Poor people being priced out

[veggifriedbreakfast]

I live in East London and need to move, I currently rent a 2 bedroom flat. But, looking around now, for a 2 bedroom the minimal is £1400 a month up to £2000 for a 2 bed!!!

It seems to me that what is happening is that actually poor people are being priced out of London. I lived in Stratford and had to move out of there due to the market going up and now where I am again it's happening. How can people on lesser incomes afford this? I am now looking to having to uproot ds again and move even further out because of this. Aibu in thinking that this is a part of forcing the poorer people out of London?

"That's fucking huge with drastic affects for the whole sector."

It isn't huge, its less than a quarter get any HB and 95% of the market is not fully paid for by HB.

Its not fucking huge, you are claiming it is because it suits your narrative.

Its isn't the major determinent of rent increases because a) The overwhelming majority of properties do not recieve HB. b) The number of properties that accept HB is lower than those that don't. c) Only a small number of the entire market is fully funded.

The determinants of rising rents are:

A) An under supply of affordable rental properties in areas of high demand.
B) Changing demographics, more people living alone, or split families with two houses.
C) Government sponsored projects like help to buy driving up prices in places like London forcing more people into rentals.

HB is pretty far down the list and your analysis is biased, and erroneous.

"God, there's just no reasoning with some people."

What do you want me to say? Its more difficult now?

It is.

But it wasn't ever easy, for anyone in London to buy.

Do you want me to say that it was easy to buy for people in the area that they want to live in? Cause it wasn't. I know no one who bought as a single person without either significant parental help, or the schemes from the government where they gave you part of the deposit ( and often both).

You were the one claiming that people on £45k could only afford house shares, when they bring back in over 2,800 pcm.

The OP's post is about what is happening now.

The fact that is was difficult in the 1980s is not a reasonable or particularly relevant response to the fairly uncontroversial point that it is much, much more difficult now.

You can sit here posting links to Rightmove all day if you like. But that doesn't actually help with the fact that the OP is being priced out of the area where she currently lives and may have to uproot her son, and that in two years' time she may well find herself priced out of whatever crappy "up and coming" area she moves to and having to uproot her son again.

If you don't have anything helpful to add, what exactly are you contributing?

"The fairly uncontroversial point that it is much, much more difficult now."

It is harder, but not much much harder. Private rents have always been precarious and subject to increasing rent prices.

A couple on the London average salary can rent a room in a house and cover all bills for about £1k and have an after tax income of £4470, tell me that a deposit can't be saved within what 2 years?

Its always been a significantly harder challenge to buy when single, even more when a single parent. It wasn't easy, private renting never was either.

Did OP ever come back?

Sorry LoveInTokyo but everyone always thinks that they have it harder than the previous generation.

at least todays families get financial help with childcare and free nursery hours. I didn't when mine were little.

its swings and roundabouts - some things are better, some things are worse.

I did. I bought a flat in London when we had negative equity in the 1980's. it was brutal. watching a flat halve in value but still have the full value of the mortgage to pay.

Yes I am a home owner. But of course I worry about the next generations because that is my children and I want them to have somewhere safe and secure to live. But carrying on as we are, or having 4 year term parties only willing to tinker at the edges of housing policy is going to make absolutely bugger all difference.

We need big big change. Completely new ways of thinking. so we need to cut out housing benefit. we need to stop properties being left empty. really easy to do. if you own a flat and its unoccupied for more than 2 months then you pay 100 times council tax. or be bolder and charge even more. that would put a stop to it.

the properties in London are there. they just aren't in the naice bits or they are being left empty as investments.

I don't hold out any hope that some time soon someone will have the foresight to bring in the big changes.

"I have a theory that people who are not overly affected by the housing crisis because they are older and/or bought their own homes at a time when things were less crazy will go to any lengths to pretend that either things are not so bad now or that they were always this bad out of some deep-seated guilt that they are OK but so many other people are completely screwed."

People make choices and you can choose to live in an over priced area and complain that there is no affordable housing or you can move to an area you can afford.

I bought a house in the NE for £15,500 last October and lots of homes still in the £18,000 to £30,000 range and with a mortgage would be extremely cheap to own.

I moved out of an area where it would cost me £600 a month for a 1 bedroom flat and now own a large 2 bedroom home free and clear. I didn't save up for 10 years for a deposit for a house I couldn't afford, instead I looked at what I could afford and moved to an area where I could achieve my housing goals.

I'm not saying it's wrong to want to live in a certain area, but not all people who own their own homes are pretending that the housing crisis isn't real, but it's real due to people's lifestyle choices.

I could afford to buy my house on limited income as I don't have items most people now find as must have items. No television equals no TV license. My £10 Nokia phone and £5.00 a month phone bill. No takeaways. No credit cards.

Not all property in this country is over priced and out of reach but it comes down to priorities in most cases.

"Sorry LoveInTokyo but everyone always thinks that they have it harder than the previous generation."

Sorry MummyMeister but it is going to be really hard to argue that young people these days don't in fact have it a lot harder than their parents, unless you're not worried about looking really stupid, in which case, crack on.

"People make choices and you can choose to live in an over priced area and complain that there is no affordable housing or you can move to an area you can afford."

Did you even read the OP? Where she talked about being priced out of the area where she lives now? Having already been priced out of where she was before and had to move further out? And how she's worried about uprooting her son for a second time?

If you live in the north east, good for you. I don't think you understand how an ever-increasing swathe of the south is becoming completely unaffordable. It isn't about wanting to live in a "naice" neighbourhood, fgs. Unless I missed the part where the OP was moaning about not being able to live in Chelsea.

"unless you're not worried about looking really stupid, in which case, crack on."

Well as you've made no actual valid arguments regarding this, just always sought specific caveats to justify your point you are the one that looks rather stupid.

We have all said that people face significant challenges to get on the housing ladder, but that this has always been the case. The halcyon days that you seem to think existed didn't!

More people own their homes now than did in 1980, or 1970 or 1960. Yes there were council properties, but the ones in sought after areas were hard to come by, and the ones offered to many were poorly looked after and in areas with significant crime levels. London of the 70s and 80s wasn't what it is now. Just for example take a look at the area around Kings Cross which was a den of iniquity and vice back then, or estates round Swiss Cottage and Camden or bloody Stratford!

They weren't nice to live in, nor if you happened to be in a private rent were they particularly secure.

Yes its harder to get on the property ladder, but its not impossible, and people who are on London average wages in couples can afford to do this. Those with specific circumstances ALWAYS found it harder to get property that suited their needs in their price range.

I own houses in forest gate that rent fr £1250 and £1300 range per month

And Dagenham 2 bed houses are £1050/110

Thurrock is cheap too

Edmonton is cheap and well connected.

Seven sisters is cheap and well connected.

Tottenham Hale is cheap and well connected.

All those areas are only "cheap" if you have a reasonable job and low outgoings!

"Those with specific circumstances ALWAYS found it harder to get property that suited their needs in their price range."

Specific circumstances like having children?

The OP isn't talking about getting on the property ladder anyway, and I think it's important to focus on the topic at hand. If you're in your 20s now then unless you get help from your parents or a massive inheritance then you have precious little chance of ever owning your own home. (Unless you happen to have a job within commuting distance of a very cheap house up north, I suppose. But if there were lots of jobs in those areas then property prices would be higher.)

The point is that people in the private rented sector are in an impossible situation, and in places like London where prices just keep spiralling, you simply have no security. One minute you're living in a rented flat in a stabby area that you moved to because you got priced out of the neighbourhood you were in before, the next minute your landlord is putting your rent up by another £100 per month because that's "market rate" now, and you can't afford it so you have to move again, probably to an even stabbier area.

It's not fair and it's not right. Nobody seems to care about people in the OP's position.

*Edmonton is cheap and well connected.

Seven sisters is cheap and well connected.

Tottenham Hale is cheap and well connected.*

They are cheap today. They won't be cheap tomorrow. Since the OP is renting, not buying, she has no protection against being priced out again in a year or two.

Are you ever going to answer this point? I've made it about six times now and you just keep saying, "yes but Seven Sisters, Rightmove, blah blah blah".

I lived in East London for fourteen years (god knows how many moves) & genuinely believed London was the center of the world... especially since I work in the arts which is so London centric.

A year ago we moved to a city in the North & cut all of our expenditures in half for an equal quality of life, my work hasn't suffered & we're not always stressed about rent/finding somewhere to live.

We love it now & I don't think we'd nice back & I loved London.

You raised getting on the property ladder when it was proven to you that rents in East London are available within that price range.

"If you're in your 20s now then unless you get help from your parents or a massive inheritance then you have precious little chance of ever owning your own home. "

In a now desireable area of London yes.

If you are on London average wages there are plenty of places where an average couple ( yes couple, most people buy houses in a two not as a single, and singles have found it hard to get on the ladder in London for decades) can buy a one bed or two bed flat.

What you describe about moving to a stabby area shows my point about the sniffyness was correct. Where I own in London was "stabby" in the 80s and 90s. Where friends bought in the 90s was "stabby" or "Crackney" people like you sniffed at them then.

You aren't now.

"Since the OP is renting, not buying, she has no protection against being priced out again in a year or two."

As has ALWAYS been the case, which I have said before! Long term private rentals have always been precarious, and yes its not fair, but pretending like its a new phenomenon is disingenuous.

I don’t think for the average person London offers any quality of life. You have to be seriously rich to take advantage of all that it has to offer

Do you have any idea how bloody dangerous Edmonton is? And it’s not cheap.

"Do you have any idea how bloody dangerous Edmonton is?"

Its no more dangerous than Kilburn/Queens Park/Cricklewood were in the 80's or Hackney in the 90s/2000s. Or than other areas are, its London, its more dangerous than most places everywhere.

Lots of normal Londoners seem to live in these places just fine, only those that sniff about shit like then complain that they can't get on the property ladder/find reasonable rents in the area that they want to live in.

The OP lived in Stratford, hardly a a sleepy hamelt.

Land lords in London are greedy sods. It is definitely social cleansing and the effects will be felt when teachers, nurses, anyone who doesn’t earn huge amounts will leave the city entirely.
The rent we paid weekly on a flat in London, was the same as the monthly rent on a whole house in Scotland.

Actually it's all gone up massively for all of us. My friend bought aged 20 something in Fulham a few years back. She was single earning an average wage and had to take in a lodger. Similar stuff is £1.2 at least now. This is a much bigger issue than just the poor can't afford housing. If prices continue to increase then there is no point in aspiring to a good job as without hand me outs from family it will be very difficult to afford decent housing. I know 30 something solicitors and doctors living in crummy house shares. There is something very broken.

LoveinTokyo - I am guessing you are under 30? because believe me having just got a 100% mortgage on a flat in London that then halved in value - almost over night - was pretty shit. and then dealing for the next 5 years paying back the negative equity - equally shit. Do you pay for all of your child care or do you get some of it for free? decent maternity leave and paternity leave - where was that when I had babies? right to return to the same job?

Stop being such a snowflake and recognise that there have always been challenges with renting, with owning your own home, with living in London.

and heres a grown up thing you could do - suggest how to make it better, how to improve the situation. My kids are grown up and it does really affect them. what I have tried to do on this thread is suggest ways to improve the situation, to try new things to be radical to take a different approach. have you?