To ask you what you think about this cute flat I spotted for rent in North London?

[purplebush]

Isn't it lovely? And only £765 a month. BARGAIN!

They tidied it up beautifully for the photoshoot too.

www.primeukestates.co.uk/properties/riverside-road-london-n15/

😀😄😂

I'm not a Londoner and avoid London, tbh. But how are poorer people meant to move out?
A 3 bed house move Swansea to Cardiff cost me £900 (for the lorry alone) 2 years ago. i wager london to manchester or glasgow for eg would be more then on top of that deposit and first months rent.
That's the bare basic expenses. Easily 3k. Add in anything else (eg buying new appliances if your home in London was part furnished) it could get eye watering very quickly.
If you're paying thousands a month how can you even save bare minimum.deposit? This is part of the reason homelessness is rising in London as rent prices go up, as they get notice on their current house and have to find something else while still paying an eye watering sum for a month or two. Then they've either raised the deposit for a new home or they're homeless.
Plus, what good is saving 9k a year on rent if you or you and your partner lose 15k plus out of your wages? Just had a quick look, the same (low earning) job I do here would be worth 11k more per year. My exes job would've been worth about 10-15k a year more.... I would never move there but I see the sense in staying put if you are poor.

I don't see people living in sheds outside London. I know that terrible housing conditions exist outside London but the capital seems to be experiencing a particular housing crisis and it's just not acceptable. Landlords and their agents must be held to account.

I don’t think it’s just to do with employment opportunities, it’s to with desireability too. So Hexham is very expensive, as is Corbridge and Alnwick, whereas Chester le street is cheap which has amazing transport links.

The nice little villages tend to be more expensive, and the surburban ones cheap.
Newcastle has lots of employment opportunities but is cheaper than Hexham.
In Newcastle, Jesmond and Gosforth are very expensive whereas Fenham is very cheap, all have good links into the city centre and pretty much the same size and design of houses.

It’s not true that the cheaper places automatically mean you have less employment opportunities sometimes it’s just people like living in the posher areas and then the more rich people live there the nicer the area gets as posh businesses move in etc. and then more people want to live there.
Also lots of people like having a posh postcode.

I live in an ex council house, I have excellent links to the city centre, a garden and a drive and my house is half the price that it would be if it wasn’t ex council and half a mile down the road.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-72584609.html

This live/work studio doesn't look particularly legal to live in either.

It’s ridiculous to just be like ‘if you don’t like it move’
Why are we blaming ordinary people for the housing crisis in London?

It’s not a ‘can’t handle the heat get out of the kitchen situation’, it’s a ‘oh my god the kitchen is on fire!!’ Situation .

On the NE where I am from I agree with the above. I suppose it is like comparing say a posh St John's Wood with the worst bits of the London borough of Brent although these days distance from centre does largely decide price in London if not in Newcastle and Leeds and Manchester. You u sed to be able to buy very cheaply in run down east end of London and get into the city quickly but then it was all done up so that doesn't apply to so much now.

However my son and I did see a co-relation between house prices and jobs as you would expect. His current employer has a scheme where you can move to other areas of the country doing the same job but there is nothing North of Leeds although I am sure if he put his mind to it he could get a job in the NE if he wanted to.

The problem with jobs in the north east is it depends on what field you’re in, so there’s lots of science jobs, engineering, tech jobs and not much of anything else.
It’s a bit of a lottery too because we depend on businesses having factories up north, so if a factory closes you aren’t guaranteed there to be another job in your field anywhere in the north east.
Or if the company you work for decides to move, you’re screwed.

I wouldn’t be moving to the north east with Brexit looming tbh I think that would be a big risk.

Its not about blaming the residents of London, its about accepting that - if a large percentage of the country want to live in one corber of it - things are going to be cramped and expensive. There really is no way round the expense. At the moment the cost of living in London is mostly bourne by Londoners and Londoners want the cost bourne by the country as large (through increased social housing provision, more subsidies for transport etc). As someone living in the mythical 'northern wanna-be powerhouse' it's quite hard to sympathise with the idea that dealing with Londons problems must always be paramount.

As an aside, ensuring that the laws governing private rental are stuck to by all landlords would benefit people across the country. No one should be allowed to offer a converted concrete shed to rent for human habitation.

@Changerooroo Hi neighbour!

It's true, Londoners have had no choice but to start viewing properties with disproportionately low standards and endless optimism. It's v.grinding.

Think I've chirpily said "it could have potential" at pretty much every viewing I've done here, and you'd be surprised at how many landlords/sellers don't even bother doing a light tidy for viewings.

Sad as it is, an N16 garden flat at less than 1k per month could be smeared in sh*t (sorry) and within 5 minutes of going to market there'd be people fighting amongst themselves to put down a deposit.

...The silver lining I'm clinging onto, is that if/when we leave for another city, any home there will feel palatial by comparison _

that's so effing depressing.

What is worth staying in London for if you have to fork out a fortune to love in somewhere not very nice? And if the job was worth staying for, surely it’d pay well enough to get somewhere decent?

This is what I always think in regards to jobs in London and the 'but you can't work in my line of work elsewhere' line.

If you love your London-only job so much that you're happy to pay £2k a month for a not great two bed flat, great. Or if you're happy working 60 hours a week to afford better, same.

But the fact is that someone earning £80k in Central London is likely to have far less in terms of spare money, free time and nice housing than a school leaver working in a call centre in Cardiff earning £22k. Which makes keeping that London job, for the sake of having an £80k job, pretty pointless iyswim when you could have a better quality of life elsewhere on much less.

I like this one www.primeukestates.co.uk/properties/tufnell-park-road/

So tidy, and clean!

(seriously starting to think that the EA doesn't care about their job anymore)

different I didn't think that was all that bad until I got to the bedroom...who the hell doesn't even make the bed before taking the photo!

The housing crisis is truly a joke

I don't find it funny, I find it really sad.

I would think that the first property is illegal and does not abide by basic planning regs, gas and electric, insulation etc. There seem to be a lot of people illegally converting garages and charging extortionate rents for them. In all honesty, I don't see the appeal of living in London as we wouldn't be able to afford the lifestyle we have now. We live in a thriving city in the North, live in a gorgeous 3 bed 1700 sq ft Victorian end of terrace with excellent transport links, shops, market, restaurants etc and pay £670 a month on the mortgage.

I have to say I don't get the obsession with staying in London. Lots of people manage to work in decent jobs in other parts of the country, and for me, being near my family wouldn't be worth slogging my guts out for 60 hours a week to pay extortionate rent on a shoebox.

I'd rather work 40 hours and have a nicer house elsewhere, and use the spare cash to travel to my family and spend some quality time with them!

Oh....my. That’s something else.
@adaline I’d move to London in a heartbeat if I thought I could maintain our current living arrangements - five of us in a three bed house with a mortgage £250 a month. Annual salary around £40k.

Don’t think I could even rent a storage unit for that in the SE

Dh works in London. He goes mon and comes back Friday. We are in Worcester. Have a 6 bed 4 bath detached house with massive garden. Lovely village setting. We brought for 140 000 in 1993.. worth half million now. kind of wish we had brought in London then as b worth a hell of a lot now but London a bit rough now for us.

That looks ridiculous op

Tea, I agree even though I am from there and I hope I gave my son the pros and cons. He seems to be convinced if he moved it would need to be somewhere his employer has a scheme to move people around the company anyway so as soon as he discovered they don't operate North of Leeds he changed his mind. I think he's better off in the SE for now not too far from the rest of the family and with an awful lot of different jobs on offer if he decides to change (it is no secret, he drives Ocado vans and before that was a postman after university for 3 years and those kinds of jobs are not always that easy to get in areas of high unemployment but are fairly easy when people within the M25 have so many higher paid jobs to choose from).

@Diana maybe you could rent a shed?!

Clearly it's illegal. There are lots of migrant workers round here, crowds of them hang about outside Wickes every morning trying to pick up work. If you've been living under a tarp under the north circular over the winter, as some of them have, that shit hole would look like 5* accommodation.

It's about five minutes away from where I live, in a rented two up two down terrace that costs £1,200 pcm. We're extremely fortunate that our landlord is on the level and hasn't raised our rent for five years.

I know that people outside of London think we're all mad. Despite having a six figure joint income, my partner and I cannot afford to buy a house like the one we live in because they are currently being sold for £650k+. The area is still distinctly grotty, but it's the proximity to the Victoria Line that bumps up the prices.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, for me to find work outside of London so we're stuck. Plus, paying £4500+ each a year to commute back in is not an attractive thought either, and would be difficult logistically with our pre-schooler.

I've been in London for 25 years, and it's my home, but a combination of mental health issues, relationship breakdown, and a surprise pregnancy, made it impossible for me to get on the property ladder when prices weren't as stupid. It makes me feel quite sick when I contemplate leaving, but I would like a little garden.

If it is an illegal conversion, then of course that's shocking and I'm surprised they have the gall to advertise them. However, if its legal accomodation, and if you look beyond the junk, cleaned it up and decorated it, would it really be so bad? You even have a bit of a courtyard. I would prefer that to a room share anyway.
I feel very sorry for people of limited means who have to/are forced to rent substandard property in London. The prices charged are inhuman.

the problem is , sites like this advertising such shitholes.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, for me to find work outside of London so we're stuck

No. You're not.

It would be difficult to find work outside of London in your field.

If you want to pick up two £18k jobs they're easy enough to in my area IME. And rent on a two up, two down in a nice area here would be £500pm. A household income of £40k is more than enough to have an excellent standard of living in many, many places.

You choose not to. Which is fine. But you're not forced to work in those jobs.