How unreasonable am I being to consider spending this much on rent?

[Nicebucket]

I'll try to keep this brief, even though I'd love to have a moan and a rant.

I've moved back to London recently (job transfer) and I'm hunting for a flat. I've lived in London before for 3 years as a student, so I am familiar with the city.

I'm going mad searching for a flat!!! I'm working in Canary Wharf and anything close to work is hideously expensive.

I would really prefer to live alone if I can (or maybe share with just one other person) but obviously that's very expensive.

I saw a studio flat today that's about 10-15 mins from work, near Crossharbour and its for £1300 a month with all bills included. The additional bills I will have after this are the Oyster card, phone and Internet.

The studio was tiny, but modern and in a really peaceful area.

Am i being crazy to even consider this?!

I could get by if I got this flat, but just barely. I wouldn't be able to save anything and wouldn't have money left over for luxuries.

Is it worth it? My colleagues and friends tease me mercilessly for being too much of a princess to share, but I've had such terrible experiences in the past with flat mates! One of them stole my stuff and disappeared

Also, I'd make a terrible flat mate. (Seriously!) I dislike noise and mess and Since you can't avoid that with flat mates, I'd be an awful nag. I literally hate noise and parties, even on weekends. I'm so dead tired from work, I just want to sleep or have a nice, peaceful day. I love my own space

Is there any hope for me? Is it even possible to live alone in London and still manage to save some mkney?!

If you are looking at this as a short term option while you find your feet I would actually go with spending £1,300 and living near work rather than commuting from Bayswater. Couple of hours extra leisure time if you are working long hours are pretty valuable. Also gives you more time to sort things out longer term. If you are in line for rapid future pay rises then not saving is not much of an issue either.

Last time I was renting in London I was paying £500 excluding bills. That was over 25 years ago and so the prices you are quoting don't seem outrageous to me.

I know how you feel - I moved to London (also on a work transfer, but OH was already here waiting for me) four years ago. I also had a heart attack at house prices (I was living abroad before - £300 pcm for a lovely studio in the town centre) and still struggle to adjust to big city life.

London is not where I would choose to be based in or around, if not for the fact that the work (in my field at least) is here - but try not to let it get you down. It can all be do-able, with slightly altered expectations in terms of living arrangements...

I would dearly love to live in Canary Wharf too (my favourite area of London), but not going to happen this lifetime, short of a lottery win! Only one person out of many I ever worked with over the years has ever lived in London (Bethnal Green) - the rest commute from outside (average an hour commute time). That - or flatsharing - is pretty much the norm here, so I think perhaps you need to adjust your search in view of that.

We settled first in Essex (central line to Stratford and then change to Canary Wharf) and now are on the Hertford East line (25 mins to Stratford or Liverpool Street and then change to tube). Yes, it's pricey for the commute (£230 a month for me in Zone 7), but the rent / mortgage for a much larger 2-bed flat is much cheaper (though admittedly we have the benefit of sharing the cost between me and OH), and you get an awful lot more for your money.

With a Kindle, I really don't find the commute that bad (unless the tube has gone tits up - in which case, nightmare!). The benefit of going in via the overland is that you usually get a seat, and you're not restricted to the tube areas (usually rent is higher the nearer to a tube station you are). You also get the benefits here of being close to London while still having a non-city lifestyle and lots of countryside around.

We also have a lodger, whose rent covers 2/3 of the mortgage. We've had three people over the last two years - and like you I was dreading sharing (a case of "needs must" when we started), having been in shared houses in the past with all the various horror stories associated!

Perhaps we've been lucky, but by choosing people in our age range (thirties or forties - I'm 33, OH 52) and with similar lifestyles in terms of profession, personality etc, it needn't be anything like the student flatshares you are probably thinking about! We use www.spareroom.co.uk, and find that by being clear about the type of person we were looking for and making time to really talk to people at "interview" stage, we can always find a good "match" to our way of living (i.e. non-party, non-messy, friendly but not in each others' faces all the time etc).

We have been lucky enough to make genuinely good friends out of each of the lodgers, and I can honestly say it has been no skin of our nose (other than not walking around naked etc) - I appreciate you'd be coming at it from the other angle (we have the benefit of being "landlords"), but I guess my point is not to rule it out entirely. It may even end up being a great way to meet friends in a new city, which I have to say can be very hard otherwise (easy to meet people via MeetUp etc, but harder so to make good friends as a result).

Even if that was how you started, once you're here and know the city better, you can always take the time to find the right place and then move on...? You wouldn't be "tied in" forever like that.

Anyhoo - I do really feel your pain, but hope that's been of some assistance at least!

Thank you LadyShirazz! That's been very helpful indeed.

I've started looking in Essex now. I'd already looked around Gants Hill, but the area looked awful- perhaps it was that particular flat!

Think the Lewisham one was already gone when I called them.