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.

It's not so much not living in London that is the problem - plenty of lovely places to live outside London. The issue is finding work outside London.

That's talking about net disposable income, i.e. income minus bills, and I guess the difference is that our government doesn't allow enough housing to be built, so huge slices of people's incomes accrues to landlords and banks.

I was in Germany at the weekend, there people live in rented houses with secure tenures, here we are put at the mercies of scumbags like this www.kentonline.co.uk/ashford/news/fergus-wilson-assault-guilty-15697/ who evict people for being poor.

As in previous generations in my family, I have gone to where the work is.

That'll be London then...

there has been a MASSIVE swing towards living in London over the safe commuter towns which are now, relative to London, substantially cheaper than 15 years ago

I wonder if that's because usually both partners work - this doubles the transport costs.

Surely the bigger issue is that really 'poor' people are being driven out of London by caps in housing benefit and cuts to council tax payment help?

London used to be a great mix of rich and poor, now it is just for the rish and we are all the poorer for it.

I agree with some posters - depending where you buy (eg zone 3/zone 4) you get more of a bargain, neighbours up road sold 2-3 bedroom flat for £375 and bought a house nearby for £250. its run down and needs doing up but is liveable.

Please someone tap me on the shoulder when the prices come down. I won't hold my breath until then

We can afford the £800k for a small terrace in London zone 3. But why on gods green earth should a 2 bed terrace cost £800k?? The insanity....

Meanwhile we keep building that deposit whilst filling up one one bed flat with more stuff. Parents have promised to help us with an interest free loan if we are still here in a few years time, so we can spend £1.5 million on a family home. Ridiculous that two grown adults on high wages still need parental input. Stupid stupid stupid.

There's a lot more at stake than just people not being able to live in big houses with nice gardens.
A friend who was a midwife in a London hospital said she had seen staff become more transient and less experienced over the years. Housing costs were pushing more experienced permanent staff out of London, often when they had families of their own.

What impact is the cost of housing having on the quality of health services in London? Yes London hospitals might have some of the best surgeons in the country but what good is that if the midwives are inexperienced and overstretched?

Bad news, it's not just the midwives...

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/senior-doctors-cant-afford-to-rent-homes-near-londons-main-hospitals-9175524.html

One of the reasons I would move out of London is for decent healthcare. It's not that they are it's all bad here, it is just very unpredictable. You never know quite who to trust as there have been so many bad experiences.

"I wonder if that's because usually both partners work - this doubles the transport costs. "

Not necessarily. Two season tickets from Shenfield is £7,760, two from Brixton £2,500, the difference is £5,260.

£5,260 on a mortgage is around £132,000 at 4%.

So let's say you have £600k in Shenfield: www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-44494628.html

and then £750k in Brixton

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-30811554.html

The Shenfield place is far too expensive obviously, and needs at least a third off the price, but the £750k to live in a tiny ex-LA-type terrace in Brixton is in another universe.

And if you are working in the City, the Shenfield train is 23 minutes straight to Bishopsgate, which is less time than it would take to get there from Brixton.

It's a mania and you can't begin to rationalise it. People are searching for the bigger idiot. Yes, if you want to get the London salaries you do need to live somewhere near London, and the £600k for the family house in Shenfield means you might well be better off oop north with a lower salary and a house at half the cost, but there's absolutely no need whatsoever to pay ££££££ to live in Zone 2 Stabsville.

We live in a relatively expensive area in the SW and just for fun I put our rent amount into right move to see what it would get us in london.

We rent a 2 bedroom house with a good sized garden.

In London, we could have a bedsit, or a lovely parking space

Agapanthers - but a 5,200 difference is quite a lot when it comes out of monthly disposable income.

The price of the house is less relevant than what they are paying on a monthly basis. Many years ago with one working adult in the family there would be only one season ticket to pay, a difference of about 2K between Brixton and Shenfield.

What's going to happen a bit further down the line when people won't commute in for jobs like nursing, teaching, policing etc?

It is insane! Surely a city needs families to keep it going? Not just rich people, but ordinary run of mill type of families.

We do live in London, we moved down here about eighteen months ago and to be honest we most probably be going as soon as this years tenancy is up.

unrealhousewife the point is that the mortgage also comes out of monthly disposable income. If you have £5,200 that will buy you about £130,000 of mortgage on interest only, less on repayment, which is nothing in the context of million pound flats in grotty parts of London. Unless you are downsizing, that mortgage needs to be paid for out of taxed income, same as the season ticket.

I don't think Railton Road is 'stabsville' anymore - its more Herne Hill than Brixton and Herne Hill is unrecognisable to me now after leaving it in 2004.

But even if you can't chuck a stick in Brockwell Park without hitting an artisinal bakery that still doesn't mean that £800K is a sensible price for a TWO BED TERRACE.

Where are all the medical staff needed for King's College going to live? Not within a ten mile radius of their own hospital it would seem.

We left Brixton in 2011 (renting). Our neighbours had just sold their 2BR flat (middle floor in a terrace, no garden or storage space) for £400,000, which was paid in cash by a couple for their newly graduated son to live in.

That's when I told my husband, I don't think we'll be moving back here again. Madness.

Bloody hell. Where do all these people get their money from?

from selling houses they bought 20-30 yrs ago?

Personally I regret moving from zone 2 to kent/Greater london. the commute is soul destroying. I wish i had stayed in a small 3 bed rather than moving to a larger 3 bed and loosing so much of my life commuting. I would not wish my life style on anyone. DH and I can only work in C London in our roles.

Agatha, not sure what you're saying? That people are better off buying a cheaper house out of london and then getting the train in as it's quicker?

They might need to liver closer though because of late finishes and need/want to take a taxi home - or work shifts which make the train difficult and therefore use the nightbus, or want to go out in the evenings which again makes the train more difficult. I've chosen to pay more to be in zone 2 and have a smaller house because of that. Yes a train to Shenfield might be quicker than my commute at the moment but as I'm so close to where I work I can get a taxi home in 20 mins or so at roughly 18 which means the difference between doing bedtime stories or not.

AgaPanthers - not Agatha - sorry!

agree - there was a programme on tv recently - presented by Evan Davis about how lots of orgs are becoming more and more London-based, including large medical research place being built in central London. Wondered how on earth all the phds, labtechs etc going to be able to afford to work there?

MrsDe - that's basically the choice we made, moved right out to Kent, got a 3 bed house with garden and garage for less than a 2 bed top floor gardenless garage less flat in Blackheath where we'd been renting (one in our block came on the market at the time we were looking). It added 10 minutes each way to our commute compared to living in Blackheath (fast train connection vs stopping local train), and the additional transportation costs are more than offset by the much cheaper mortgage on a 3 bed house here compared to in Blackheath.

Arh, interesting MaryWestmacott. I'm much closer than Blackheath and work late most evenings so for me need to be closer and have the flexibility with buses/taxis etc to get home. My childrens school is closer again (on the way to work) which means that I can drop them off, come in and get some work done and then head back for swimming galas etc and then come back to work.
We managed to buy a 3 bedder with a small (postage stamp) garden 7 years ago and live close to big parks etc so we feel ok. Can imagine that if we were in a 2 bed flat with no outside space we might make a different decision.