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.

[softlysoftly]

Same could be said of pretty much every capital city in the world

[Fideliney]

I think London is the least affordable capital in Europe softly and even if it weren't, it is not a desirable trend.

[MrsKoala]

I agree IWILL to a certain extent but lots of people from inside London also had that kind of house when they grew up. I grew up in zone 2/3 and had a 4 bed semi with a garden. Both may parents are WC and so were a lot of my friends. It was normal regardless of being in a lovely leafy part of London. The house i grew up in recently sold for £750K when my parents bought it 25 years ago it was £80k. Also childcare was much cheaper in comparison, so they could have 2 earners.

[Laquitar]

'Young interesting families'
What makes a family 'interesting'? Just curious.

FWIW it is not only very rich or very poor or those who had help from family. Another group -like us- bought 10-15 years ago in zones 4 or 5 when most people wouldnt go that far and consider zone 4 and 5 another country or another planet.

[MarshaBrady]

I think we've been lucky in SE London as it was largely avoided by people in various sectors (ie ones that earned a lot). It's changing now and pushing up the prices. Probably the overground that has caused it mostly.

[Fideliney]

I think maybe it is those of us who grew up in London who are most shocked Koala. I like you grew up in nice 4 bed house, leafy area, not posh, not rich (mum FE lecturer, dad teacher) but it was affordable, near a tube and it was home. I think the feeling of feeling uprooted from home is what does it. I'm getting a bit irritated with being told to get over myself to be honest.

[cantbelievethisishppening]

Not just London....anywhere within 50 minute train ride. The town I live in is fast becoming a London dormitory town with prices for a terraced two up, two down now nudging £400,000. There is also a two bedroom town house looking for offers IN EXCESS of £750,000.

[Deverethemuzzler]

I am not rich or poor and I live in London.

We bought a house in a place that everyone thought was a crap hole and turned up their noses.

Up until a year ago if you mentioned it to people as a place to look you would get laughed at.

Someone just announced on a local page that they were putting their 2 bed up for £425k

They aint laughing now.

Its like the bleedin' Gold Rush round here now.

Still the same 'crap hole' though.

Weird that.

[MoreBeta]

To live in a nice bit of central London in a family house, send DCs to private school, etc you need to be on at least 750 k a year. It still doesnt give you a luxury lifestyle. I have friends who work in the City who struggle financially and live miles out and commute in.

I left London some years ago. Its insane.

[MrsKoala]

I know what you mean Fideliey. I could say i want to live in x and loads of people would say 'ha! yeah so would we all' type of thing. But the reason i want to live there is not because it's expensive, or 'posh' or even nice , it's because it's my home and i want to be near my family. My dad is an electrician and my mum works doing admin - hardly rolling in it MC high end earners.

[Fideliney]

Ah here's someone who know's my old corner of London. What do you think about London overall Devere?

I can't see a future here for the DC. Beyond the early career stage at least. How will they ever buy anywhere?

(My plan involves fleeing 300 miles)

[TheBogQueen]

Mrskoala - do you like Tonbridge? My sis is currently fed up with the prospect of shelling out £££££££ for a 1 bed flat and has looked duwn the train line and quite fancies Tonbridge. She wants to start a family, currently teaches I Peckham.

[TheBogQueen]

We left 10 years ago and moved 400 miles north. We have a lovely 4-bed tenement in a lovely neighbourhood, good schools etc. our flat cost £230,000. If you have 350,000 you could buy somewhere amazing.

London's a mug's game now.

[D0oinMeCleanin]

A quater of a million pounds for a three bed flat with no garden and people actually want to live there?

You could buy a whole street round here for that and the park too.

I don't get the appeal of London. Over crowded, over priced. Yes, the jobs pay more, but they need to.

[Spero]

I left Brixton 4 years ago because I could only afford a two bed flat. Soon after I left a Foxtons AND a Starbucks opened on the High St so Brixton has finally fallen.

Brixton had avoided gentrification in all that time, people I know swerved away and went to Clapham.

I think the Russian oligarchs have bought up all the areas where the bankers used to live, so the bankers have moved into the areas where I would like to have lived, and now anyone who isn't on a six figure salary has to move out if they want any space.

[ChickenFajitasAndNachos]

We live a 40 minute train ride from London. DH earns a London banker salary and we get a beautiful family home. To me that's the best of both worlds.

[Fideliney]

Exactly Koala

I walk past the road where my family were bombed out, or buildings my grandfather built and the knowledge they are now bankers' enclaves is ODD. The borough where eight generations of my family lived/worked/died is completely off limits.

Yet I worked on a project in Cornwall > ten years ago assessing different projects to keep people in their local communities via housing market interventions.

I suppose I'm just another refugee

[MarshaBrady]

Yep that pretty much sums it up Spero.

But I do know loads of families on (much) less than £750k a year, in houses with dc in private school. But not in very central London. There, yep they are probably on more.

[MrsKoala]

TheBOg - We currently rent in Sevenoaks but really like Tonbridge and are in the middle of a purchase of a house there. The prices are rocketing up tho so if your sis is interested she needs to move now. We made an offer in March for a 3 bed semi (which needs work) for £220k Now you can hardly find anything 2 bed under £250k.

I also think a certain amount of Londoners who bought a while ago are relying on the prices to go up as their savings/pension. I know my parents and their friends expect to be able to sell and but a property for a fraction outside London and then live on the equity. But they are now shocked that the areas they wanted to move to (Kent/Surry are almost as expensive). My parents were talking about selling their 2 bed ex-council house valued at £400k and buying a big 3 bed house with a lovely garden in Tunbridge Wells or even Tonbridge I told them they could probably just afford like for like in TW and would struggle to have £100k left over in Tonbridge.

[Deverethemuzzler]

I don't know Fideliney hasn't it always been this way?

It seems unsustainable. I mean how can a normal 3 bed house in an ordinary suburb of London be going for half a mil? Its bonkers conkers.

I never expected to own a place but we managed it somehow.

I predict that 'London' will get bigger. Dagenham and Southend will be suburbs and everyone will move there. Parts of London previously dismissed as too far down the tube line will acquire the sort of status previously reserved for Kensington and Chelsea.

Or people will get fed up, move back to Gloucester, Chelmsford and Northampton and the outskirts of London will be affordable again?

[Fideliney]

Should have done the dull work for the big money.

Spero getting out just before gentrification is the only way to maintain credibility.

[x2boys]

I agree dooinmecleanin I live in the Northwest quqter of a million pounds could probably buy a whole street of terrace houses or a very desirable house near me .

[nicename]

The back of Notting Hill was a pig farm waaay back. Places where my friends grandparents bough when they were young and skint are now areas of multi-million pound properties with only the wealthy foreign money/bankers with obscene salaries/bonuses and students with very rich mummies and daddies being able to afford them.

Most people I know 'can't afford to buy around here anymore'.

[Fideliney]

I don't know Fideliney hasn't it always been this way?

Well I don't know DeVere.

I'm the last member of my family left in London (four siblings, four cousins scarpered, all when they wanted to buy).

I must be at least 14th gen londoner. I'm pretty sure the last six generations at least were homeowners. None of them 'wealthy'. I know several other people who are the last of their families left here.

So that is unprecedented IYSWIM. It feels like a trend to me.

[Fideliney]

(bonkers conkers describes it very well )