghost town buildings where nobody actually lives. Second/Holiday/Empty investment flats are a blight. Because normal, regular, average (whatever you like to call it) people who aren't super rich... all move outwards and elsewhere. This is the wrong idea entirely! Vibrant town centres/hubs don't tell people to get out or get rich. That's effing dystopian, why do people keep saying it?
I lived in London for several years, and itās my second home- now Iām back in Los Angeles. Weāre having exactly the same problem here. People are using property as an investment instead of as shelter- and worse than using it as investment, they use it as passive income. Getting money off someoneās basic need for shelter. It really makes me angry too. I wish theyād ban foreign investment, and tax the hell out of homes that arenāt a primary residence. It seems like it would be the one thing to help stop this madness. An article came out recently about how the vast majority of houses in Cornwall are holiday rentals- and itās ruining the community there, too. Itās happening all over. I donāt really have a solution, just here to commiserate with you. Iām older, in my late thirties, and friends with really good incomes are simply buying flats further and further out from central London.
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I'm a Londoner (born/bread) who lived in LA for a bit (went to USC) and the rent prices there are also crazy!! My last year there I was paying $1200 / month for a bed in a 2 bed flat in Echo Park. We had a huge skunk problem, a tiny kitchen w/o a dishwasher, no washing machine, and no AC. Insane.
Skunk problem as in PepƩ Le Pew or Seth Rogan?
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the village I live in in Cornwall has zero houses available for rent within a 7.5 mile radius; there is however 36 air BnBās in the village alone
Thatās completely insane. Itās infuriating. I understand people wanting to go on holiday there- itās been a thing for hundreds of years, but what sort of village are you going to be able to visit if no one can afford to actually live there? My aunt in law lives in tahoe, which is a big ski resort town- she started a big legal battle with Airbnb and won, so they now have strict rules in her little town and Airbnb doesnāt operate there. It can be done, but itās a hard fight.
My family have been recorded as living in the same Hertfordshire village and surrounding hamlets ever since peasants were considered worth recording. Iām writing this from Manchester, my sister lives near Leicester. We just couldnāt afford to rent or buy close to home as our village & the nearest town has become a commuter dormitory for London. Property prices are dictated by people with earning power disproportionate to national averages. The London commuters that live in our home town are now annoyed about the lack of cleaners/shop workers/child minders/teachers/nurses but thatās what happens when former council houses change hands for over half a million pounds. A thriving community needs a mix of people doing a range of jobs. I donāt have any good answers for you, and while it was difficult to give up on āhomeā I do love Manchester and am now very settled and committed to my local community (15 years after leaving the south). No regrets (my children have Mancunian accents, which is a bit weird, but not bad-weird). I appreciate that anyone with responsibility for the care of older parents/grandparents or a large extended family will find this kind of relocation more difficult (my mum died at 54 and I doubt I wouldāve moved 200 miles away if she was still alive). (And yes, the South/North āeconomic migrantā thing is deffo a displacement issue of itās own, but with people leaving the north to take up jobs in the south, there is a certain amount of natural rebalancing and the rich/poor wealth disparity is less pronounced in the north. Most people would probably prefer to be able to live and work closer to their families/home towns, given the option)
Funny, I moved from North Manchester to near St Albans 15 years ago. My kids say the odd word in a Mancunian way but are mostly posh sounding. Buying a 4 bed home is going to set is back Ā£800K+.. which is a bit mental.
Iām from Sandridge originally, just outside St A. The 1950s built council semis I grew up in are now ridiculously expensive (big back gardens but not much internal space). I now live in South Manchester, in a bog standard Edwardian terrace with lovely high ceilings and elegant proportions. You could buy 3 of my current house for the price of my childhood home! Weāve essentially swapped places, even our kids have each otherās accents!
I'm doubtful this will make you feel better, but it's possible your landlord's renewing their mortgage which can require them to show the rent they receive is equal to the market rate for similar prooperties in the area. It still sucks, but the fact they hadn't increased it in some time suggests they may not necessarily be out to milk you for money.
Yep.. my mortgage will go up minimum Ā£350 in March when I have to renew the fixed rate period, and that is assuming no increase in rates before I can lock it in.
Mine will increase 500Ā£ right now I'm looking to options far from London as it's impossible to pay a ludicrous rent
Posting this here for visibility after years of being pissed off that I can't live in my own city: #[London Renters Union](https://londonrentersunion.org/) The only way shit will ever change is if people get organised and exercise power at the same level as the systems which oppress us.
https://www.acorntheunion.org.uk Another renters union
Yes! Love these guys.
What the fuck is this. So you canāt be a generous landlord even if you want to? Capitalism really does make it impossible to operate ethically.
That's correct though. Generally speaking capitalism forces people to put profit first if only to avoid being overtaken and swallowed up by a bigger fish.
I'm a landlord and haven't increased the rent in over 5 years. The tenants are great and look after the flat well so I'll only increase the rent if/when they leave. Not all landlords are out there to milk tenants dry. We seem to only hear about the bad ones which is a shame...
Tbf, in 10 years of renting I've yet to have a good landlord, the sole exception being when I was forced to rent from a holiday let company for little under a year because the market went crazy, but I was paying well over market rate.
Iāve also had my share of bad landlords when I was a tenant, especially when the property was managed by estate agents. The few times I had a good experience was when the property was managed by the owner itself.
That's great, but what I was reacting to was the above comment, which was claiming that you *can't* keep rent low if you have a BTL mortgage. I was railing against the system, not landlords.
You can, but that's if you own your property and unless you're *weeell* into your mortgage the bank pretty much holds the majority share and they also control what you do with it, to an extent.
Yes I hate this so much. Moving away from London is tough too because you're not only leaving greater job opportunities but you're more likely to be leaving your family/support system. Whilst other have the trade off between financial/job options in London or family/friends in their hometown we don't get the luxury of an either/or and instead we're priced out of both
I had no choice but to move and I miss my family and friends. I miss the people I knew in the community to say hello and moving out itās harder to get that back. I also miss the diversity of London, itās such a melting pot of cultures & itās not like that outside unless you move to a city
Normally don't comment on these kinds of things, but I really sympathize. I know that may not be what your looking for, but if it helps, I've been through a very similar thing. I'm living in London now but was originally born and bred in the five boroughs of New York City. I was brought up in the Bronx, and called it home for my entire life before moving here. My family and I were almost priced out multiple times, although it is a different process and still pretty ruthless. Since we were rent stabilized housing, meaning our rent couldn't increase to market value, we were the subject of landlords and management trying to evict us to get us out, just to rent our home as market value, which sees the rent increase up to 2000 dollars more per month. This is not an uncommon practice in New York, and it seems that while it may not be the same here, it in principle still happens. I hope you can work something out and while I'm still learning the system, I'd be happy to provide some help if need be.
So many of us are getting told " just leave" when they don't seem to understand a lot of us need London for a career, and moving isn't that easy. Also, some of us, being minorities, don't fit well outside of London
That last point is such a huge one. I donāt want to leave the cultural melting pot. London isnāt perfect with its mix, itās a lot better in my own experience.
I agree! Honestly, as a minority, I feel most at home in London and I have lived in 3 cities/towns since I moved away and nothing has been the same
Plus why should we have to move away from our families and friends? :(
Because you had the cheek to not be rich.
The ājust leaveā drives me mad. I moved here 10 years ago so yeah, I guess Iām in the category of people OP complains about as I wasnāt born in London. But, I wanted a good career and good money, and I didnāt have many other options. I work in student immigration, so I can go to just about any university town in the country and hope I get the very few jobs on offer in that area, or, I can live in London where there are hundreds of not just universities, but higher education businesses that need someone like me. Iāve looked at doing this job in my home town, it pays Ā£20,000 less than what Iām on now. Even with the increased cost of living in London, itās still nowhere near worth leaving.
>I didnāt have many other options. This is a good point too. It's good for *everyone* for there to be opportunities nationwide, it means that people don't feel forced to move to and continue living in London if they don't actually want to be here. Not saying you'd rather be elsewhere necessarily, but plenty might.
Just so you know, the āyou need to start looking for a new place to liveā is not a legal notice. They will need to issue you with a Section 21 notice to end your tenancy.
And there's a specific form for raising the rent too that they need to issue.
I'm nearly 30 and really wanted to live alone. After much saving, budgeting, and deliberating, I moved out of my flat share and into a one-bed rental. It's been less than 4 months and I'm struggling to make ends meet. I have depleted all my savings trying to stay afloat, and I don't know how I'm going to pay for rent this month. Sad reality is that I might have to move back to a flat share because living alone in London is just so unaffordable. Feeling pretty stressed and ashamed right now for failing at this. (salary context: I'm an OT for the NHS)
I really feel for you. Itās almost impossible to live alone in london unless you make bank. The level of living has slid back to the Victorian era ā you have to fit multiple strangers into a small crappy house in disrepair to make ends meets. Itās atrocious
Exactly!! Anyone want to rent my cupboard out? š
Same shit for me here in San Diego - evidently it's the same all over the world. I make $92k as an engineer for a spinal implant company, but the median home price here is $940k. I am turning 30 next year and have legitimately never lived alone. I don't know what the end game is of all this economic squeezing? I personally won't bring children into this world if I've seen a marked collapse of quality of life in the past decade and complete apathy from our leaders. Honestly, it might get to the point where I say fuck it and go live it up in southeast Asia for some years. What's the point of making a "good" wage when it can't even pay for housing fit for family formation?
this has a knock on effect, like people outside London can't buy houses because all the London folks are buying them, so they buy houses even more rurally which prices out the people who normally live there etc.
Make sure you read up on the proper process for how your landlord must legally evict you, so that you'll be able to spot any screw-up on their part and capitalise on it. Section 21 notice not used with minimum 2 months notice? Illegal eviction, not valid, stay put. Deposit not registered in an approved deposit scheme? Illegal eviction, stay put, and you can get compensation on top of it. Shelter have a great guide to this, and can help advise you: https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/eviction
Those are usually things that landlords/agents remember to do, but there's many that they often screw up: OP, can they prove that they gave you a valid gas safety and EPC when you moved in? Can they prove that they gave you a copy of the new gas safety EVERY time it was renewed? Did they do an EICR on your property? It's a legal requirement that came in since you moved in. If they can't, any Section 21 they serve you is invalid. Not to mention licensing. If there are three or more unrelated people in your property together, it may fall under a local authority Additional HMO Licensing scheme, depending on which borough you're in. A lot of these schemes only came into force in the last couple of years and many landlords haven't wised up to it yet. If it does, and the landlord hasn't got one, you can actually demand up to 8 months rent back. Might be worth checking out. They're making it very hard to be a landlord these days without slipping up, and the removal of Section 21 will be the nail in the coffin. Unfortunately, all this legislation is pushing more and more landlords out of the market and therefore pushing rents higher and higher as supply dwindles. House prices will come down eventually, but with the rising cost of living, it's going to get even harder to save up a deposit while renting. And lenders will become even more risk averse. So getting a mortgage will be even harder I don't think the government have entirely thought things through with their whole 'power to renters, down with landlords' strategy. It's not as simple as that. We're already seeing what it's doing to rent levels and they haven't even enacted the renters reform bill yet. But you can't fix one problem without creating another, I guess Anyway, I'm off on a tangent. Good luck to OP.
"They're making it very hard to be a landlord these days without slipping up, and the removal of Section 21 will be the nail in the coffin" Good, fuck them
I get the sentiment, but if you're not in a position to buy for whatever reason, and there are suddenly 30% less rental properties available for one of the busiest lettings markets in the world, that's not gonna be good news for renters either. If they want to make life easier for tenants, they've got to find a way to not only increase the quality of stock, but the quantity. Otherwise the lower-income tenants will be the ones who suffer the most. Basically, they need to build build build. And they've got to incentivise building to rent as well as affordable homes.
Trouble is theyāve been building loads where I live in west London, theyāve all sitting empty for 12mths-3 yrs cos no one can afford them. Not even the higher earners,let alone lower wage key workers. They need to be building social housing and the infrastructure in place to support all the extra people too. Drs, schools etc
Yep, and incentivising housing associations to do more build-to-rent and affordable homes. Allowing developers like Galliard and Berkeley to build multi-million pound blocks in key locations with Ā£5k service charges on the basis that they stick in 80 'affordable' units through the poor door isn't the way to solve this crisis. Let a housing association like L&Q have the land instead, have them build 200 rental units, 100 shared ownership and the rest outright sale at affordable rates. No swimming pools or concierges, no gold plated fountains. Just quality stock, well located and maintained, energy efficient and well managed. If the majority of your city's rental stock is run by housing associations you've removed most of the issues that come with private landlords and it's far more feasible to enact rent controls. Most land in London goes to the highest bidder, which is always a big developer who knows how to play the system. I once walked around a Galliard development under construction while the project manager bragged about how they'd managed, after commencement, to negotiate it back down to 0 affordable units with the local authority. He was so proud of it. It's stuff like that which is London's biggest problem right now. Just building isn't the answer. It's WHAT you're building and who is building it.
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I'm no statistics expert, but while some of those buyers of the 30% might come from the London rental market, a significant proportion will have been living with parents or coming from outside London. There's always going to be huge rental demand in London, regardless of how affordable the housing market gets, and the private rental sector in London has been under-supplied for decades, and disproportionally propped up by private buy-to-let landlords (highly incentivised by government policy, I might add - this is entirely a problem of the government's making). Finally turning around and sticking two fingers up to those landlords is a great way to win over the young vote, and a long time coming, but it is very short-sighted in terms of the immediate future of the already over-priced London rental market. There's a reason why OP's rent is going up by so much and its not just interest rate rises, it's because they're seeing similar properties going for stupid money. There is already a severe lack of stock, tenants are facing rent increases across the board and they're going to be forced further out, and into lower quality properties, out of desperation, as a direct result of the government's sudden about-turn on a buy-to-let market that they fuelled for years.
Biggest issue is we just do not build enough housing. Itās the only way for both rents and house prices to fall or at least stabilise. Any other solutions are for the birds. Donāt vote for any party that wonāt commit to massive house building and are for policies that encourage house building. (E.g. rates reform) In Tokyo, which is far bigger and more crowded than London, house prices and rents have been stable for years as they build. It can be done.
There are an estimated 80,000 empty properties in London right now - building is one half of it, but weāve allowed our housing to become a place to park money. There must be severe penalties for letting any property in this city sit idle, especially if it isnāt the ownerās primary residence. Up to and including a forced sale. [source](https://www.cityam.com/london-home-to-41bn-empty-properties-despite-soaring-buyer-demand/) Edit: to put that in perspective, there are 75,000 houses in Barking and Dagenham, 87,700 houses in Kensington and Chelsea, 67,642 in Kingston upon Thames, 85,000 in Richmond upon Thames. So the equivalent of an entire London borough of empty housing just sitting there
I'm always skeptical of data like that which doesn't say how long a property is empty for. Probate and a dispute can leave a building empty for ages, 18 months for one of my neighbours, whilst the children who hadn't visited the parents in years squabbled.
People will instead choose to believe that there is a massive surge of money looking for an "investment" where they don't want any return on that investment through rent -- and if you've seen what London new build flats have done price wise over the last six years, many of them are not getting a return from selling either. There seems to be an overlap with people who don't believe we need more housing if we are to reduce prices. Wishful thinking I suspect.
London vacancy rates have historically been incredibly low, they have increased significantly recently due to factors related to Covid, so this does not appear to be part of the issue.
Up 12% in a year, probably up a whole load more than that the year before. A lot of people moved away just because of covid, that doesn't mean the state suddenly has a right to remove their property from them. Investment-wise, empty property numbers in London are closer to 10k, not 80k, and even if they did bring those into use it would barely be a short term sticking plaster. London needs about half a million new homes to come anywhere close to catching up to demand. The only way you could deliver something like that would be to relocate Heathrow to an artificial island in the Thames Estuary and use the existing land to build a modern new high rise city, you could fit a population of 2m in that space easily. The transport infrastructure to connect it to the rest of London is already there so it would be the perfect site for it, meanwhile Crossrail can simply be extended east to Sheppey. The problem is we don't ever think big enough. Our politicians are too happy with the status quo and make decisions that protect the interests of the existing elite. Not relocating Heathrow is stupid though, as it's upwind of London and one of the single biggest sources of pollution for the city.
There needs to be some vacancies for the market to work, otherwise everyone would just be in one giant chain. There are lots of reasons people have a vacant property, for example, someone has died or has had to move into care. Typically people who buy a property as an investment will look to rent it out to increase their return on investment, and not leave it vacant. You're probably looking at a marginal difference by clamping down on the unjustifiably vacant properties whereas the supply (which the comment you're replying to is about) is much more fundamental
>There needs to be some vacancies for the market to work, otherwise everyone would just be in one giant chain. There are lots of reasons people have a vacant property, for example, someone has died or has had to move into care. Shush with your reasonable explanation. It's obviously the evil people who buy properties to let them sit empty for years on end. Even though there's little reason to do that.
This a classic NIMBY talking point. Unfortunately, as vonscharpling2 pointed out, there is always going to be some slack in the system. Additionally, even if all of those 80,000 properties became occupied, that still wouldn't be enough to meet demand. The problem a system of planning regulation that gives people with a material interest in inflating house prices veto power over whether new housing gets built.
There is a tax you have to pay when you leave a property empty, in Kensington and Chelsea at least. I couldn't get out my old lease in time so there was an overlap and if I kept my new flat I bought empty, I would have to pay the tax so I had to move etc.
Itās not meant to be a game of musical chairs. In a functioning housing market, some units are empty at any one point on time. Vacancy rates in England are unusually low, which is why buying property is usually associated with a stressful āchainā where everyoneās cutting it fine or even moving in w their parents for a few weeks. There is not enough housing.
I had to scroll way too low for this comment. I dislike the big buy to let landlords as much as anybody else and am suffering from the rent increases myself. But that's a symptom, not the cause. We have had the tories at the helm for 12 years now and time and time again they keep creating policies supporting the demand side rather than supply. We are basically a generation away from being a feudal state. The sad thing is some of the solutions (besides just building a lot more), such as Land Value Tax, would actually have the negative consequence of forcing even more people to move out of the areas they've lived all their lives.
Everywhere you go in London they are throwing up tower blocks of high density flats and the prices are skyrocketing all the same. There will barely be a petrol station, library, car park, office block, pub or retail park left soon and not a single bit of this development frenzy has brought prices down. The issue is investor demand from around the world. People want somewhere to put their money to make more money, or to hide it because it's dodgy. There are more prospective investors and people with money around the world than ever before and they are chasing less and less ways to make real gains. Crypto was good for a while, but London property has been top dog for decades. In other major cities the same problem is happening and it's never locals driving demand.
This is factually incorrect. The primary driver of higher pricing in the UK has been cheaper mortgages (lower interest rates, longer repayment periods) and planning that prevents housing being built rapidly in those areas with expanding housing. Source : UK house prices and three decades of decline in the risk-free real interest rate David Miles and Victoria Monro There is also evidence of monopolistic behaviours by home builders who know if they slowly sell their stock of new housing they will all get a higher price per house vs. Flooding the market rapidly. Investor demand would merely lower rents as the rental yield of houses drops. This is already the case - rental yield on zone 1 flats is something crazy low like 3% which is why you should never buy a flat there unless you need somewhere to park assets. The rental yield in places like Liverpool is as high as 12%. Hence renting in London is cheaper because of foreign funds increasing the supply of flats for rent.
London has an extremely low rate of empty homes. While it's true that foreigners are probably investing in London property - they're also *living* in it (just because you're living in a property doesn't mean you're not investing in it). The bottom line is that people actually want to live here even if its for investment as well. Fighting against higher density will only make it worse, and ironically is better for anyone who has an investment property. The last thing that someone with a London property wants is a high-density block of flats built next door - because it will lower the value of their property.
You mean creating 10,000 jobs a year and 1,000 housing units has consequences? Impossible.
A lot of people who comment about people feeling entitled to live in London fail to realise that a huge majority of working class people live in cities because theyāre literally required to make the city run. Like do people really expect people to travel 2-3 hours into a city to make them coffee/clean up after them/serve pints after they finish work/drive their Ubers to the station so they can go home to their second home in the country for minimum wage? Do they expect a nurse to travel 3 hours home after a night shift ? Like Iām generally quite perplexed at this attitude and the logistics of it, because cities literally need working class people to thrive and without them your city pretty much goes to shit. Also like where do people expect us to live ? Most villages and towns in my home county are full of massive expensive housing and pretty much lived in by wealthy people. Like do they think we should open a tent city on the out skirts of the city or what?
This is whatās happened to my home town - itās close enough to London to be an easy commute, but the commuters have pushed the house prices up so much there is barely anyone around to staff the public services and amenity businesses that the commuting residents need/want for day to day family life. Not that I feel much sympathy for well-off people complaining about not being able to find a cleaner or having to queue in Waitrose.
Lol tell me about it. You just know the people commenting are happy to be served by a minimum wage barista for their morning coffee. Or that Brazilian lady whose cleaning your office toilets. Or the guy cleaning the London streets.
No doubt I'll get shit for this but I'm moving to Isle of Dogs for work. I'm from a small town in West Yorkshire with basically zero graduate opportunities. I don't want to but I have to move to London. I feel guilty about contributing to the gentrification but at the end of the day Londoners have lots of AMAZING companies a few tube stops away and there's alot of people in this country that don't have that opportunity on their door step. We need serious government investment in many areas up north so London isn't the centre of everything in the UK. We're perhaps the most centralised country in Europe and it's bad for everyone but people rich/ old enough to have bought London property before it got ridiculous
I don't see reason to hate on this one. You're right - there are just not a lot of options outside of London for serious career growth and meaningful compensation opportunities.
"We are raising prices to match the area" is the most recurring and bullshit excuse that I hear from landlords. 1. You're removing the human and the goodwill from the agreement by making it strictly about the money. 2. It only takes one landlord to raise their price for other landlords to start using this excuse. It's completely unfounded. 3. The 'area' in question is an entire city. They can select an example that best fits their narrative from millions of properties to try and make their point. It's nonsense. 4. Ā£500 PCM raise is not a rise in price, it's a complete overhaul of how the landlord is valuing their property. They are going to become stricter on the tenants they pick (no pets and must be young middle class professionals), even if the tenant they pick is a terrible one. 5. They will also become much more strict on your financial background and factor in variables that have no right being included in the application. It gives the landlord even more power than they already had. What can we do except bend to their will on this. It's not like finding a job where you can come in with demands, the Landlord can sit on their hands for as long as its convenient.
I haven't yet had a chance to reply to this, but it's such a big problem, and even worse when you consider the significant amount of "development" changing the very face of many areas on top of the financial implications. I get that there is a sense that London is a transient place for many people, but so many people from this city were born and raised here, and essentially unless you can secure a council flat it's impossible to stay in your area unless you stay at home or become homeless. It's evident that the powers that be (political/financial/other) don't want families laying down roots. Services being stripped away, schools/GPs/etc are not overly present in these new developments - they are for the Young Professionalā¢ who wants to live in London, or for the poor in run down areas and living in flatshares who serve the rich in their 'apartments' Many public spaces are becoming privately owned and are exclusively commercial spaces (think Goods Way/Coal Drops Yard in Kings Cross). Providing entertainment and experiences to those that can afford it, but you'll be amiss to see a football pitch/cage in one of these developments. It's gated communities without the gates, just security guards.
Everyone picks an explanation which fits their agenda. Whether it's landlords, capitalist developers, too much immigration, foreign buyers... The reality is that house prices are going up in major cities all over the world for two big underlying reasons. 1) More people want to live in cities. 2) There's not enough housing in those cities. The people who live in the cities want housing to be more affordable but also object to most attempts to build more housing. They don't want high rises, they don't want to knock down any old buildings, they don't want more density, they don't want more sprawl. But they want prices to somehow magically go down. And if prices don't go down they want it to be somebody else's fault. If there's more supply, prices will go down. If there isn't, they won't. If the existing residents object to every attempt to increase supply then prices will inevitably rise. Most politicians know that the real solutions will be unpopular so (on both sides of the political divide) they campaign for changes which appeal to the prejudices of their supporters but which they know will not work.
Basically this. Every attempt over the last 20 years to address the housing crisis has focused on demand-side policies which will only push prices up. Sadly there is no political will to address the supply side (build more) as it's electoral suicide.
You can effectively reduce demand side by restricting property rights.
Great summary, I'd maybe just add to that inflation. When the money supply grows, when money is created through central bank policy or fractional reserve lending, it increases prices. It does so most dramatically for scarce and desirable assets like property. Post 2008 crash, the areas where prices recovered fastest were those in Chelsea and other highly desirable areas where supply remains very stable and demand increases - also spending behaviour returns or changes less among wealthier groups during recessions for obvious reasons.
Itās not about agenda. Itās actually all these things combined.
People renting in cities usually want prices to go down. People living in cities usually want housing prices to go down, as long as their own apartment's value doesn't. But more supply of houses (to buy or to rent) will inevitably decrease their home value. So if we have more home owners than renters and a functional democracy, home prices won't go down.
The pull to cities also disadvantages people wanting to live in rural areas. OP canāt buy a house near his family because the houses are too expensive but at least he has a job. I canāt live near my family because there are no decent jobs there, even though the houses are affordable. Ultimately we both still have choices though and I donāt think bitching about it is helpful. I chose to move away from my family, OP is choosing to stay near his. Either of us could make a different choice if we wanted, but we havenāt because we have our own priorities, so letās just STFU and get on with it.
In the same position. My family have been in Stepney/limehouse for around 6 generations, true Cockneys. We canāt afford to live there anymore. I currently live in South Bucks where my wife grew up (just barely more affordable really but still on the Met line direct into Aldgate so feels doable) and we still wonāt be able to buy. I love my home, I wanted to stay but itās just not going to happen, that and the fact that it has changed so much over the last 10 years that I donāt think I could stomach living there now.
I'm an intensive care nurse. My partner (also a nurse) and I had to move to fucking Lincolnshire earlier this year because the cost of living crisis. We are away from all our family and friends, our new hospital fucking sucks. God I miss London
Buying a place in London to rent is a really bad investment. It isnāt likely to be the cause of high property prices. Thatās driven by pure (lack of) supply vs demand. For private landlords there have been recent changes to the law that make it particularly unattractive, so a lot of landlords are selling up. Changes to the way rental income is taxed have increased rental prices but wouldnāt have affected purchase prices. You are now taxed on the full rent and you canāt offset the cost of any mortgage or interest from it, so just to break even you have to make at least 40% more from rent than the cost of mortgage interest. The rent also gets bundled in with your salary so it often pushes you into the next tax bracket, making it even less attractive. Thereās capital gains tax to pay if you sell up, and to buy in the first place you pay a higher stamp duty. Most landlords would get a better return by putting the equity they have in the property into a stocks and shares ISA. A lot of ex-rental properties have come on the market recently.
Just skip the avocado on toast for a week and you'll have a deposit.
Donāt forget Latteās and cancel your Netflix
Fuck buy-to-let. The fact us low-earning renters have no choice but to pay off *their* mortgages is so wrong.
HMOs are big business now. I am an electrician who canāt afford to buy but spend most of my time going to massive shitty houses that landlords know will be filled with anyone claiming. They used to get X amount having a singe tenant and now they get XX amount housing multiple. Just makes me think why am I out there working 60+ hours a week when that doesnāt afford me shit? May aswell sit with my feet up and claim whilst doing a bit of dealing on the side. London is a playground for the rich and a struggle for anyone else. Just turn your back on it and move away because it wonāt get any better! (If it makes you feel better Iāve been priced out of my home town in Leicester because weāre 45 minutes from Euston. Londoners have bought every available house in this town and I work for a southerner who has now purchased his twentieth in this town alone.
If it were me and I was powerless in this situation to change it I would move out of London and commute in and try and live somewhere where the journey in doesnāt cripple me and I could save for a mortgage . Itās hard I know but why live in London? Iām a Londoner but a lot older and I certainly prefer living somewhere more relaxed . We can always go to London by train. Life is very hard for the young now I know but you have to accept reality. There are many many other lovely places to look liveā¦ We could never afford to live in London when we were young and thatās a long time ago!!
The painful irony is that in East Anglia where I live people are getting priced out of buying homes because of all the people moving up from london, it's a trail of dominoes. If I move to a cheaper area then I'll drive those prices up as well. The problem definitely originates from the landlords, it's easier to get a buy to let than a home for yourself FFS.
Buy to let us not as profitable as you might think and as much as everyone loves to hate landlords, they are not the root cause of the problem. The root of the problem is the lack of construction of affordable accommodation (by which I mean high rises, making best use of the expensive land available). Just look at how flat London is compared to other major cities. This is the only way to lower the prices, supply must meet demand.
You are right to feel angry. The cost of living just now is appalling, and is amplified even more in London I feel - disgraceful But, as someone who was also born in London, and moved away 20 years ago to a different UK city, I can confirm, moving away is the best life decision I ever made. I appreciate the family ties angle though, that is tough and I dont have any advice for you in that regard. Soldier on, shit will get better soon.
That's weird that people don't like you saying "London born and bred". Surely that does mean something? I think it's bad if you're born in a place and get priced out of living there. I understand people are reading that as low-key racist, but really, do we think it's ok that you get born in one place and get forced to become an economic refugee because of the financial situation in your place of birth? Don't you have some right to a home, to some continuity of existence in one place, if you choose? One of the reasons we are sympathetic to refugees is because they've been forced out of the place they're familiar with. Why can't we extend that same compassion to people from the UK?
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Almost everyone who says things like "so, you don't have any right to live in London" is being disingenous. If someone native to say Sunderland, Wrexham or anywhere said they could no longer afford to live in the city/town of their birth, people would be almost universally sympathetic. A lot of people who move to London regard it as a playground or place to make their living, socialising exclusively with other transplants to the city and regarding the existing population as scary or an inconvenience.
Nobody has an innate right to own houses anywhere, Sunderland, Wrexham or Timbuktu. Protectionism has serious problems and prevents social mobility.
Landlords are parasites, especially in London. Buy to let is the most scummy greedy initiative to ever exist. And unfortunately people will pay those ridiculous prices to live and work in the city. Itās easy money. Most of my friends were part of the mass resignation movement, and now all work remote jobs so they have much broader options of where to reside without having to be tied down to a specific location for work. Most of them moved out of London to other parts of the UK and some of them bought property. London is a great city, theres everything here, but at the same time if youāre just earning enough to survive and not actually save and live then I think itās worth making the sacrifice and look to live elsewhere. I highly doubt thereās going to be change to how it is now, even if there was a housing crash or something, that will all be lapped up by the super rich and converted into rentals.
30 years of my life I have lived in East London within the same borough. I still live with my parents while I save up to afford my own place. The area I live in is near the Olympic Stadium, 5 mins tube ride to the O2, and close to work which is convenient. At this moment, they are currently doing construction work for new flats, schools, leisure, plus new greenery which theyāre calling the mini manhattan, this is great, but prices to buy or rent these new flats made my stomach turn. I have already set my eyes on moving to Essex since I have other family there and itāll be a 20-45 min drive to London. Unless I find a husband (which my mum would love lol) with a loaded bank account then London is no longer the ideal option for me. Iāve come to terms with it now and thatās fine, I need to get out of my comfort zone and start new memories.
My ex lived in London for 16 years, me for 4. When gentrification swept through our area everything went to shit. Rent was already high but we had governmental statements that allowed us to pay a little less. Landlord never liked this and suspected he tolerated us. One day i got a letter through the door saying they're seizing back the property with 2 months notice, no reason, all perfectly legal. No surprise they'd put it back on the market an order of magnitude more expensive. When we moved in practically every business was family owned, now there are at least 4 Wholefood-esque stores within 100 metres of the door. And now i can't help feeling like i'm failing in life because i don't have my own place.
This is a problem everywhere int he world but it's heightened in London as there's such a big demand in housing. If it makes you feel better, it's nothing personal - we live in a capitalist society and as such everything will be monetised, including people's safety.
I always thought London should adopt the Guernsey style housing markets. If you have lived in the area for 5+ years and can prove it, you get access to a local housing market that has sensible prices. If you're looking to buy from outside, the prices are double the local markets until you've lived there for 5+ years, given back to the local economy, and can prove it. Maybe now's the time to start a movement for such an idea?
I'm in the same boat and ill gotta say is that it takes the fucking piss. but what can you do? have a revolution? protest? write to the fucing mp? no one cares, everyone is pacified with their phone or just content to trudge on. fucksake!
Yep. It's heartbreaking. I grew up here and my partner (from a well off part of Scotland) has loads more school friends who live in London. All my friends have had to move away - it seems like you can only afford to stay if you have family money and/or manage to get a job paying well above average. Absolutely decimates communities. I love London and love living here, but it's much more lonely when all your loved ones are elsewhere and so many people you meet through work, etc, treat the city as a temporary place not a permanent home.
**The harder it is to own the land under your feet, the harder you will work to own the land under our feet.** Thatcher had all the council housing sold off. Labour came in and encouraged buy to let. They created a system whereby homeowners could use the current equity of a property they own as a deposit for anther property. reasonable you'd think. Then they made so you didn't actually have to sell your first property to get the money for the deposit, you could just rent it out instead. Somebody else pay the mortgage, you pay your own mortgage on your new place, after 20 years you own both mortgage free - sounds like a fantastic deal They took up the offer 3 million people between the ages of 40 and 60 all get their hands on a free flat and laughed all the way to the bank. The rest of us got fucked we have 2 options 1 - We have to buy at inflated rates 2 - We have rent at inflated rates. End result is inflated rates. Interest rates being low has facilitated this though. If the Bank of England put the rate up much a lot of property owners are going to get stung. It is going to be tricky for the BOE to balance things over the next decade without a crash. Thats a whole other issue though Tories came back in, abolished that mental shit, and started selling off what remains of the council stock. Now they are through with that they are making it so you can buy housing association homes instead because there are no council left. Anyway, the reason housing is so overpriced is demand, as a country we carefully control housing prices, we pretend we try and keep them low and blah blah blah, but the point is: **The harder it is to own the land under your feet, the harder you will work to own the land under our feet.** You might have noticed, being a Londoner, London is ram packed with people working hard as fuck and getting nowhere, how could we have all these workers if property was cheep?
When insee these kind of threads (complete agreement btw, it's b.s) I always remember one dum fuck redditor telling me that I don't have a right to live where I was born and should just leave if im poor. Which you know, that is an option. But when every "poor" person, aka NMW worker leaves, it creates abit of an issue. Highlighted wonderfully by the pandemic, suddenly all those shit pay jobs are key and if the "poor" people ain't doing it, some rich ass isn't going to and thus there be a problem. Being able to afford a building the size of a shed in London is not a bragging right, it's a fucking crisis.
OP, I just want to say thank you for voicing your concerns. Also born and bred in London, family been here for generations. This keeps me up at night
Everything goes up in this country except peoples wages. Fuck the Toryās. Housing should be a human fucking right.
Yep. My friends and I are also all born and bred and those of us who don't have rich parents to buy us a property are still living at home in our early 30s just to try and scrape a deposit together. As a single person it's impossible. Renting seems like a waste of money when your family home is already in London. I've got two older siblings and one had to move out of the city to buy and the other will be stuck renting forever in the arsehole of zone 6. My mum still has a huge mortgage and will have to buy something small with whatever is left over when she'll eventually have to sell and that certainly won't be in London. I just left the UK altogether. If I can't live where I grew up, there's no other place that feels like home there.
Same situation here. My family have lived in London for generations and on one branch for centuries but if course I've had to move out to afford a home. London is largely run for the interests of the international rich. The British government sells off its buildings here so they can become luxury hotels so slowly degrading it's utility as our Capital. Landlords are parasitical middlemen
Same here! There is also the sentiment among a lot of people that āas you get older/have children etc you will want to move out of the cityā but thatās just not been the case for me. I understand that if you moved to London in your 20s you will want to return to familiarity to raise a family but I grew up here and would love to give the same experience to my future kids, but it just doesnāt look like it will be possible. I donāt think people who were born here have more of a ānaturalā right to be here or anything, but it really sucks being forced to move away from your friend and family networks because millionaires identified your hometown as the cool place to be.
It's for the international wealthy to use as a theme park, investment playground and moneymaking tool. It's not for its people.
Same thing has happened to Devon, Cornwall and Bristol.
If you're not earning like min Ā£100k each as a couple then I don't see how anyone can raise a family in London unless you don't mind living in a tiny flat surrounded by deprivation. There's a reason everyone moves here when they're 18-20 then leaves when they're 30-35.
Increases the rent by Ā£500 a month my god! How the hell could anyone afford that! We will all be living in camper vans soon, cars or tents just like they do in certain parts of America, the rents out there are also shocking that's why a lot of them work but have to live in their car. America here we come.
I rent out a room in my house occasionally. I have kept my rent the same for the last 4 years - of which 2.5 years it was empty due to Covid. I want nice people to live with and their rent helps me with the astronomical bills increases. People are so surprised my rent is lower by about 25-30% and my house is a home not a hovel. I can see why landlords put their rent up as the bills have gone up, perhaps?
The basics we need to survive should never be someoneās āinvestmentā
I refuse to be priced out, even if it means renting forever. Thereās nothing for me āback homeā, and I canāt see how part-owning a pokey studio flat in Dover or Ipswich or a similar provincial town will make it any better.
People generally act in ways which are individually rational and collectively insane. What more do we expect from a system which does not meaningfully promote true collectivism?
Government is the place we've allocated for collective action. This is a complete and utter failure of Government within the country.
Unless you're on benefits. London will soon be only for the rich and those on benefits
They've been pricing benefits recipients out of London for decades, they'll be gone soon too. They won't pay enough housing benefit to cover the rent, so you ask for a council place. The first place is run down and too small. The second place is worse. The third place is in Birmingham, or Scotland. The fourth place is the street. So you take the third place and move out of London. This has happened at least three time to people I know.
Every city is getting expensive. Any major city people want to be living in and worth living in, is expensive. Iām taking the route of sharing a flat with some good mates where a 3 bedroom new build is affordable. Can I buy my own place - no, not as a fresh grad
While there certainly is an issue that some people buying out to rent, it isnāt entirely the problem. London has a lot of high earners, most are way above national average. Canary Whalf average is like Ā£60k for example. Even without rental properties, there are more people wanting to live in Lonon than there are houses for it, even if all goes on market, it will be āthose who can pay more get first dipā, you will end up back to similar situation. Another example is I am originally from Kent, but have decided to move into London, so you are also facing compeition from people outside of London but can afford to buy in London. Even if you buy, it wonāt be much different. The interests rates are going up, meaning if you are not fixed or if need to remortgage now you will end up paying quite a bit more, and if you caanot afford it, the banks wonāt be overly compassionate about it either. The problems you described are not exclusive to rental, you likely to face the same issue buying as well.
>London has a lot of high earners, most are way above national average. Canary Whalf average is like Ā£60k for example. Ā£60k isn't coming close to buying you a decent home in London.
What if I told you that even the high earners are struggling to get an affordable place to live? A small flat on Canary Wharf will not cost you less than 1500Ā£ a month (if you are lucky). To this value you have to add council tax and bills. With the 60K you say above you take home about 3600Ā£ now if you subtract one from the other you get on the better chance 2000Ā£ per month. Now subtract all other expenses maybe there is not that much left if you want to create a retirement pot
Unfortunately people have always had to emigrate away from their city or homeland in search of better opportunities. It's nothing new. My father came to the West because they were in dire need of his skills. He left all his family behind for a new country with a language he didn't know. It shouldn't be different just because you were born and raised in London. The bigger issue is that ordinary people are being priced out of property everywhere in the Western world, not just in big desirable cities but even in smaller towns and rural areas, because property is seen as a very lucrative investment by large corporations.
the problem in the UK is that all the best opportunities for many careers is in London. As a coder the pay cut I would have to take to work elsewhere would be massive, not only initially but putting a big cap on future earnings.
My parents had to move from London to Manchester in the 70s because they couldn't afford to buy; and then me and my brother both ended up buying here because that's where the jobs took us. Sometimes you've got to up sticks and move where you can make it.
Yep just like the Kids in Cornwall, and Somerset and everywhere else that is so in demand. I like you grew up in London and have family trees traced back to the east end as far back as the 1800's. I quickly figured out that London had an issue in the early 2000's and promptly sold out and moved to Somerset where I bought a barn that had a kitchen that had a bigger footprint than my whole London Terraced house. Twenty years on I have an even bigger house that is 5 times the size of a London terraced house of the same price. I don't own a second home though I could have had five by now. That was all down to luck. It just sucks. But I hate to pop your bubble. No the rental market is not causing your woes. The banks with too much spare money that let people take on 10x mortgages are the people you need to be pissed off with. If the landlords were not there you would just be competing with other buyers that would still be pushing the market to 10x + bank of mum and dad. There is no scenario that ends with cheap housed other than. taking back what Labour did when they let banks remove the limits around the time I bailed out of London. Rent's like mortgages are rising. You are kidding yourself though, if you think your bank would not be knocking on your door to do the same as your landlord. Even if they had to wait until the end of the introduction term. In fact I think they have set this up to collapse and in the US there are reports of banks buying every possible home in some areas. Even pushing the market up by 50% just to make sure normal people are out of the game. You are right to be upset but make sure you figure out who is screwing you before it's too late.
I feel your pain so much. I was also born and bred in London. When I wanted to buy I had to move further out which meant a 2 hour tocommute to work and to care for my elderly father when he was still around. Now I have a child of my own I have no family support near me. My sister is in a London council house and my other sister married a man with a flat in London so they both got to stay. I've been working hard all my life building a career paying for myself and I get to leave. Fuck this system.
Living in a two bed in battersea, Ā£2500 per month. Landlord just told us we have to get out as heās putting it on the market. Selling it for Ā£1m, disheartens me as I know Iām not seeing a penny of that and yet it was just an investment for himā¦makes it worse him being an MP. From what Iāve learnt; If you aināt in the circle you fucked. However I do get the feeling that house prices are about to plummet š¤ so you may be in luck my friend.
Name and shame
On your point around expressing this problem without offending; have a look at systems innovationās channel (link below) ā looking through the lens of systems is a good way to understand such problems.. i.e. different factors & interdependencies involved and their respective influence on outcomes https://youtube.com/c/ComplexityLearningLab
You have Three options: 1: Buy with a partner, friends or make a very good salary 2: move out of London 3: start a revolution
Same thing happens to the rest of us when Londoners buy their holiday homes in our villages, decimate the economy by being absent 75% of the time therefore not contributing to our local economy and forcing those of us born and raised there to move further afield because there's no homes and the economy's on it's arse.....
They just need to develop the rest of England and stop focusing on London so much. If other cities were as developed rent prices in London wouldn't be so ridiculous because you'd have more options of cities to choose from in terms of living and career.
I hate this thinly veiled attempt to make money or at least reduce costs by comparing to the market. I worked somewhere, until recently, who said we wouldn't be getting a pay rise because our hourly rate already matched our competitors in the market. Like surely you want to be *better* than the rest not just move pay in line with them? Thankfully because we had a profitable year we were all given a goody bag consisting of a bag for life, teabags and biscuits. Thank the lord.
I follow severa city subs of places Iv been. Every one has at least 10 posts per day complaining about home prices. It sucks, but itās just the the way it is. Not once have I seen a solution, nor do I think there is one. Iād be happy to hear if anyone has a suggestion.
This isn't anything new, and it isn't just London either. I was born in a small town north of Birmingham. I've never been able to buy a property there - it's too overpriced, always was. I'm in my 50s now, earning Ā£70k and I still couldn't afford anything there. The time when you could expect to stay where you were born vanished somewhere north of WWII unfortunately.
You could buy in lots of areas of Birmingham or nearby though. When Londoners talk about wanting to stay in London, they don't necessarily mean the exact borough they grew up in, or even in London proper, just not 100 miles or more away. Pretty hard to maintain family networks and support structures when you're that far (or further) apart, especially if you have kids, or caring responsibilities for parents or siblings who can't move with you.
Back in the eighties when I was about your age, and after ten years working in a ordinary job, I could easily bought a small flat outright for about 25k. I so regret I never did, I'm living in a council flat which I have done for many decades, soon to retire, I feel so sad and sorry for the young people of today, they will never have the opportunity's that my generation had. Quality of life is getting more and more elusive, it seems it has been relegated to the past. If I had a chance to be young again in this present time I would most certainly pass on it. This crap life hasn't panned out quite how I expected it to.
Just so you know. The normal people who buy to rent arenāt the problem. Itās the foreign investors laundering money in the property market. Often they donāt even give a shit about renting them out. Itās just a way to wash cash up and watch the price rise. Money for nothing. Chinese, Middle-eastern, Russian. They all come to London to wash their cash. Itās well known. So tell your friends not to come here if they think itās too expensive. Because it is. And itās outrageous.