To disagree with my work colleagues in thinking that the cost of living is a potentially serious social problem?

[Livingtothefull]

I was having a discussion with a few work colleagues, they were all 50-60 somethings and own their own properties, only small mortgages left etc. We are based in one of the major cities in the UK.

I said that it was a big problem that a lot of people, despite working hard & having good jobs and/or professional qualifications, couldn't afford to buy property and much of their salary went on rented accommodation which left them very little disposable income….also many jobs were insecure which left them worrying about being able to afford rent or to save.

I have previously talked to a few (mostly younger) people who are in this position. One person who is a police officer in his 30s complained that he had been a police offer for 12 years, been promoted but still couldn't get on the housing ladder.

I suggested to these colleagues that there was something intrinsically wrong when a police officer - doing a difficult, sometimes dangerous and necessary role - couldn't afford to buy himself even a small flat.
They all quite vehemently disagreed with me; their response was, that rather than complain about the cost of living, people should just go wherever the work and job security is and where housing is more affordable, and if that means moving away to a cheaper area then so be it (one or two of them pointed out that they had had to do this when they were starting out).

I was really quite surprised at their response: is it just me who thinks this way? How are people with personal/family ties to where they live supposed to just up & move? What about essential workers like nurses/police officers who are needed everywhere, not just in affordable areas?

I do feel that the 50-60s are a luckier generation (I belong to it btw) & I was surprised at their response, some of them have DCs? I do feel things are tougher for the younger generation & it can be difficult to get ahead, I think I have quite a lot of anecdotal evidence from them (no massive student loans in my day either). I just felt that the colleagues I spoke to weren't aware of how much the world has changed - but would be interested to know what others thought about this.

My folks had to save a deposit of 2x their annual wage to buy. So that’s the equivalent of 52k today if you’re going on average wage. They struggled. It took years. don’t think they had curtains for two years. Houses near them are still affordable. You can get a three bed semi for 60k. 110k would get you something really nice

Sheffield, Barnsley, most of yorkshire, and the north. Newcastle, the bits of Manchester the BBC didn’t ponce up, the less flash but still totally ok bits of Edinburgh (an actual capital) , Glasgow and pretty much everywhere else in Scotland outside central/flash bits of Aberdeen. All affordable. All decent places to live. The whole of Scotland/north Yorks/peaks on your doorstep. All affordable.

London isn’t. So don’t live there unless you’ve got a serious job that pays serious money.

Move. Move cities. Move countries. The idea that there are no jobs just isn't true. There’s plenty of money in Edinburgh. Biotech and manufacturing in Scotland, South Wales... there are jobs. Move to Munich. Move to Dundee. Staying in London when it’s 250k for a tiny one bed flat in a shit area and you’re never going to have a decent wage is madness. It sucks that you can’t live near your family I know, but setting yourself up for a life of high rent and zero security is insane.

It’s not that you can’t buy a house , it’s that you can’t buy one where you want to live.

It's very true that outside of London prices drop an awful lot. For £250k you can buy a 4 bed detached home in a nice village. There are lots of well paid jobs locally and the schools are good.

I moved to London to start my career and never expected to stay. I didnt stay, moving to NYC where I still live now. Another good point is the shear number of people who think working 40 hours a week is a lot. Yes there are a lot of salaried people working far more than 40 hours a week but anyone who is working 40 hours or less should not be complaining that they can't afford a home. Get a second income and don't give excuses that finding work is hard. There is always the option to be self employed which actually suits me better for my second income.

At the moment , if you want to join the Met as a police officer , you have to have lived in a London Borough for the last 3 years. Which is great from the understanding diversity point of view , but which basically means that either you have lived with parents , or in student accomodation , or houseshare type arrangements . Which are all fine and dandy for the first 3 years or so as a police officer. However, what seems to be happening after that , is that once officers get a bit settled , get married , or start thinking about having a family , that suddenly they realise they can't afford to live in the very place that made them eligible to join , and certainly not anywhere the would be permitted to live . So then , they have a choice . They can either a) buy or rent somewhere out of London that's cheaper , but that means having to either pay out for a season ticket as subsidised travel has been stopped for new officers , and that is about as much as what they get in London Weighting , or they b) transfer out to the counties , buy or rent for less , lose the London Weighting , but don't spend 3 hours a day on top of shifts getting to and from work . Unsurprisingly , most are choosing option b. So essentially the Met are handing over fully trained officers to the counties for nothing . They must be laughing .

This is happening week in , week out . I work in Central London , but live over 100 miles away , to find a house I could afford to buy and the only reason I haven't transferred out is because I now have too much service to do so .

London isn’t. So don’t live there unless you’ve got a serious job that pays serious money

Shock horror, some of us were born in London, our families are here, our friends are here. I don't want to live somewhere where I know no one.

London has shops which need shop assistants, restaurants which need waiters, hospitals which need nurses, schools which need teachers. We need cleaners, bus drivers, binmen, fire fighters, police. All these workers cannot be expected to commute from outside of the capital into it.

Yes which is why social housing is woefully misused and needs to be properly looked at. Given the shortage of housing I think there should be a premium paid once you earn a certain amount. I lived in brook green and there were quite a few people living in counsel owned housing who earned a high income paying 'fair market rent' which was much lower than what was charged by private landlords. They should be paying 20-30% more than private rentals because of the cost incurred by everyone else that goes into managing housing for those who are low income.

The HA charge less for rent because they pay less for the buildings. It's insane that anyone making more than HB limits for a sustained period of time (a year) can live in a HA unit in London when there are such huge wait lists.

Yes, cost of living is creating social problems. A wide gap between rich and poor has been shown to destabilise. The gap is growing at speed.

I am 52, married mortgage and childfree. I think I am so lucky - and I do think there is this I am alright Jack going on. I am not left wing by any stretch of the imagination but I seriously don't know why people are not rising up and protesting about the basic right to live in an affordable home - even if you can't afford to buy, rents are also extremely high. And don't get me started on employment practices - zero hours contracts, short term contracts, internships.

Why can't people move for work? My grandmother's grandparents left Ireland (famine), my grandfather's parents left Russia (1917), my father came to the UK in 1939 (Jewish). DH's grandfather left Wales to join the army and escape the mine. His daughter became a teacher and got her first job in Yorkshire (family then living in London). Her mother's mother was French - weaving and Spitalfields Don't know the full story.

London is full of foreigners: Poles, Russians, French, Germans, Spanish, Sputh American, Sputh African, Australians, Africans, Asians. They all moved to find work and build lives.

Baby boomers (we are tail end baby boomers). Our DC will get aĺl of our money. In ten years time we could sell our very expensive property, buy a flat and start off the DC. Money trickles down.

In any event, imo property is hugely overvalued in London. When some of the Europeans go and as incomes rise which they will it will become more affordable. Give it five years and the realignment will become noticeable.

Of course people can move for work. However, increasingly the jobs are in the larger cities. There is a global trend moving towards 'megacities'. That is what the nationalities in your example have all done when they have come to London. So if people move for work, it's not going to be away from the more expensive areas! You are making a different point to the one in the OP. By the same token, I laughed when someone mentioned moving to Edinburgh as a more affordable option.

And the thing is, what people never seem to understand when they make this point is that cheap areas are cheaper because fewer people want to live in them. I know this because I live in one myself. It would soon stop being so cheap if more people wanted to live there. Personally I wouldn't go anywhere near London whatever the salary, but the answer to elevated cost of living is not simply everyone under 35 decamping en masse to Sheffield.

There are plenty of companies HQ'd outside London. They are also sensitive to property prices.

THERES A WHOLE WORLD OUTSIDE OF LONDON! That is the annoying thing, people talk about what is happening in SE and London as if it is the whole of England or even the whole of the UK. If they mean housing costs are a crisis in London then why not say that.

My son is living in a Midland's city, it is where he went to university. He is looking at buying his first house and can get a nice 3 bed house in a decent area for £70k. He is earning £27k as a recent graduate so yes even the singles can do it. The houses he is looking at are much nicer than my first house and is much more affordable. I don't know the employment stats on the city, all I can say is he has a good job and he had no problems getting it, his friends who stayed on in that city when they graduated all have good jobs. I don't know what the job market is like for say a school leaver without qualifications but a quick look online shows unemployment levels are well below the national average and the London average.

Personally I wouldn't go anywhere near London whatever the salary, but the answer to elevated cost of living is not simply everyone under 35 decamping en masse to Sheffield. Of course not everyone can move or would want to move. It is the attitude that what is happening in London and the SE is what is happening and the rest of the country gets ignored. There is clearly going to be a crisis in London as people doing essential low paid jobs can't afford to live there but that needs to be addressed e.g. when my husband was a young policeman there were lots of police houses/flats but I am assuming they have been sold off and if that is true it was short sighted.

If people did move out of London in significant numbers it might even up price differences a bit, a drop in London and an increase in Sheffield might not be a bad thing. (I don't know Sheffield but I am assuming it is considerably cheaper than London.)

Right because outside London all you have to do is click your fingers and jobs just fall into your lap. Is that what happens in London?

There is a global trend moving towards 'megacities'.

It is indeed the way we are going.

It is actually a good thing from an environmental standpoint as higher concentrations allow for better use of resources.

BananasAreGood you said, Right because outside London all you have to do is click your fingers and jobs just fall into your lap why would that be relevant? It doesn't happen in London does it so there isn't a comparison is there?

People are moving out of London though. I have many friends who have left and moved to surrounding counties. I find it heartbreaking actually. I'll drive down the road or go to the shops and think "oh, so and so used to live there". So many friends that I used to pop in and see for a coffee and chat who are now miles away. It's so sad.

The problem is that there isn't actually anywhere in the country where houses are an affordable multiple of local average earnings. London is the worst in that respect, but nowhere else is ok. Which is why comments like the one upthread stating there are plenty of areas where you can buy a home for 2 x FT NMW were so laughably wide of the mark.

So it simply won't do to present this as something where what's happening in the rest of the country gets ignored. Because it's literally happening everywhere. If you think people are only talking about it in a south east context, pay more attention to those of us who are describing the problem elsewhere.

It is true, as some posters have alluded, that those of us on reasonable professional wages/fixed national salaries in the regions can still secure relatively affordable housing. Mine and DHs mortgage is less than 3 times combined income, and we don't work FT. That's an option available to people who can earn a professional income, ie not the majority, in a way that it's not in London. Nonetheless, we're still in an area where average prices compared to local incomes are a high multiple, and we're also paying much more in real terms than would have been the case in the 70s, 80s or 90s. And part of the reason it's cheap is because there's lower demand, and the lower demand is due to the lower availability of jobs.

If people did move out of London in significant numbers it might even up price differences a bit, a drop in London and an increase in Sheffield might not be a bad thing. (I don't know Sheffield but I am assuming it is considerably cheaper than London.)

Le sigh. The problem here, of course, is jobs. We do certainly need incentives for jobs to move out of London, be that tax breaks or something else. However, as we don't have that, and given the aforementioned trend towards megacities, this is not something that enough people can realistically do of their own volition to solve the housing crisis. It's a societal problem, and not the fault of any given individual's choices.

But it's fine that we're losing all that, because hey at least us young people can go get a job in the Wakefield ASDA and buy a 2-bed terrace house.

If young people could even do that with any reliability, things would be better than they are. The reality is that such work is now more and more likely to be zero hour, making even a mortgage on a 2 bed terrace in an area of low employment and high social deprivation a distant dream.

But hey, there were bad things in the 70s too. Stop jizzing all your money on Iphones.

This was our property "journey", but I'm not sure it's so easy for young people now -

• DH (then DP) bought his first flat in Hackney in about 1995 for about £70K.

• Sold it for about £120k four years later, and we bought a two bed flat in Victoria for £270K. He was working in the city and paid the extra out of a bonus.

• In 2002, we bought a 3/4 bed house in Putney / Barnes area for £650K.

• Four years later (2006), we bought our current house for £1.4 million. We have just sold it for £3,3 million, so it has more than doubled in 10 years. Nearly all of that inflation was in the four years after we purchased, but property has held its value since in this area.

The problem with such house price inflation is that nobody round here can afford to move due to the stamp duty. Rather than paying £300K in stamp, people tend to stay put and invest the money in basement conversions instead. This pushes house prices up further because there is so little stock in the market, particularly family houses.

We have just moved into a house in the same area for which we have paid £550K in stamp duty!

A one bed flat here, over a shop, will cost over £550K. Even two delapidated garages down an alley cost £220K.

I very much doubt our own children will be able to buy in this area (basically the whole of West /South-West London), unless we help them out and so we've made provision to do that.

There are streets full of elderly people rattling around in 4-5 bedroom houses worth anything between 3 and 6 million, which they bought in the 80s for the kind of money you wouldn't get a bedsit for now. I think London is a different planet to the rest of the country and it's crazy.

I'm a Londoner as is my husband (met at Uni) & we are lucky that we can afford to stay here (for the moment). However virtually all of our friends have moved out to the surrounding counties. House prices there have really increased as have rail fares & we all know many services are shocking. I've made friends with a fair few neighbours & they are now too looking to move as they need to upsize but can't afford it. I'm thinking of it too, it's a bit of a joke when 1m can only buy you a small terrace with no parking & postage stamp garden when you consider catchments. I love my city & know nothing else but it's becoming more & more polarised & loosing the diversity that made it so great.