Can the last poor* person to leave London please take their kids with them.

[fakenamefornow]

WTAF is going on with house prices? I want to move to London but it seems impossible.

I think Surrey's going to be next to remove all traces of the poor.

• By poor I mean anyone on average income or below, so actually, just not rich.

[Dolcelatte]

Thank you Snow; that certainly explains the 'relatively' low price!

[SnowinBerlin]

Hampstead Road, Somers Town, through Foxtons, just added, looks ok inside and a good location, if you don't mind LA status.

Isn't Somers Town about to be obliterated by the HS2 development into Euston? If you don't lose your home to a compulsory purchase, you'll end up living on the edge of London's biggest building site for years.

[labelwriter]

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-46828487.html - shocking - this is what half a million, well over half a million, gets you in Hackney.

[fakenamefornow]

So they help you to buy but charge you 1.75 percent more in interest

And who gets that 1.75%? I assume it goes straight to the bank and non of it to the public purse, privatising any profit while the tax payer pick up any risk. Please somebody come on here and tell me I'm wrong about this.

[Laquitar]

YY unreal
This help to buy was a very stupid scheme. I am wondering how many people have used it and on what properties, what price range, what their incomes and job security?

[unrealhousewife]

So they help you to buy but charge you 1.75 percent more in interest, just as interest rates start going up. I assume it's not fixed?

Another brainless Tory bright idea. Thousands of first time buyers buying property at the peak of the market just before interest rates go up.

Give with one hand, take it away with the other.

[Dolcelatte]

Hampstead Road, Somers Town, through Foxtons, just added, looks ok inside and a good location, if you don't mind LA status.

[AgaPanthers]

The only £280k flat in NW1 on zoopla is only 42.5 square metres.

www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/31141900?search_identifier=d34cd1d62096662260bc2345cd0cf3a5

Rather less of a bargain.

[AgaPanthers]

£325k is still a ludicrous price for an ex-council house in SE London, just perhaps (slightly) less ludicrous than a 2-bed flat for £750k. Even more ludicrous that two higher rate tax payers struggle to buy it!

We don't need any help to buy, but still steering well clear of all this nonsense.

[Dolcelatte]

I have just been doing an idle search on Zoopla and there is a flat in NW1 for sale at 280k - admittedly it's ex LA (but so is the Barbican and that's quite smart now!). It has 64 square metres, which sounds like a bit of a bargain....

OP. what about NW1?

[thatdoesntsurpriseme]

Its 5%. That's about 1.75% higher than you'd probably get with a 10% deposit though.

[unrealhousewife]

Well done, good decision. In the end only refusal to pay silly prices will bring house prices down to a sensible level. What's the interest rate on help to buy?

[thatdoesntsurpriseme]

I think I'm qualified to comment here because I just bought a house in SE London. It's a 3 bed, completely developed and renovated ex-council house which cost 325k and it's in Zone 4, just 10 mins walk from a station. The transport links are good at commuter times (national rail to any of London Bridge, Waterloo, Charing Cross or Cannon Street) and the area is both residential and safe. We also have an absolutely amazing view of London from the lounge and master bedroom (we're on a hill). We are both higher tax payers and earn a combined income of 6 figures, but we struggled with the deposit and have just got a Help to Buy mortgage, which means that the repayments are sky high. Coupled with commuter costs, we're not rolling it in, but we havent had to give up saving or our standard lifestyle for this.

The only real downsides are that the trains can be fairly infrequent later in the evening (only 1 per half an hour) and there are no bars/restaurants/supermarkets (just corner shops) near our house. Having said that, we both work in the city, so why on earth do we need those things right next to our house when we walk past 100 of them every single day?

I've encountered a lot of snobbery at work from people I have told that I live in SE London. I can understand this in respect of places like Lewisham and Peckham, which have long-standing reputational issues, but I live in a very residential, quiet area which hardly anyone has even heard of because they dont deign to go SE of The Strand. When I tell people what our house cost, they invariably say "oh I'm so jealous", yet they then go and over-leverage themselves on 600k 1-bed flats in Highgate.

So it's complete rubbish that you HAVE to buy a 750k flat to live in London happily, but many people here will tell you that you do for no other reason than they are too snobbish or lazy to move just 2 zones out.

[Boobz]

Streatham Hill is definitely on our list - I used to live in Kirkstall Gardens so anywhere round that way would be ace.

Nice house - a good doer-upper too! We aren't actually coming back for at least another year though... I wonder what everything will have done by then...

[merrymouse]

There is a difference between something increasing in value because it has improved and increasing in value because it is scarce.

A healthy economy is based on creating products that have actual value rather than value on paper and industries that spread money throughout the population. The housing market doesn't do either of those things.

[maggiethemagpie]

Fakename said : Also imagine if housing costs didn't eat up so much of our income. All that extra money could be spent in the economy, it would benefit businesses hugely

But surely it is spent in the economy - by the people who receive that income ie, landlords (for tenants), the banks (for mortgages), the seller of the property.

why do you think the government has done nothing to stop rich overseas investors buying property in London to keep empty? because that money then enters the british economy, makes the country richer.

[CharmQuark]

Boobz - yes the Earl Ferrers is great - thy had fantastic events during the food festival. Also the Railway by Streatham Common station does brilliant lunches and has a tea shop.

Look at Pratts and Payne, Brighton Way, Bocye and Rocca, Adomme, and The Village Cafe as examples of nice new places in Streatham - actually the Village Cafe doesn't have a website yet.

If you can't manage Brixton / Herne Hill what about Streatham Hill? for example great house once the decor was sorted and many more like that, from about £775k. Those roads are considered 'prime' roads (The ABCD roads, which include Wavertree, Nuthurst and Normanhurst). All those are in the catchement for Streatham Wells, Hitherfield and probably the new Dunraven primary, and also for Dunraven and Elmgreen at secondary. Easy walk to Tulse Hill with Thameslink trains, or Streatham Hill station.

Look at houses in roads like Claverdale for similiar prices and just across Tulse Hill for access to Brockwell Park.

[fakenamefornow]

So why don't you sell up now and give the money to your children so they can move forward?

Because they are 5, 7 and 8.

[labelwriter]

disclaimer cheap = cheap by London standards

[labelwriter]

I think a lot of it now depends on whether you are willing to take a gamble on a bit of London that isn't yet considered 'desirable'. We moved to an area in SE London that was considered quite the opposite 5 years ago and bought a house for £380k, it's now doubled in value and area changed a lot, transport improved etc. There are still areas that are cheap, East Ham, Plumstead, Forest Gate, but it's whether people want to take a chance on these areas changing. I love London and can't imagine living anywhere else, but it's certainly not for everyone (ditto anywhere else in the UK!)

[unrealhousewife]

So why don't you sell up now and give the money to your children so they can move forward?

[fakenamefornow]

Really? You like fried chicken places? They're hardly very attractive! But each to their own I guess!

Yes, because that's just London isn't it, the London I grew up in and know. I don't want it all gentrified and just for the rich.

[fakenamefornow]

For any crash to be big enough to make a difference I would lose money. I was planning to sell when the time came to help my children buy. I wouldn't need to do this anymore though because they would then be able to fend for themselves without my help so even children like mine, who would have help, would be better off.

[unrealhousewife]

Depends how much equity you have in your properties Fakename.

[fakenamefornow]

Surely you should be banned from this too then.

Yes, I agree, but as I said, me pulling out is only going to affect my own children it won't make any difference what-so-ever to the problem. How bad do things have to be for even people like me who might on paper have done very nicely to think a crash is a good thing.