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.

I waas watching george clark's amazing spaces last night and I was thinking this has to be the future. ordering a 4 tonne storage container and spending 20k tarting it up, or a self-build.

Where do normal people live?

The back of Notting Hill was a pig farm waaay back.

Very droll.

I'm talking about the fracturing of families and social networks.

(And whining obvs)

We live in a flat with a garden in London. It's too small for us and we could sell up for stupid money and move to a commuter town. But then we wouldn't be in London anymore, and that would kill me. I love it here. The parks and people and museums and opera and food and schools... to me it's worth being underhoused. I didn't move here for a picket fence.

But I can't imagine that my children will live in London. It has simply gone beyond what anyone other than the superrich or superpoor can afford.

Yes, London is crazy in terms of prices. We got pushed to Surrey, but even Surrey is going in that direction. We've bought our family home and don't intend to (can't afford to!) move.

The problem (for me) is that if you are going to leave London you need to do it and establish a 'family base' somewhere else before the DC reach a certain age and scatter. If you have more than one child there is a limited window once they are in education.

Interesting thread. It's my main problem with Outnumbered - isn't their house supposed to be in London? How would a teacher & a PA afford that house?

Although, maybe we are not supposed to question the telly .

It's not just londoners who find it hard though. After a decade+ I found it very hard to move away and start again. I did though, and I'm glad I did. I own a house and I'd never be a home owner in London.

We're on much (much much much) less than 750k a year and live relatively close (zone 2) have a 3 bedroom house and send 2 to private school.

Yes, it's tough sometimes and we make sacrifices like hardly having a garden and going camping for our summer holidays but overall we have a good life. We bought our current house at the height of the market (just before the crash) and were in negative equity there for a while which was very worrying. It's bounced back but if we moved out then I wouldn't get paid anywhere near the same as London so we would be worse off actually.

I actually like being in London with children - lots of free museums, the parks, the cycling life (we live near a canal system and lots of greenery/parks), lots of offer for the children but where we live it's still a nice community feel.

Just looked up up-to-date 'average income' figures and £23-25k gross per person seems a reasonable assumption depending on whether you trust IFS, NEF, IPPR or whoever. So - £46- 50k GROSS pa for a dual income household.

It doesn't give much hope set against London hosuing costs really.

I'm a single mum on an average wage and I live in London, a small 2 bed flat near Euston. It used to be my council flat but I managed to get a mortgage on it last year after the discounts were raised. It's in a central location but the estate it's on is something many would turn their noses at, as it does have lots of poor people on it (but increasingly lots of young professionals too). I know lots of poor and average waged people living with families in London, not so many rich people though (they don't mix with the likes of us!)

I think I am the first to buy in London fideliney
DM and DF moved out to the home counties to buy when they were in their mid 30s and my DB and DS stayed and bought there.

Before that all my lot were renters. I don't think there was any expectation that they would buy. Nobody bought a house. They had long term leases and some had social housing.

I think that is the biggest problem. Renting is far too expensive and people think you are a failure if you don't own your own house.

Fix the rental market and the rest will follow.

True. If you have security of tenure as a tenant, buying is much less important anyway.

MrsKoala, so the 60k is the only salary? If so, I agree that despite appearing to be a high salary, by the time you take into account tax etc it's not as good as it looks. Two salaries of 30k would give about 4-5k a year more after tax. It's no wonder so many parents feel they have to both work.

I think this property bubble will burst soon. And then their will be wailing and weeping. People who haven't already committed to massive mortgages should think again. When interest rates go up it will be a nightmare for a lot of people. But the warning signs are already there.

only if you can afford the childcare tho Whatsthat. Sadly my wage wouldn't cover it so it means i am unable to work - we'd be £400 a month worse off. BUT i still think of us as fortunate and luck to be doing better than a lot of other people so i am certainly not complaining. I honestly despair tho, if we find it hard how do other lower earners cope? I just feel so sad for a lot of other people.

Agree Vivienne - that's why we wouldn't overstretch ourselves and paid for a 5 yr fixed term - by then i should be working so if it goes up we should be able to absorb it.

agree its for rich or poor

My family were also in London for generations. My grandfather grew up in a large townhouse in Camberwell - grove park I think it was called. My grandmother lived in a massive Victorian house in Peckham rye - her father was a bus driver!
Generations were in service in the big houses in Mayfair.

The bubble might burst, when it does it's usually pretty swift. People rush to go on the market and it pushes the prices down.

Viviennemary So agree with your post,I remember people crying to cancel reservations on properties a few years ago when the bottom fell out of the market I worked in new home sales at the time,the amount of anguish it caused was awful.It has always amazed me why people spread themselves so thin when it comes to the biggest purchase of their lives,three months off work and you can be homeless and don't for one minute think it can't happen I have seen it happen to the people with the big 4 x 4s and the expensive cars all paid for monthly to keep up with the Jones's,my heart goes out to them as the bubble will surely burst and much worse than last time.

My family were also in London for generations. My grandfather grew up in a large townhouse in Camberwell - grove park I think it was called. My grandmother lived in a massive Victorian house in Peckham rye - her father was a bus driver!Generations were in service in the big houses in Mayfair.

We've had this chat mutual whinge before! Shall we start a commune for displaced Londoners somewhere?

I think we have. I'll join you later for a ginger wine and some pie and mash in a boozer with sticky carpets.

It's just...just that people assume London has always been a playground fur the rich - but it hasn't.

I'll join you later for a ginger wine and some pie and mash in a boozer with sticky carpets.

Lovely. They'd better be properly sticky carpets, mind

it is mad, but it is surely a bubble which will hurts (again) at some point, no?

Nothing this inflated can fall back to affordable levels, though. There might be a drop (or a 'correction' as it's euphemistically called) but it will only hurt recent entrants and won't ease the situation much overall.

The average london house price has passed the half a million mark now hasn't it? That's not going to tumble back down to somethig sensible like £200,000, which is what it would take for a range of people to be able to live here again.