Outnumbered - is the lifestyle realistic?

[Mrsemcgregor]

So I’ve been watching Outnumbered on Netflix with my DS (he loves it!) and I’m wondering if the lifestyle they have is achievable in London considering their jobs?

Pete is a teacher in a secondary school and is yet to achieve head of department and Sue is part time in what I assume is an admin/PA type role. I’m hypothesising that their joint income is likely to be around £60k? Maybe £70k. Where I live they would be lucky to be on £50k but I’m adding extra for London wages.

The house they live in is huge! I am not sure where in London it’s meant to be, but their is a scene where Pete mentions problems on the tube so I assume they are within the underground network. It’s 3 stories and at least 4 bedrooms and two bathrooms, a massive kitchen dining area, a garden and a nice sized lounge with a big bay window. Even where I live that would set you back close to £500,000. That house must cost a fortune in London?

Pete’s mum and dad are still alive as is Sue’s dad so I’m assuming no large inheritance, and they mention a mortgage so they haven’t inherited the house.

Can any London mumsnetters confirm or deny that this is realistic?

(I know I have far too much time on my hands and have given this way too much thought )

[quote TwoLeftSocksWithHoles]@Respectabitch

If Z2 is your postcode then you're a long, long way out of London and hence the low price.[/quote]
You're... Joking, right?

@SimonJT

Not with those legs.

I'm surprised at all the posts calling the house tiny and shabby. It's much bigger than my house and my house feels quite big to me!

@Chicchicchicchiclana - my post was about the topic OP was asking about : with current salaries for the jobs depicted around 50k in her area and maybe 70k in London, and the house in the series costing in her area around 500k now, is it realistic the characters could be living in this type of house in London? OP does not ask was it realistic when the series was filmed. As we've found out from other posters that house was recently sold for 1.85m so I stick with my original assessment that it is not a realistic setup. The friends comparison is a great one. As many people have said, house price inflation has been many times that of salary inflation which is horribly unfair so that family living in a house like the one described in Wandsworth is totally fictional and even would have been when it was filmed unless they had help from the bank of mum and dad. My point was no family should be beating themselves up about that they don't live like that on normal salaries, it's clearly fiction!

As for what am I doing on mumsnet I am staying on top of what people care about here as often it's the same as me!

Guys you do know it’s fiction, right?

Name a TV program based in London, accurately depicting what the protagonists could afford, that isn’t thoroughly depressing telly.

Next we’ll be debating whether it’s even worth risking living there at all, given the daily massacres according to Luther!

Yes I often wonder the same thing about many dramas. The houses are too expensive for the occupations. But I do remember thinking the house wasn't in tip top condition.

I bought my North London 4 bedroom Edwardian in 2001 for £365,000. In today's prices that would be £608,000.

Its just sold now for £1.4m. But the place I'm buying, also I n north London is expensive too.

Oh and I regularly see Clare Skinner and Hugh Dennis wandering round the area together as they are now dating. My DD was very excited to serve them at the local cinema.

I loved Karen too. And my son loved Ben. Especially that scene shooting 'Stranger, Stranger!!' in a gift shop about his parents. I think that's what the scene was....

No way is it realistic. They would never afford. House like that - even at the time it was filmed.
I know teachers who have had to give up jobs and move out of London as they could not even afford their flat shares.

I think it's realistic
Hugh Punt is 58, Jane Horrocks 56
First series filmed in 2007, so he would have been 45 and she would have been 43. Their oldest child would have been 7.
So in reality they probably would have bought a flat to start with, probably when they were about 30 which would have been when houses were at rock bottom prices. Then traded up when they had children, in 1995 a very similar house in the same road sold for £250k. I think that would have been achievable if you sold a flat for say £120k (a 2 bed flat in the same road sold for that price in that year.)

At that time mortgages were easy to come by and they would routinely lend 4x joint salary and it was common for parents to chip in a bit if they had some spare.

It was about the last time you could do that. We bought a tiny cottage in about 1997 for about £150k and they routinely go for £1m now.

Hugh Dennis even!!

@CountessDracula

Hugh Dennis even!!

Jane Horrocks isn’t in it either

Although Clare Skinner did play Jane Horrock's twin in Life is Sweet!

So lovely they are together in real life!

Oh yes that's right, I always confuse them!
Pretty hopeless all round, didn't sleep well

and the house in the series costing in her area around 500k now
Surely not 500k? That seems incredibly, incredibly low for London.

I remember laughing at the Paddington Bear films too. Mr Brown was supposed to be a risk analyst with a stay at home wife - and they were living in a fabulous three story period town house in central London!
DD is a risk analyst, making less than £50K. She was in hysterics at the film, and reckoned Mr Brown must have a lucrative money laundering sideline!

I assumed Paddingtons "parents" were old money.

I think (but stand to be corrected) that the books of Paddington were set quite a long time ago, with mrs bird as the housekeeper. I loved the film but yes the huge house in Notting hill(?) was very grand for a supposedly quite "ordinary" family.

I guess a slightly pokey, ex-council 3 bedroom maisonette in Walthamstow* wouldn’t have been such a magical setting for Paddington, although Londoners might have appreciated the realism

• Nothing against Walthamstow. It’s a great area. And I’d happily take a 3 bed maisonette, if we could afford one...

I love the house in Paddington with the flowery tree up the stairs

The house in My Family is pretty nice too (possibly realistic if the dentist dad had lots of private patients)

It wouldn't be realistic now, but it certainly was the case 20 years ago. What you are watching now is very dated.

I do think there is a teeny difference between Outnumbered, whose USP was a overtly realistic (in a sitcommy way) portrayal of a certain type of middle class life in the early 21st century, and Paddington, which is out and out magic realism set in a timeless fictional London.

But FWIW if you ignore the talking bear and focus on the plausibility of the real estate, there are no grandparents in Paddington, so I assumed the house was inherited. Alternatively the mum could be one of the vanishingly small but non-zero number of illustrators who makes big bucks. I bet Lauren Child and Axel Scheffler’s houses are lovely.

The Browns' house in Notting Hill so absurdly outstrips their income that it makes it clear the whole thing essentially takes place in a magical land of unicorns, tbh.

@Babdoc

I remember laughing at the Paddington Bear films too. Mr Brown was supposed to be a risk analyst with a stay at home wife - and they were living in a fabulous three story period town house in central London! DD is a risk analyst, making less than £50K. She was in hysterics at the film, and reckoned Mr Brown must have a lucrative money laundering sideline!

But when were those stories set-the 50s if not before?

It was perfectly normal to live in a nice house on just one salary then.