To wander how is cost of living cheaper outside of London

[where2now]

So I get rent/Mortage and childcare will be cheaper out of London especially further north. But what else is cheaper?? Everyone keeps saying cost of living is much cheaper up north. AIBU not to understand this? I mean supermarkets surely have the same price food all over the country right? And even retails stores ie clothes shopping??
I'm really wondering as we are considering moving out of London due to this but I just can't get my head around it.
Can anyone help and give examples I'll be very grateful? Thanks all

Near the south coast, 50 miles from London, we're paying £4.80-£5.20 a pint for beer in most pubs, more if it's an exotic premium lager.

Petrol is expensive, primarily because there are only 2 petrol stations in town. The Tesco petrol station is always 3p-4p more expensive per litre than at the Tesco PS 9 miles away, because there is more competition there. The same applies to Sainsburys. When we go to south London to see MIL, we try and go with a near empty tank, as it's so much cheaper there. When filled up at a Tesco petrol station in Hull a couple of years ago, it was 9p a litre cheaper than locally.

Fares: it's £9 return to the nearest big town, less than 10 miles away, by train and £5 by bus. £3.30 return for the (hourly) bus to the town centre, 1.5 miles away. Taxi minimum fare is £6.50. It's just over an hour to London by train, but that will cost £5k pa for a season ticket.

A small terraced house in town will set you back £450-500k, a one-bed flat £180-£250k. Houses are a bit cheaper on the outskirts, especially ex-council houses, but still very few under £300k.

Rents: £750-1,000 for a 1-bed flat, £900-1,500 for a 2-bed flat/house and nothing under about £1,200 for a 3-bed house.

Some weird things are expensive. We have the usual chain coffee shops, but the independent ones are even more expensive. They're all hipsterish places. (This hacks me off, because the most I'm allowed to reclaim when I have to meet a client in a cafe is £1.20) We have two bakers, both very expensive (one sells "artisan" bread that is £8 a loaf!), but no greengrocer.

Despite all that, wages are low unless you're in the public sector, where national pay scales apply. The area has one of most adverse ratios between average wages and house prices in the country (or at least, did 10 years ago).

And our public services are pisspoor: schools oversubscribed, library only open for 3.5 days pw, MH drop in now only open for 12 hours a week (was 40 hours) and the children's centre has closed. The roads are dreadful and they've reduced the frequency of cutting the verges so that you can't see the bloody road signs. For this we pay £1,828 for a band C property.

emily I don;t think council tax is necessarily cheaper
I live in a small country cottage (2 beds) (Midlands) probably worth circa £450K - but my council tax is circa £2.5k (band F) for which I get very little amenities. Lots of London properties are worth much more and the council tax on them is less.
As the council tax band was fixed years ago it no longer is true that cheaper houses up north, cheaper council tax.

Exactly. If the OP wanted to say, spend £200k on a 3 bed semi in a nice area within half an hour's commute of a northern city, she'd have oodles of choice, whereas she'd have no chance at all in London and the south east.

Families on ordinary incomes, such as couples of nurses and teachers on £25-30k each can buy family houses easily in the north.

Of course there are very expensive houses available, but they aren't typical of the average price.

Such as this £500k+ 3 bedroom flat. That sounds like a London price. But it's on the edge of one of the most desirable towns in northern England, in one of the most expensive areas outside London.

Ummmmgogo

One pound bakery is good. Loads round here nw

I once saw a one pound bakery van unloading a delivery to Gregg's

Could council tax be cheaper in London because the higher population density means that the amount they need to raise is shared amongst more people?

Also, I'm not sure how bands effect things. Eg Band D council tax in Leeds is £1500, but £1000 in London.

But in Leeds a Band D house is an average house, but there are also lots of Band A- C houses too and far fewer band G or H ones.

But in London there are few or no Band A-C houses and more houses are in Bands F-H. So the average amount paid per property in London is the same or more than in Leeds, even though the Band D council tax in Leeds is more, because more people in London are higher up the bands?

I was under the impression there was a lot of variation in council tax costs in London? I know Wandsworth is very cheap. It's about half Manchester where I am.

Islington Council Tax Rates for 2016/17

Band F: 1,872.22

so I would pay £600 less if I lived in leafy Islington for my band F house.
I doubt £450K would buy a Band F property there.

Some cities have very expensive public transport, far dearer than in London, and if public transport isn't good people have to have cars. But taxis tend to be much cheaper outside London. Apart from that and housing costs, I don't imagine there is much difference. Plenty of cheap supermarkets in the capital. And free museums and galleries.

Princess i absolutely agree that Housing definitelyischeaper on average in the north of England than in London

Material words - on average.

There are expensive parts of the country everywhere, and I disagree that Londoners don't have the choice that other parts of the country do. My parents live a 40 min train journey out of London and the housing costs are about 2/3 of where we are in South Manchester.

Supermarkets charge differently depending on location. I can travel into the ‘cotswolds’ and the prices increase

If you shop online you need to input your postcode prior to shopping so that the prices will be correct for your particular area

@where2now Leigh on sea is very good, and has a nice vibe, independent shops/cafes, pubs with live music, can be a bit musnetty though (pushy parents etc), rural bits around Southend because Southend and Westcliff have excellent grammar schools, but you don't want to live bang in the centre of town, Thorpe bay is nice if your budget will stretch a bit, Chelmsford is great and has a good mix of independent schools, grammars and state. Brentwood/Shenfield great but property very expensive due to short distance to London. There are some nice areas North of the county too but might be a bit far out, property is cheaper though, places like Tiptree, the knotleys and so on or you can go west to the Hertfordshire borders, again some great grammar schools and very good state schools. This article focuses on Chelmsford schools but scroll down and it ranks all schools in Essex. www-essexlive-news.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/every-essex-secondary-school-ranked-461622.amp?amp_js_v=a1&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.essexlive.news%2Fnews%2Fessex-news%2Fevery-essex-secondary-school-ranked-461622.amp%23amp_tf%3DFrom%2520%25251%2524s

So your parents don't live in London or even that close to it then, namechanged? And you've picked an expensive, bubble-esque part of Manchester (because you evidently don't mean Wythenshawe) rather than one of the cheaper areas in the city where family houses can be had for 100k, and even then there's still a one third difference? This is not making your point very well, you know.

it's not that difficult to understand Princess. There are locations outside of London that are generally cheaper for housing. But I think it's pretty evident from this thread that there is much variation and assumptions about the North being cheap for example are generalisations.

If the OP wants to move somewhere cheaper, she needs to do her research.

Your point is extremely easy to understand namechanged, it's just shite.

You disagreed that Londoners don't have the choice that people elsewhere in the country have. This is nonsensical, even for someone in the naice Trafford bubble (and honestly, how much do you think the equivalent to eg Sale would be in London?). As we have established, there are family sized houses available in Manchester for under 100k, to take an obvious price point. There aren't in London. This means people in Manchester have a choice that people in London don't. The pattern is repeated in nearly all northern cities, give or take a York or two. This makes you wrong.

So once again, because housing is so much cheaper on average in the north than London, and because the London priced examples are so small a percentage of the total housing stock, actually OP doesn't really need to do her research simply in order to obtain cheaper housing. She should do her research about where she's going to move because that's a sensible thing to do, but finding housing that is not London priced is not some difficult thing that takes effort. It is not very likely that she's going to sleepwalk into Prestbury and assume there's nothing cheaper to be had.

She could move out of London, find cheaper housing, cheaper goods and services.....and probably get paid less money.

My Husband’s family live in a different part of the U.K. Their mortgages are either much much less than ours is in London, or they’ve paid it off as they could afford to do so.

Services like the hairdressers, spas, cinemas and gyms are so much cheaper. Also, so is eating and drinking in restaurants and pubs, car parking, and even food.

Londoner living up north. Only difference is house prices. Transport is more expensive in terms of less for money and food etc is the same. Also, my council tax is more expensive up north than London for same square footage etc.

Well I don’t have any parking charges pretty much even to park on my own road I was looking at £100 a year plus visitors permit that last 2 hours at a time

Compared to Yorkshire, everything is more expensive in London, not just houses. Travel costs, utilities, food, going out and entertainment. The only things that aren't are from high street shops like Next. Supermarkets do charge more.

We have the £200k suburban northern semi. However, as a small university city with a large teaching hospital, rents in the better areas are comparable with the PP's south coast examples with an unremarkable 2 bed semi-detached bungalow, just around the corner, being up for just short of £1000 pm.

I've lived in London straight from uni.
Then moved back to Birmingham which is where I was born and love.

And now I live in a town in Worcestershire.

You most certainly get more from your money out of London in my experience.
My rent there was extortionate.
However, Birmingham can also be expensive depending on where you live. Not London expensive though. I also love how vibrant Birmingham is but I am very biased.

Where I live now the house prices are amazing tbh. We live in a large detached here. The cost of this house would have bought us a small 2 bed in Brum.
And a tiny flat in London.

My London council tax is £3200 (outer London). I have spent 6 months trying to get the single person 25% discount which is now about to be applied.

My sons 2 bed terraced in Chesham, walking distance of tube (although it is a long tube ride into London - he doesn't work in London) was £330k about a year ago or possibley £325k, can't remember exactly now. If want a small terraced house nearer to us in zone 5 (london underground zones) like the first house I bought those cost about £420k these days (flats are cheaper).

I am from the NE and it is definitely cheaper there in most areas although there is a house in my parents' old road which has been for sale at about £3m in the NE (mind you it's been for sale at that price for about 5 years so I expect it's true value is closer to £1m unless they can find a footballer who wants that exact road I suppose).

@Ummmmgogo that would be the £1 bakery. It's great but Greggs is better

I live in a 3 bed house in a nice area of Lancashire. Utilities, mortgage, food (2 adults, 1 baby & 1 dog), council tax, petrol and car lease totals roughly £1,500 per month.

I'm guessing that's cheaper than something similar in London.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond. I've read all the posts sorry I can't reply to each one. I'll definitely look into this by area as I can see it varies a lot. Hopefully we can come to sort of decision soon. If anyone can recommend a place in Birmingham where school catchments are excellent I'd be grateful x