Moving to London

[Italwayshappenstome]

I have copied this thread from the Lone parenting section, thought it would make sense to post in multiple areas:

Hi, I had no idea where else to post this topic so thought here would do.

I am a lone parent, have ds who has just turned one. I currently live in the north of England and work here. My salary is ok and I receive tax credits due to being SP.

I don't really enjoy my job and it feels like a daily grind and I can't see me wanting to stick it out any longer than I have to. There are no prospects for me at all.

I have seen a job advertised but it is in London. I need to find out what the salary would be (waiting on a call back plus loads of other Questions I'd like to ask them about the position).

My question is has anyone moved to a completely new area miles and miles away from friends and family as a lone parent and succeeded? Is the cost of living in London expensive and would it be worth my while since I am on my own with a baby. I am anxious about the cost of living and childcare more than anything else, plus being miles away from my family and friends.

Anyone have any advice?

Interest only is my guess....

Annie I have an £80k mortgage at < 50% LTV, remortgaged last year on a long term fix at approx 4%. I pay just under £600 a month on that.

You are either 1) talking bullshit about your mortgage payment 2) bought ages ago and have very little capital to repay over an extended term or 3) on an interest only mortgage which is neigh on impossible to get now.

Thought of you when I read this, OP. The soaring rent is a bit scary. www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/london-houseboat-slum-rents-barge?CMP=fb_gu&commentpage=1

Have you considered Brighton and Hove at all? Anything in your sector there? Still pretty expensive but not as bad as London, plus if you could get work in Brighton/Hove itself you'd have minimal commuting as it's possible to live close enough to walk/cycle etc. Lovely for kids too, lifestyle wise, though not certain what the schools are like.

I was jobhunting recently in the area so I still have all the likely jobsite links - PM me if you like? Good luck, you're at least sure you need to move on from where you are now, and that's a good thing.

We are on .85% interest only. Which we will be selling this year and buying somewhere for cash.

And I was the one who found the mortgage not a mortgage broker.

Interest only is fine if you know you are at some point in the future before the mortgage comes to an end going to move.

Moved on to this mortgage about 6 years ago.

I too came from the area op is in and would never go back. Struggled for several years in the area then moved down here and have never looked back

When house prices are rising interest-only beats renting - it means the bottom rung of the ladder isn't getting further out of reach, and if you are in a position to sell and move somewhere cheaper, you get to realise the appreciation in value.

If house prices are stable it is basically renting with more responsibility but greater security. And if house prices are falling you're screwed.

As you say it can work in the short term, but only the short term.

To be buying in cash now you presumably have had an inheritance/windfall or else you are moving to a very substantially cheaper area.

So Annie you really are in a completely different position to op then!!

Bring able to buy a house outright or raise a mortgage on 300 odd is completely different to living on 18 grand and paying london rents!
At a wild guess she'd be able to get a mortgage of up to 60-80 max which isn't going to buy a house even if it was interest only. Not in London.

Not really a fair comparison of circumstances.

(And of course having twice the income).

PMSL at a mortgage of 60-80 grand in London. You could maybe get a lock-up garage for that

My mortgage is £600 whether it is on a mortgage or rent I have outgoings of £600. If the op is going to be getting similar income with her benefits I cannot see how it is different.

I most certainly haven't had a windfall. The money I will make on the sale of my home will more than adequately buy a larger place in a more convenient location in London.

If the op rented a studio (her ds is only 1) then with a monthly income of her £18k job and £20k in benefits coming in she should be able to manage Then once down here and when she has found her feet she could also apply for better paying jobs, get a bigger flat etc.

Can I ask what people spend their money on that if you take into account I have a £900 private school and £600 mortgage per month you cannot manage on £3000 per month. And that is for a family of 4

Exactly my point!

My brother just rented out his tiny studio in a rough bit if south London for £900pcm. I get that you're on a good deal, Annie, but it's nuts to suggest OP could have comparable outgoings. And nuts that she'd live in a studio flat with her DC. I know some do it but not if they have options.

Op would be on similar income and with a studio flat similar outgoings. Probably less

Your point was?

Op is not buying a place.

Op would be around Crystal Palace and a quick look suggests that she should be renting a studio for around £600.

Why would it be nuts to live in a studio with a 1 year old?

We live in a 2 bed place with teenagers.

Annie- you are living in a one man fairy land. We live in a one bed flat, x2 adults,x2 children. Admittedly more central, but it's £1600 a month. We asked recently about a mortgage and for £400k mortgage, monthly repayments would e approx £2400, that's a 2 bed.

No way would we get a £600 rent/ mortgage. I paid £680 6 years ago for a room in a flat share. Dh the same.

OP This may be off the point a bit but I must say that I really admire your get-up-and-go and your wish to improve your career. I was going to suggest some sort of further education, but see that you have thought of that yourself. Is there anything you could train for /study that is linked to your present employment, however loosely, so as to make it more interesting /rewarding?

Education is great for its own sake, but study ideally needs to be targeted if it is to progress your career, especially in these difficult times when so many young graduates with perfectly good but non-specific degrees find it hard to get a job. Might it be an idea to talk to the HR dept at your employers/seek specialist careers advice, eg from professional bodies linked to the sort of career you are aiming at, and/or from a relevant trade union?
The Open University has this website: www2.open.ac.uk/students/careers/ou-study-and-your-career which might perhaps be useful.

Please forgive me if I am interfering/just stating the blindingly obvious. Good luck.

Annie you have been exceptionally fortunate with your housing costs. If you bought 6 years ago, this was just before the crash which severely curtailed mortgage lending and raised mortgage costs - getting such a low interest-only deal would be impossible these days despite the fact that base rates are so low.

You have also benefited from a period of unprecedentedly low interest rates, keeping your repayments extremely low. During a more typical period your repayments, even on an interest-only basis, would have been substantially higher.

And you have also benefited from a period in which housing market conditions in London have bucked national trends - blame wider international markets for that - in which prices rocket whilst in the rest of the country they have generally dropped through the down-turn. Leaving you with substantial equity in your home despite the fact you haven't been repaying any of the capita.

With 20-20 hindsight that may seem like good judgement on your part but no-one predicted what has happened over the last six years. It could easily have gone another way - in an alternate universe you could be paying £1500 a month in interest payments and trapped in negative equity.

Thanks flora, I am contemplating the OU. The work I do now is related loosely to my degree which was in Engineering. Funnily I have ended up in the education sector but my role is very limited to the point that I just see it as a means to an end for now. I can guarantee on my monthly pay cheque and that's all it really holds for me.

The job I was thinking of applying for in London is moving towards a health care profession but still undertaking an engineering role, however it would mean starting as a trainee hence the naff wage.

I will consider the OU, I just need to establish what it is I am hoping to works towards.

Thanks for all the help people

Do not know where you are looking Art but £400000 for 2 beds?

The fact that you question 400k for a 2 bed shows how out of touch you are Annie,I think you live in la la land

I am not questioning £400000 for a 2 bed per se but you do not need to spend £400k to get a 2 bedder.

Recent thread was about how someone would not be able to buy as a 2 bed new build in Wembley was £350k and how they couldn't afford it even under the HTB scheme. (2 bed in Wembley £145)
Despite myself and several other posters repeating that HTB was not just available on new builds one of the last posters tried to point the op in the direction of moving to Northampton as there were a few new builds around that qualified under the HTB scheme.

And as for being exceptionally lucky I would just like to point out that if you call scrimping and saving for years exceptionally lucky then I have been.

OP I'm someone else who really admires you for wanting to do this. I can't really comment on the financial side of things as don't really know about the cost of rent & childcare in London but do think carefully about the friends & family side of things. Who do you meet up with at evenings & weekends at the moment? Where do you meet up? Do your parents regularly babysit (whether of an evening or for a few hours during the day at the weekend)? Do you regularly go there for a meal or to stay? My worry for you is that you could be pretty lonely. You say you get on with anyone & make friends easily, but when & where are you going to meet people to make friends with? If you're working full time, in the mornings you'll be racing around to get ready, to drop your DS off at nursery & then get to work. All the other nursery parents will be doing the same and, whilst some people will begin to look familiar, you won't make friends, especially as everyone will drop off at slightly different times unlike at school when it opens at a set time and so people are waiting outside together. DD has been at nursery since she was 15mths but it wasn't until she turned 3 and some of the children had birthday parties that I ever said more than "hi" to any of the other parents. At work, if you are joining a graduate programme who mainly take fresh graduates, then I doubt that there will be many others in the same situation as you so a lot of the social life could be based around going out after work, something you won't be able to do as you've got to go & collect your DS from work. Also, they may well all be younger than you &, even if it's just by a couple of years, you will be so much more mature than them as you have a child & have already had an actual job. And then once you've collected DS and got home and put him to bed, what are you going to do then? Presumably you'll have little choice but to stay at home whilst he sleeps unless you can afford a babysitter. So that leaves you with the weekends to get out & about and make friends but a weekend can be a long time to fill when you are by yourself, have a little one to entertain & don't have friends and when your main way of meeting them is going to be the chance of finding a like minded person in the park. There may be some toddler activities or classes at the weekend but there aren't where I live (admittedly a fairly sleepy market town). I would love to be able to somehow wave my magic wand and move you to a nice flat, near a park, near the bus stop & in the catchment area of a good school and find you some friends with similar aged children but I don't have a wand and nor does anyone else!
Just one thing on nursery fees - our (outside London) nursery is open from 7.30 - 6.30. It is the only one in a ten mile radius which is open for this long. The fees for 8am - 6pm are £62 per day. It's then an additional £7.50 if you want to drop off at 7.30 and a further £7.50 if you want to pick up at 6.30 so bear in mind the premium you may have to pay if you want extended care, which you may need as you're the only one able to do drop off & pick up.

Annie if you can find me a 2 bed flat/ house that's within 30 commute of both Liverpool street and Fulham for work for £600 a month that would be great. Oh and can't be out of zone 2 really as then we would have high commuting costs the further out which defeats the point. Cant be more than 30 min commute otherwise we would spend more on nursery fees

Annie I'm not suggesting you've not made sacrifices to get where you are, but the fact you have sustained such low housing costs and made enough equity to buy another house outright in cash IS exceptionally lucky, and not something anyone starting out at the bottom of the housing ladder today could hope to replicate.

On the matter of what the OP could afford (were she still considering moving to London - part of that £20k benefits will be housing benefit which (at a maximum) would only be available to cover the rent and no more. Depending on the age of her son she might be entitled to enough benefit to cover a 1 or 2 bed flat. Trading down to a cheaper studio wouldn't 'save' her any money as she would simply receive less housing benefit. In that respect the actual housing costs are somewhat irrelevant, it entirely depends what's available on the market to LHA recipients within the relevant caps.

We've just today had our 2 bed flat in CP that we bought two years ago for £220K valued at £370K. Our next door neighbours sold there's for this on Saturday. Been on the market for a day. Things are going crazy round here.