to think a lot of people just don't get the cost of housing?

[stressedofnorthlondon]

DH and I are looking for a house and it's got me thinking. I live in a cheap part of the city, but that's cheap relative to other parts of London and the south east. We've looked a quite a few places now, but with each one I see I just can't quite believe how much a fairly small family house is going to cost us. But, we have completely grown out of our current home so we need to move.

We need to stay in London for lots of reasons. Our jobs are here. I could probably get work elsewhere (or maybe not in the current climate?) but DH couldn't. His profession is London-based. So if we moved away he'd have to commute back in anyway. Our support network is here. Our familes are not but they live in equally expensive areas that are not to far away, close enough to help. All our friends and all that we know, that keeps us sane, are here.

So often on here you see people say "downsize" "move somewhere cheaper" etc etc. The whole HB furore going on at the moment is due to the expectation that people should be moving to cheaper accomodation / cheaper areas. But there is nowhere within commuting distance of London that is cheap! I think it's because people who live in other parts of the country just don't understand that here there isn't really such a thing as "affordable" housing. There isn't anywhere to downsize to, as even small properties, to rent and to buy, are really really expensive. Yes lots of people get paid much higher salaries to work in the capital, but we also have lots of people on minimum wage, lots of people in the service industries, people who clean etc. To rent a family house here is well over £1000 pcm.

So AIBU to think that a lot of people who live elsewhere in the country just don;t understand that housing here is expensive, whatever size of property, or what area you live in.

(and I know that DH and I could stay in our small flat, but we are lucky that we can afford to move, I just can't believe how much it'll cost us!)

Sorry to say it, but Londoners only have themselves to blame for allowing the prices to become so inflated. A house or flat is only worth what someone is prepared to pay. The sad thing is that Londoners (and southerners in general) are then moving elsewhere, having sold said poky house or flat for an exhorbitant amount of money, and then buy up all the best property in cheaper areas - probably outbidding locals in the process - thereby pushing up prices in those areas too. The trouble is that this does not work the other way - no one is going to choose to move to London for a better quality of life are they?

So YABU - I understand that property is stupidly expensive, I just think that as a group Londoners brought it on themselves.

aww, OP, don't worry about it

you have taken the "wtf are you on about" posts with good grace....the mark of a true, trusted and brave MN'er !

wear your "I am BU" badge with pride !

gaelicsheep do you want all Londoners to get together over coffee and decide to lower the cost of housing? it doesn't work quite like that.

No, I'm just saying don't whinge about it. Homeowners in London can move up to where I live and buy a mansion. You have it very good compared with the rest of us. Except for the people who want to work in the south east and can't afford to live there of course so don't. That is the south east's loss I'm afraid.

oooh Gaelic, harsh! I don't really see how I'm to blame for the cost of a house in my area having risen by well over 300% over the last ten or so years. Or how the family living in a rented flat that happens to be more than Dave thinks they should spend on rent is to blame for that. But, it's interesting to know that some people think that.

Gaelicsheep, do you mean 'London Homeowners'? I am struggling to see how Londoners who rent have themselves to blame for being priced out of the property market

It is AIBU! No of course I don't think that individuals are to blame - that would be stupid! But as a group the residents of the area allowed prices to become inflated to unsustainable levels. If people hadn't paid those prices all these years, they wouldn't be so high.

Thanks AF, I shall go to bed now, placing my badge on my bedside table so as not to lose it

The same goes for rents really. It's market forces that determine the rent a property will fetch. Landlords charge a fortune for a damp-ridden hovel because they can get away with it.

But 'those people' aren't a static group of people who remained in one area, garlic- London has an increasingly transient population. This is a huge part of the problem, and more than a bit 'Chicken or Egg'.

So, in most areas, those people unwilling/refusing to pay the high prices have left. Others have come in and paid.

It's not a static populace just reaching deeper and deeper into their pockets.

stressedofnorthlondon, don't be selling your badge to get a swanky pad will you?

Surely I can exchange it for an executive detached home in Hull can't I?

Off to bed, night everyone. Sorry if I caused any offence!

Pip - not all areas of Essex are cheap. Nursery costs in my Essex Town match Central London Prices - and a 3-bed terrace average cost Private rented here is £900 pcm. A bit cheaper than London - but a 45/50 minute train journey, and the associated £4k annual pass cost added on - so what you save in rent, you are MORE than spending on travel. And that is WITHOUT the car park costs...

And how far exactly do you expect the NMW workers to move out? If they move to my town - they would be spending £4k of their £11.8k pre-tax income on GETTING to work. WITHOUT taking into account their rental costs...

OP - YANBU. I can't SEE where the NMW workers that will be affected by the benefits cap are going to move to, if they are still expected to STAY working in their current job. And if they get a job LOCAL to their new house - then who the effing Jeff is going to DO the jobs they have left behind? I doubt anyone wants to wheel their OWN bed to the operating theatre, or cook their OWN food just after they have had an operation!

Oh - and hahahahaha to the person who said No7 was a 'cost-saver' to them. To a lot of people, make-up from pundland is a cost saver compared to the collection 2000 they normally use...and No7 is something they have no hope of EVER affording. Like me, these days.

Personally I don't know how anyone who isn't on banking / city law firm levels of income affords to live in London, and I'm saying that as someone who has friends who live there and have chosen to live there. It must be hard if you have family and roots there because I don't know how anyone can afford it on a relatively normal salary, unless you bought a house prior to 2001 and even then you're stuck where you are.

Housing has been the bane of my life since I started working in 2001, whether renting or buying. If it's any consolation it's the same in almost every country I know (Germany - if you want to buy, not rent, in the big cities like Munich, Frankfurt - Ireland, the US, France etc).

Sorry, should say I mean that it's the same in the capital / large cities of the countries I mention. There are cheap parts of the US, Germany etc but if you want to live in Munich, Frankfurt / San Francisco, New York, you'll pay through the nose, as with the UK and London.

There are surprisingly affordable parts of London though - not north but southeast.

London's probably the worst, but other major cities are actually not far behind. My home town, for example- prices went up ridiculously due to the oil industry. No one can afford anything unless they are a well-paid exec, it seems- so most people I know live miles and miles out of town.

YABU to think everyone outside London is ignorant but how would our sympathy help you?

London has always been much more expensive, to an extent not reflected by London weightings in ordinary salaries. That's why I knew I couldn't choose to live and hope to establish myself there when first seeking work 15 years ago.

Certainly my profession is not London-based but that was a choice. I have entertained fantasy ideas involving all the benefits of living in London (which I know are fantasy, I only have to think about communitng from zone 4 to wipe out all the pleasantness). Choosing a London-based profession is a choice, other career choices were available and while there are plenty of professions that can be massively more financially rewarding in London (law, accountancy, financial services etc) there are few that are exclusively based there. Your DH must have made some cost / benefit assessment when starting out and thought he could make enough money to make living there worthwhile.

HB for local people in ordinary jobs is a different issue from people choosing to pursue a London-based profession.

I do think quite a few people:

• don't add the travel and rent/mortgage together to get total accommodation costs

• dont consider all the London options (judging by people getting sniffy about Streatham - hardly the worst area - on another thread)

What you are truly BU about is the idea that Dave's government cares about anyone other than their multimillionaire cronies, not just London's plumbers and porters etc etc. They have no sense of what the rest of us actually do and how we do it.

I think this is a growing problem everywhere. I don't live anywhere near London or the South East. House prices are lower here, obviously, but there is still a yawning chasm between the average salary in this area and the average house price (and rental - which is sometimes even more expensive).

YABU as most people do understand that London is ridiculously expensive.

I know you need to stay in London because of jobs, but people like myself did move out of London because we couldn't afford to rent never mind buy there. And I have met lots of people who have moved out of London because of rents/high house prices.

Anyone using the word "everyone" is BU to read something that says "a lot" and turn it into "everyone".

Last time this discussion was had in the In The News forum, we had posters hotly disputing that there's a link between house prices and local job markets, and that people aren't more likely to be able to find work if they're living in more expensive areas. Good times.

Anyway, the situation does need to be sorted. We're far too metrocentric as a country and that doesn't help anyone. Least of all people trying to make ends meet in the south east, at least some of whom would live elsewhere if work permitted. I get that some things need to be in London, but not everything does. There are things there that really don't have to be, but still are. To pick a legal aid example as that's my background- the Legal Services Commission head office is there, in the centre. I don't see why this couldn't be done from Birmingham. Ideas that have been proposed include tax breaks for businesses setting up in particularly deprived regions, and sending more of the public sector out to the regions. Controversially, I also think there needs to be more realism in housing policy in London too. People want to live there, which is never likely to change, and a house is simply going to be unffordable for many. large blocks of family sized flats might be the answer, but people tend not to want those on their doorsteps.

When we bought almost 20 years ago our modus operandi was to buy as close to the centre as we could possibly afford. At the time the area we bought in was being redeveloped, was not fashionable and relatively blighted. It has since turned into a little jewel. We could have bought a better house a couple of miles away for about 80k less and not worried about DH's fees coming in in the first few years. Those houses that we looked at are worth about half the value of ours now. Oddly at the time a lot of people said we were nuts. My mum still comes here and turns her nose up because where she lives houses in this style are regarded as a bit "down town".