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 )

I always think this about Bridget Jones and Love Actually. All these people in low-paid media/arts and admin jobs, all living in huge flats in Central London

@museumum

The show is really old. I had guides who went to school with the boy, that was around 2003 I think and the show wasn’t brand new then. About the same time I knew people buying in the Putney / Southfields area for £250k.

It first aired in 2007

“Just for fun, where in central London would a teacher and part time admin assistant with 3 kids live today? And what would their house/flat be like?”

I think they’d live in a similar house up north!

I know people with fairly regular jobs who live in massive houses in nice parts of London. They bought v young, or had help from parents young, and quickly moved up that ladder.

Not that the north is universally cheap etc

I've thought about this a weird amount over the years as it never added up. My old boss and her husband had kids around the age of the Outnumbered family at the time and they had a house in that area. She said they put the house deposit on a credit card in the early 90's. However, she was senior management in the headquarters of a major bank and he ended up as the CEO of a media agency... which is a world away from the jobs the Outnumbered family had!

@moose62

I bought my house in London 25 years ago for £135,000. It is now worth a hell of a lot more. When outnumbered was written those houses in South London were going for about £250,000 so not that unrealistic. The salary increases have not risen with the house prices so at the time they probably could have afforded it.

They really weren’t! I lived in the area and it was posh and expensive then just like it is today. We’re only talking 13 years.

Haha yeah I think maybe though it was a good few years back as others have said.

But my husband and I bring in 90k in London between us and we’ve finally managed to buy the ground floor flat of a 3 story house - it’s only got 2 bedrooms and it’s pretty tiny! We’ve borrowed the absolute max we can and the repayments are fairly high - we can afford it - but I laugh at the thoughts of being able to buy the whole house and have all 3 floors - it would be well over a million 😂

We will be leaving London once our baby starts school

My BIL and his wife bought a three bed semi ex council house in Hays in the 90s. The had three children and would have been on the same kinds of salaries as Sue and Pete. That would probably have been more realistic.

I love outnumbered but have often wondered how realistic it is. Both their parents feature at times so doesn't look as though they have inherited it. I always imagine they bought it when they were first married (maybe in the 80s) and it needed lots of work doing which they've done over the years but that's probably a stretch!!

A house like that easily upwards of 1mil.

Previous posters have said it was meant to be Chiswick (although the actual house was in Wandsworth) that’s an affluent area isn’t it? Even back in the 90s?

Jake is 11 in 2007 so they probably bought their first home during the early 1990s property crash.

Their fridge cost £2200 in 2003- I know as we had the same one. They are much cheaper now

In my head, Pete parents owned it and sold it to them when they downsized for less than market rate. They probably had enough equity to make that possible.

As for Motherland, they're all portrayed as being quite upper middle class and having professional, more senior roles/partners who do. The whole sheltered nature of them all is half the joke isn't it? Well everyone except Liz.

We bought a Victorian terraced house in the borough of Wandsworth for £116k in 1995. I saw it for sale around eight years ago for over £800k. If they bought their house around the time their eldest child was born it would have been affordable.

Hilarious, but true.

Critics always noticed the apartments in 'Friends', too. No effin way those 6 characters could afford such nice NY apartments in central NY. No way.

Jake is 24 now, I wonder if he’s managing to get on the housing ladder nice and early like his parents must have?!

My parents had a house like that in North London. Their families lived in the area, they grew up there and bought and sold locally in the 80s and 90s. By the time my two siblings and I were born they had a lovely big 4 bedroomed house, with garden, two reception rooms, roomy kitchen, two bathrooms, conservatory and outhouse. They sold it a few years ago for a mint. Sometimes people just strike lucky!

Unfortunately their luck has yet to rub off on me

In 1997 I bought a flat in south London for £45K. The last time it was sold, it sold for £260K. I was earning £19K when I bought it.

If you extrapolate that to a house, the Outnumbered parents could have afforded that house, and they'd be liable for a covid wealth tax now

@Mrsemcgregor

Just for fun, where in central London would a teacher and part time admin assistant with 3 kids live today? And what would their house/flat be like?

Either they would live in a flat and have fewer kids, waiting til they were older, or they would move out of London.

The only people I know how can afford a house for 3 kids are lawyer / banker type couples who also inherited money.

@fizzyp0p

The house is in Chiswick

[[https://www.chortle.co.uk/punching-ups/2020/07/23/46560/outnumbered]]houseeupforrsale

The house pictured is in SW18, which is Southfields/Wandsworth, though "Outnumbered" set in Chiswick.

The average house price in London in 1992 was £78k, now it's over half a million.

www.itv.com/news/london/2014-07-15/the-rise-and-rise-of-london-house-prices-1986-to-2014

Eermm??? You do know it’s totally fictitious don’t you .... ?

Even in "Bread" the small terrace is like a TARDIS inside, even though it is portrayed as a very ordinary terrace near the river Mersey.