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.

MrsDe - I think if we'd been in a position to buy in London 7 years ago, it might have been a different story! we're a few years behind you and a whole load more went out of our price range. Sadly now, we'd not be able to afford that top floor flat either! (Mind you, if we were buying now, not sure we'd be able to afford this house, it's gone up in value, not at the speed that the places in London are, but it's worth around £150k more than we paid already....)

There's a great train link were we are, unless working late is later than 1am, you'd get back in less than 30 minutes to the station, shift workers are a different issue, but the bulk of those middle income workers in London are working office hours (albeit many extended hours), living out and commuting works for most of them.

BravePotato - yes, I can see that a lot of people might have parents sitting on a million pound plus house but what I don't understand is how those parents are releasing the equity to give to their children.

Either they are remortgaging or someone is buying their house and they downsize and help their children out.

So who is buying their million plus houses?

I don't know if it is the heat but I honestly don't understand what is going on. Surely cheap mortgage rates can only explain so much.

I know and I agree it is crazy how quickly everything is going up.

Yes, but it's the walk to the station then a car ride the other end - surely it's more than 30 mins door to door?

When the tubes were down (every other day on the Victoria line it seemed) it was quicker for me to get to work from Cambridge on the fast train to King's Cross (5 mins walk to station, 45 mins fast train, 10 mins bus) than from Brixton on the 45 (anything from 40 mins to 2 hours).

MrsDe - that's why in this town (and most commuter towns I've seen) you pay a premium for being within a mile from the station! It's less than an hour door to door for DH to his office in the City. (under 15 minutes from our house to the platform, under 15 from Cannon Street to his office, approx 30 minute train journey) - most people within London end up doing about 1 hour door to door once they factor in walks to/from tubes/train stations.

OP - ifyou are still reading, have you looked outside of London, what's your budget and where in London do you need to be each day?

I'm 12 mins on train from Kings Cross. So there. door to station about 20.

But when you're talking Busland it is quite another story.

Thanks MaryW, I can do 30 mins door to door if I use the tube or 45 mins on the bus. If I get a taxi home after rush hour (no such thing anymore really - it's always busy) then 20 mins tops. Saying that, with school drop off in the mornings, I actually leave the house and hour and 20 mins before actually reaching my desk!!!

Oh god the 45 bus

There was an interesting article in the Guardian recently about who is buying up all the new flats/houses in London. Apparently 50% of them are bought from overseas and 60% are bought as investments, not to live in.

As long as this continues unregulated, there is no hope for ordinary people just trying to live in the city they grew up in, the city where they work, where they have family. London property is now just a huge investment vehicle, somewhere people can park their (often dodgy) money, it's crazy.

This is why whenever anyone bangs on about the fabulous public transport in London I think they need to add a pretty big disclaimer - it's ok when the tubes are running. Otherwise, not so much.

Spero stop being over dramatic there are only a handful of strikes in a year and there's always an overground line somewhere nearby people can jump on.

I am having flashbacks to my 16 years commuting across London. To you it's overly dramatic, to me it's PTSD.

I always found it very sad that when ever some one killed themself of the line - about once every two weeks it seemed - the whole station would be a mass of seething angry people who were just pissed off that they would now be late home.

The transport was a major reason I left.

I want to move to London because that's where I'm from, I made the mistake of moving out 14 years ago.

This is my 5 point ill thought out off the top of my head plan to fix things.

1. No tax breaks on interest payment for btl
2. Punitive taxes on empty/derelict property
3. Cap mortgages at 3x income plus min 10% deposit
4. Tax breaks/intensives for builders
5. Keep interest rates low so that if we do have a crash people can still pay their mortgage.
6. Planning permission needed for second homes

7

1. Scrap council tax and replace with US-style property tax levied at % of property value. So that £500k flat in Stabsville would have a £5k property tax, and that £8 m flat in Grosvenor Square would attract £80k in annual taxes. You could graduate it possibly. But the council tax on a £25 million mansion is ludicrously low.

1. Move government and any other gov organisations out of London. Move them to the most deprived part of the country to try to redistribute wealth.

Stop seeing property as an investment in itself

The value on my house has risen dramatically in the last 7 years but my income hasn't and I haven't got any "benefit" in the rise unless I want to sell up and move out. Which I don't want to. Why should I pay more tax on my property therefore? Surely that will only attract the richer people to buy my house?

Agree with AgaPanthers that can be number 8 on my 5 point plan.

Oh they could fund the building of a new parliament up north by scraping HS2. No need for a high speed route to London if people don't need to travel there as much.

I earn £44k and am a single parent.
We live zone 2 London in a one bed HA flat.
I sleep on a sofabed :(

There are many empty 'investment' flats round here.

The increase in tax will surely also affect the low earners who happened to buy some time ago and have simply benefitted by being in London for 15 years plus. Why penalise those people when their income might not have changed? Aren't you just driving out those on a low income then as well?

I live in an area of London now notorious for those 'buy to leave' blocks of flats. Hundreds and hundreds of properties sold but lying empty. Never even marketed to UK residents. If you travel via Old Street roundabout at night there's a flagship development, the Bezier, which has virtually no lights on as nearly 70% of those flats are owned by SE Asian investors who don't reside in them.

I'd bring in Singapore-style residency requirements (no restrictions on the nationality of buyers, but a requirement that those foreigners are actually living and working locally).

What's ridiculous is that all those expensive properties with absentee owners don't pay any council tax at all (non-resident for tax purposes).

You can do a lot of things with property taxes to make them more fair for ordinary people -- cap the rate of increase, defer payment until you sell the house, only tax above a certain value, etc.

Moving government out of London -- this may not work in practice. They tried doing this in Washington a while back, it did not go so well.

I don't think the problem is London being the centre of UK government -- it has always been. The problem is that now it's also a global financial capital and popular tax haven, that's what's so disruptive.

why don't they rent them out? They could do a managed let, and earn money, surely?

bravepotato I'm afraid that London prices are rising so fast you can 'earn' £80k on a London property by just leaving it stand for a year. If you rent it out you have a the hassle of tenants, wear and tear etc. Just keep it empty and count the dosh.

Snow yes I think that's a good idea, it's something Singapore has actively done to manage their housing stock as they have such limited space

I think Greater London is actually the same size as Singapore so perhaps a good model!

They don't need the money, and use them for friends/family dropping by for shopping trips. They have their sports cars and bentleys flown in for a few weeks over the summer - thats how amazingly wealthy these people are.