Non-Londoners, what sort of a salary increase would convince you to relocate there?

[artemisdubois]

As per the thread title, how much more would you need to be paid in order to convince you to relocate to London (Central)?

Of course the main reason I'm asking is that I'm in this situation at the moment of considering two different jobs. I'm early-thirties, engaged to a man who can run his company from anywhere with good internet and would be amenable to the move. We don't have strong family ties to our current home city, though we'd be a lot further from them if we moved to London.

Taking into account the massively-increased cost of living, commuting time and costs, busier lifestyle and other probably basic differences I'm yet to consider, it's quite complex. I'd love to hear opinions and what your price might be - I'm sure for a lot of people no amount of money would be enough.

There is no amount of money that would persuade me. Seriously.

It depends where you live to begin with. Lots of parts of the U.K. have comparable
Costs without the increased salary so it’s not so much of a leap.

No amount of money would ever get me to move to London.

A lot more, something ridiculously high maybe four times or more my current wage, but I live in a cheap place and I'd want a huge wage to make up for the much smaller place I would be living in on London costs.

Currently on 35 & would want at least 50.

Going rate for my type of job in London is 45k+.

You’d have to pay me to leave

I think you need a minimum of £200k to live in central London. A minimum.

You need to work out the actual costs of commuting, housing and living in London (or commuter belt) in order to make that decision. No point pulling a figure out of the air.

For me it would be the costs of all of those increases (transport, housing, living costs) + 50%.

Are you career options greatly increased in London? More progression? Is that worth factoring in?

What kind of deposit do you have? Or would you be renting and would work pay housing costs?

It would take a huge amount for us to go back to one of us commuting into London again. Not just to relocate to somewhere commutable, but the whole lifestyle wasn't something we enjoyed. I'm not ruling it out, but it would be a serious 'show me the money' thing

I did London when I was younger and you’d probably need to pay me about a million a year... which is a fair leap.

As per pp, I wouldn't go to London for less than 250k - would need that to have anything like my current quality of life on £50k. I am in Scotland (not Edinburgh)

I was born there. You couldn’t pay me enough. Nice place to visit, etc.

A big factor for me would be whether or not I wanted kids. The school situation in London is a bit of a nightmare, with catchments for good schools being tiny.

Money wise, I’ve never done the sums. Personally I think 25-30% more, rent, so it for 5 years then move to the end of a good train line.

But if you want kids, I wouldn’t.

I've both lived in London and lived on the outskirts commuting on. My commute both times wasat Least an hour. If you're weighing this up think about how much it would cost to live near work.

Surely it totally depends on your job? Yes travel is expensive but depending on where you live it’s not that much, I pay about £8 a day on tubes, leisure is probably cheaper as so much is free, rent and mortgage will be more that’s for sure. Other than rent you might find the rest isn’t so much and it’s the best place in the world to live.

You don't need to live in central London to work in central London, if you don't want to. We live 35mins north of Euston, husband works centrally earning six figures. But we lived in London on much less pre-child, and could afford to do so now. The only reason we left was house prices. I miss London...

It would be about being able to have a similar lifestyle. We have 1 DC and live in a 3 bed detached with decent garden, in an area with little crime. Obviously there are areas of London like that but how much would it cost to live there and I suspect that is irrelevant because we wouldn't have the deposit for such a property. I have no desire to go back to living in a flat with no parking.

£100,000 extra would get me there but I am currently on £14,000 (not full time but 2/3 time and I love my work which makes it worth a lot). I used to live in London and my first job paid £9k pa. And I survived quite well. Never lived further than zone 3, bought a lovely flat in SW11 when my salary doubled (to the grand amount of £18k also a job I loved). This was in the mid 90's though and ten years later we moved to the countryside where we are happy but remember our London years with rose tinted specs so would move back in a heartbeat.

I gather from reading posts here that London has changed enormously and has become ridiculously expensive, which is a shame as it was a wonderful place to live (as a young person: I was there for all my 20's)

Wild horses would not drag me.

At the moment I am 55 a minute commute door to desk, I am paid over £40K, annual rail card of just over 1K covering the whole of my city, my mortgage is £285 pm. I live in a national park and work flexi hours / wfh so if the weather is nice I can go for a walk / run or cycle in the hills in my lunch hour or after work, kids can bring themselves home, let themselves out and go and do their thing.

Best of all - I don't breathe grit.

@EntirelyAnonymised of course you're right. I'm in the process of doing just this. I am mostly curious to know what other people's "ooh, that's actually very tempting" figure would be. As for my personal situation, I live in a fairly big city in the North - my career options are pretty good where I am (I certainly think I could fulfil all of my aspirations here), though undoubtedly slightly better in London.

Really appreciate the responses so far. It seems that not many people would be up for the move at all - I'm not entirely surprised.

I’d need enough money to live in somewhere seriously fancy like Chelsea, to never have to take the tube - so a good taxi budget, and to afford private school comfortably.

So maybe £500k per annum?

Would you be renting or buying? A decent two bed flat in a nice part of London would be about £2k per month to rent, imagine an extra £300 for gas, electric, council tax etc--- or maybe £600k to buy it? I think to live to a high standard such as being able to go out to nice dinners, drinks, entertainment, holidays and some savings- you would want 4x that so if your combined income is around £10k per month you would have a lovely time. Maybe work it out backwards like that.

And remember not everything is more expensive in London! There is also a lot of free stuff to do! It's not all £100 theatre tickets and £8 glasses of wine 😂