Was central london affordable (ish) to live in in the 1990s?

[Theendofspring]

And when did it become completely unaffordable and the rougher areas gentrified a bit? Reading a book which got me wondering.

Teachers in London couldn’t earn £18,000 1995?

I was a low-ish earner during the 90s, always rented in zone 3, couldn't have afforded central London. When I bought in 2000 it was a flat for £70k in zone 3.

I graduated in 1999 and had a salary of about £18k including overtime etc. I lived back at home for a bit (north London) but remember looking at London house prices and buying seemed well out of reach. Then took a pay cut to get onto a management scheme so I was earning £12.5k. Rented with now-DH who was also low earning.

Moved north in 2002 and looked at buying there but still couldn't afford it in the area I was working. I assumed my salary would catch up with house prices but of course the opposite happened, especially when we moved back to London to be near family. It took us another 15 years to get to a point when we could buy.

With hindsight, I think we'd already missed the boat in 1999 but I guess if we had chosen different career paths and/or had more sense of urgency/desire to own a home, we might have been able to buy one of those grotty starter flats that are now worth squillions.

Not central London but DH's parents bought a 1 bed flat in Hendon in 1989 for £70k on a secretary+ legal assistant's wage (around £24k combined) with some help from parents. Same flat is probably around £300-350k today. In 1996, DH's dad was jobless and DH's mum was working freelance (probably earning 15k or so) and they bought a 100k 3 bed terrace in Hendon (DH's mum still lives there). House is worth £750k today.

DH and I bought our 2 bed flat for £392k on a combined income of £70k in 2019 with 15% deposit. Our income has since grown but nowhere near the multiples of the previous generation!

In a sense DH and I bought a flat at the same age as his mum also in north London so we haven't done any 'worse'. But out of DH's 4 kids ranging from age 24-32, we are the only ones who own our homes. On the other hand the previous generation (aunts uncles etc) were all home owners in their 20s.

I moved to London in 1984 and as a single person then I couldn't afford to buy anything. In the next couple of years I managed to save a bit and my salary rose a bit, but prices were rising much faster and buying somewhere became more and more out of reach.

In 1988, assuming there was no other way of getting onto the property market, I bought a two bedroom flat in Lewisham with a friend. We were advised to get an endowment mortgage. Within months, interest rates had risen to 15%. To add to the financial joy, house prices fell and the endowment policy underperformed spectacularly. Not one of my better financial decisions.

Buying in the early 1990s would have been much more affordable.

I'm not sure of timings but lots of older people I know managed to buy because they had 95% mortgages & interest only mortgages. It's much harder to get an interest only mortgage today.

I bought a 3 bed terrace in Hackney for 100k in the 90s. Sold it years ago, but a quick peruse of t’internet tells me houses on that street are now worth about 1.2-1.5 million.

These are pokey Victorian terraces with tiny gardens in what was ‘Murder Mile’ back then, with a lot of street drug dealing and prostitution going on.

London has always been pricey, but you could buy something on an average salary of you were prepared to buy in a cheaper area. There are no cheaper areas now.

Everywhere has only ever been affordable if you have a job that pays an above average salary. I rented in London in the 90s and I wouldn't say it was affordable. I made it work, but I lived in vile shared houses and moved every 6 months because that was as long as I could take in whatever rodent infested hovel I was in at the time (hoping that the next one would be marginally better). There was no way I could afford to buy. I really wanted to buy in the 2000s, but even though property was significantly cheaper then, it was still totally unaffordable - and by then I had what I thought at the time was a good job and a good wage (about £22k).

There were lots of studios and 1-beds built in London/London commutable towns in the 90s with builders 'paying' your deposit if you were a FTB. Mortgage interest rates were high but there was miras.

DH and I moved to Londin from Scotland in 92, we were arty types in various short term employment, often signing on but we lived in several leafy zone2 areas. London was a bit grotty but fun in those days. We knew a few people who lived in squats or sublet council properties from family in equally nice areas. We almost bought a house from our landlord but there was a legal issue with the boundary that was proving difficult to get to the bottom of so we pulled out. It was a three bed terrace in East Dulwich for £100k, God knows what it's worth now! Just after that rents started to go up and we had a dry spell work wise that coincided with expecting DC1 so we scarpered back to Scotland.
We have a nice house now but I sometimes fantasise about what we could have bought if we'd cashed in on london property after a few years but that would be a bit hypocritical as I get annoyed with people doing that in my area at the moment!

I’m sorry you feel that way because there was and is housing available to buy for people who earn average or even below average salaries. It can be hard to get started, that’s for sure, but if you are a couple who both work full time and save regularly, you will eventually pull together a deposit and the money to cover fees. Then you’re away.

I didn’t buy a place until I was 26 but that was in zone 1 in London and we were not high earners. After we moved in we continued saving until we had enough to put a deposit down on another property (in another country).

Don’t talk yourself out of these possibilities, I know it can feel very hard but often there is a way.

I bought in central London in the ‘90s when I earned about 20k - which was less than a newly qualified teacher then. 3x salary, plus deposit of 5k. I paid 65k.

It depends what you mean by central. Let's say within the circle line. By the late 1980s there would have been a few places like Bayswater, Paddington, even Notting Hill, Fitzrovia, if really run down and cramped, that would have been barely affordable to rent or buy if location absolutely trumped human inhabitation standards. Part of the problem these days with health and safety regulations, is that there are hardly any more cheap, dilapidated, overcrowded rentals, that usually younger people will pile into for the benefit of walking to work and play. Also for similar money, you could get much larger and better condition homes further out in zone 1 and definitely zone 2, so most people would avoid the dives in central London.

If you wanted an almost normal home, then there is no way central London was ever affordable. Even the present overpriced "homes" beloved by developers require sacrifices in living that non-Londoners would find unacceptable. They are little more than hotel accommodation, and the main purpose seems to be as bank deposit boxes, not homes. I have seen every community that is not based on social housing replaced over the last 30+ years by these hotel type "homes" in central London. Being a global city means it has to be affordable only to anyone in the world often as asset stores. There is then a ripple effect outwards by the displaced, with the attendant complaints, because people are in denial over what Londoners have had done to them.

I don't think I knew anyone living within the Circle line in the nineties, but quite a few living near the edge: Borough, Wapping, Islington, Kennington. Zone 1 living has always been a bit niche, mostly because Brits are more biased against flats than their European counterparts.

@maryso
But that’s not true. I bought a flat (large, period building) in Bayswater in the mid -90s when I earned 20k. Less, as I have said, than a starting-out teacher salary. It cost 65k. I worked in a creative/arts/media field -hardly known for huge salaries. I had no parental help. Before that, I rented in a nice house share in Bayswater too. It was very doable then. Salaries just haven’t kept pace at all.

well I think I mentioned Bayswater was very good value, but W1, SW1, WC2 would have been challenging

congratulations though on your flat, 65k-amazing!

I left in 1987 when I was earning £10,000 without London weighting and could afford a three bedroomed detached house in N. Derbyshire but only a grotty 1 bed flat in South London. I don't know what I would have been earning in London by 1995 . Walthamstow would have been too far from my job anyway. I was a single parent so there were a lot of considerations.

Meant to say the house I bought in Derbyshire was £29k.

I've lived in London (zone 2) since 1992, renting in shared flats until I bought my own flat in 1996. When I compare my salary and my property value now with when I bought, my salary has increased by approx 5 times and my flat has increased by approx 6 times. So not that out of sync, although I've worked damn hard in my career to progress which explains the reasonably significant salary progression. The area I live is gentrifying still (it's a long, slow process). It used to be considered very rough when I bought here, now it's 'edgy' / hipsterland.

I don't think London is more expensive to live in now than it was back in the 90s. There were lots of things to do for free / on the cheap back then just as there are now.

I rented in Covent Garden as a student in the mid 90s. I think it was £80/ week for a room in a shared flat. No need for a travel card and cost covered by one night a week waitressing in a club in Chelsea (good tippers). I still have a few of the Joseph / Hammett etc clothes I bought then as well - I probably lived better then than decades later earning multiples more simply because things were much more affordable.

I rented a one-bed flat in a mansion block just south of Regent's Park, so very central, for £400 a month from 1994 for a few years, electricity and heating included. No major travel costs as I could walk to work just off Oxford Street, and buses were cheap otherwise, even pre-mayor. I was in Westminster so v.low council tax - I think I paid less than £10 per month. I was earning less than £12k a year initially but managed to live on that and a few hundred pounds of overdraft, and have a very enjoyable time while I did, getting established in my career. I think that would have been about the last time you could do it, really.

I looked at London in the 90s and immediately decided against it on the grounds of cost. The only young people I knew heading there then were those with parental support. Things have been getting steadily worse for decades op. But it was the sudden increases - quadrupling in my area - in the early 00s that really blew the economy up.

A house in which I rented a room in the mid 1980s was put on the market for £222,000 in 1988. It was put on the market again about five years ago for £11.5m but went for a million or so more than that. Just north of Regent's Park. Compound growth of 16%. But that is just London.