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?

here are whole blocks of new high end flats and rows of houses left completely empty because they’ve been bought by rich overseas investors who don’t even bother to rent them out.

I saw a statistic somewhere that demonstrated that foreign owners leaving properties empty had a negligible effect on the overall availability of property in London. Just googled and found this.

www.cityam.com/266693/overseas-investors-buy-13-per-cent-london-homes-but-hardly

But the report found "almost no evidence" homes bought by overseas buyers were left empty: "one per cent or less" of the new-build units acquired by foreign investors were left without an occupant.

The report, commissioned by the Mayor of London from the London School of Economics and the University of York, found overseas investors made up 13.2 per cent of all property transactions between 2014 and 2016.

While foreign buyers purchased a third of all new-build homes in the capital's most exclusive areas, they made up 16 per cent of transactions in inner London, and six per cent of transactions on the edges of the capital.

But the report found "almost no evidence" homes bought by overseas buyers were left empty: "one per cent or less" of the new-build units acquired by foreign investors were left without an occupant.

The report suggested the idea foreign-owned homes are sitting empty may be to do with a lag in filling units once buildings are completed.

"There may be an inaccurate perception that units are empty because the private units in a development will usually complete construction sometime after the affordable homes, giving a mistaken impression of vacancy.

"Further, once large developments are complete, it can take up to two years for occupancy rates to build up, and so homes may be vacant for an initial period before being lived in full time, which may account for perceptions that homes are left empty."

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.

Not really. The kind of rapid price rises we are seeing at the moment with people having to move further out every couple of years or so are a fairly new phenomenon, and one driven entirely by greed since interest rates have been at rock bottom for the last ten years. There's no justification for it.

"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."

If you knew where I actually live at the moment you might be less judgemental. But you don't, so... Living where I do at the moment with my husband is OK. Would I want to raise kids here? Honestly, not really. But again, we're getting off the point, which is that once you and your child are settled in a neighbourhood - and particularly where you have already been uprooted and had to settle in that neighbourhood because your landlord put the rent up in your last neighbourhood - it is unfair and extremely damaging to your child's overall childhood and education to have to move again just because all the greedy landlords want to put the rent up again for no good reason.

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.

This, with bells on.

We are getting to the point where only people with significant family money will be able to afford not to live in precarious private rented accommodation in increasingly far out and unsafe areas. So what is going to be done for those people? What is being done to make their tenancies more secure? What is being done to stop their landlords putting the rent up by an obscene amount and forcing them to move on? What is being done to stop lettings agencies completely taking the piss with unjustifiable admin charges (OK, some progress is being made on this) and withholding deposits for no good reason? What is being done to improve schools and public services and overall safety in the areas that people can still afford to live in?

And what is being done to prevent (usually foreign) "investors" buying up property and letting it sit empty, to the detriment of people who actually live and work in these areas?

LoveinTokyo - I am guessing you are under 30?

Wrong.

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.

I'm sure it was. I'm not saying no one else has ever had problems. My parents were in a similar situation at one point, but the value of their property eventually went up again, and they're now in a much stronger financial position than I am ever likely to be in, despite the fact that they've only ever had to live on one salary, and my own salary is now higher than my father's.

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?

I don't have kids yet. Largely because my husband and I have been trying to get into a more secure financial position before having them. I don't ever want to be in the position the OP is in. Just crossing my fingers and hoping that I don't have fertility problems when the time comes.

Oh, and I've moved so far away from my parents that free childcare is certainly never going to be an option.

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

Oh, the "snowflake" jibe. How original.

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?

Oh, I absolutely love this one.

I made my own personal situation better by living with my parents for a really really long time, doing a very long commute, having very little social life and putting a lot of money away each month for the future. (I fully realise that this option isn't available for everyone.) I've now moved abroad to a place where prices are still pretty high but my landlord is not legally allowed to put the rent up by more than a token amount each year (it just went up by 10 euros), and when we do get round to buying (which will hopefully be soon), things should be a little better than in London. But I have no realistic employment prospects in any other part of the country.

That's me, that's what I've done to help myself personally.

Do you mean to help the situation in general? Because I'm not really sure what can be done. Nobody with any political power seems remotely interested in easing the burden on young or poor people, and the baby boomers all vote Tory and will probably live for another 20 years.

They are not a new phenomenon, its being going on for decades, I know, I lived here for ever. As an area improved rents went up. It happened in Islington, Highbury and Crouch End in the 80's, it happened in Holloway, Finsbury Park and Hornsey in the 90s and in the 2000s it happened in Green Lanes, Palmers Green and Bounds Green in the 2000s. All of which at the time had reputations.

"I know 30 something solicitors and doctors living in crummy house shares."

Then they either don't manage their money well or are doing so cause it means they can spend far more of their income

A junior Doctor after 3 years earns a base salary of £45,750.00 without allowances.

To get on the housing ladder you have to make it a priority, this has always been the case. Your average London couple in their late 20s/early 30s could live in a house share for a year or two and have a deposit. But it takes time, and sacrifices, it always has!

Renting privately has ALWAYS been precarious and open to abuse by Landlords in London. It isn't new, it isn't right.

A

LoveinTokyo,

You don't even live here and have limited experience of renting ( in London) it seems FFS you don't know what you are talking about.

LoveInTokyo

I agree with much of what you have posted.

topcat so a place in Thorton Heath might be 500k & it’s a shite area , that’s what one should be aiming for.

And what about school catchment areas? These have shrunk massively. I went to a primary a 30 min walk away & my middle school & high school was out of borough. My DCs child catchment this year was 300 metres.

Another point that is overlooked is that traditionally one would buy the flat in a stabby area, make a bit of money on it & move up the career ladder & enable you then to buy a house further out. This is not happening now as the bottom rung is so high, a flat bought this year for 500k will not be worth 700k in 4 years time.

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.

Really? Because I’ve lived there for 38 years. Since I was born. My entire family and my husbands are from there. We moved out when our neighbours head got chopped off and we had to be indoors by six and out the parks as the Somali gangs took over. It’s not called ‘shank town’ for nothing. My grandad is terrified living there. So don’t talk about what you clearly know nothing about.

You don't even live here and have limited experience of renting ( in London) it seems FFS you don't know what you are talking about.

Worked in London for many years. Only left a year ago. Rented a few times in London and in another city.

HTH.

When did you last rent a flat, I wonder?

LoveinTokyo's understanding of the London property market is taken from anecdotal stories from outside of the market, it isn't based in reality.

"And what about school catchment areas?"

In all London boroughs more than 50% of pupils got their first choice.

Outside of the "unaffordable" zone 1/2 that rises to over 60% in zone 2/3 areas andover 70% in all others. About 6% didn't get an offer at one of their 6.

Lots of 3 houses in Thorton Heath around the £300,000 mark.

But its "shite".

Aye then stay where you are and whinge, just like people we knew in the 80's did, and sniffed at us moving to where we did.

They don't sniff now.

"Worked in London for many years. Only left a year ago. Rented a few times in London and in another city."

HTH."

Yet also: "I made my own personal situation better by living with my parents for a really really long time, "

Hmmm vast experience there! I

HTH yourself, if you can't stick to a story.

If I’d have had the chance to live with my parents past 15 I’d be laughing now.

It is possible for both those things to be true, topcat. Especially given that I am not under 30, as another poster wrongly assumed.

Please don't accuse me of lying just because I don't fit into the "young, naive, too inexperienced to have a valuable opinion" box you would like to put me in.

When did you last rent a property?

I believed things are worse than they've ever been for young people in London, but wanted to quantify it.

I started by looking at house price to earnings ratios, which are indeed at unprecedented levels, but then realised that could be misleading as doesn't take into acount lower interest rates.

I wanted to know see the change in the mortgage costs in relation to earnings, but couldn't find anything like that. Then it occurred to me that on average over time, private rental prices must increase in proportion to house prices, so I looked at that. Apparently in 1994, the average private renter in London was spending 37% of their income on rent, and more recently (2015?) it was 40%. That seems to suggest thinks aren't as bad as I thought.

A new IFS report found the rent-to-income ratio in Britain excluding London has fallen by 3% — from 31% to 28% — in the last twenty years, but climbed by 3% — from 37% to 40% — in London over the same period.

uk.businessinsider.com/generation-rent-londoners-spend-40-of-income-on-rent-says-ifs-2017-10

So yeah.., again the data shows that things aren't quite as bad as they seem, and in % the average is about the same.

I do think its harder to be a private renter, but as I keep pointing out it has always been this way.

In Kilburn in the 90s rents were low, in the early 90s parts of different roads were squats, by the mid 90s rents were rising fast and building formerly left in dilapidated conditions were being done up, by the end of the decade rents and house prices were only slightly lower than those in West Hampstead which had always been far trendier.

It happens everywhere, and has always gone on, its not a new phenomenon, what is new is that more people are in the private rented sector.

The job my husband does pays fairly well in the South, South East and London. The same job pays fifteen thousand less in the North! Barely any jobs in North West doing it. So there is a reason places are cheaper. I could pick up a house for thirty grand in some places but how would we then pay for it?

Aye there's a reason why house prices are much lower in the north.

Cause no fucker wants to live there.

That was a joke BTW

Depends what you do I guess. My friends a gas engineer and moved to the Midlands from London and didn’t lose any money. But the jobs in cheaper areas come with a bloody massive salary job in my DH sector so can’t see how to better things really.

When did you last rent a property, topcat?

Doesn't matter when I rented it doesn't make my argument any less valid. I know as many people who rent in London, if not far more than you.

"They don't call it shank town for nothing"

and now trendy bits of Hackney were called the murder mile, Islington had the worst schools in the country, Notting Hill was a slum where there were riots etc etc.

I'm from here and I was one of the people that moved to a less desirable area, in times of far higher crime and murder rate.

Yes, that’s why I moved. So it’s not only ‘non Londeners’ that say it is it?

Or ‘sniff about shit’ as you put it.

"Doesn't matter when I rented it doesn't make my argument any less valid. I know as many people who rent in London, if not far more than you."

Right.

So I shared some of my own experience - in response to a direct question someone asked me about what I had done to improve things - and you used that to decide (incorrectly, I might add) that I had no relevant experience of renting and my opinion on renting in the private sector is therefore invalid.

I ask you when you last rented a property and suddenly it "doesn't matter" because it "doesn't make your opinion any less valid".

What a hypocrite.

"So it’s not only ‘non Londeners’ that say it is it?"

But I didn't say non Londoners, I said lots of people turn their noses up at areas that are full of very ordinary people, and always have.

"I ask you when you last rented a property and suddenly it "doesn't matter" because it "doesn't make your opinion any less valid".

Your experience of renting and of doing so in London appears to be very limited, by your own admission.

The reason you are asking me is so that you can imply that I don't know anything about it in the modern era, when of course I do, and have lots of experience of the rental market, almost trying to create a strawman.

Its funny that you are the one that has made all these anecdotal claims and not in anyway admitted to what I'm saying, that yes it is difficult, but it was always difficult.

Did you see some of the shitholes that Rachman was able to rent for high prices in the 60s? Did you see that insecurity?

Did you see the tiny bedsits that grew up all over what are now trendy areas where landlords raised the rent once every 6 months?

Do you remember entire families living in rooms in the 70s?

Do you remember the murder rate in London being 50 more people a year than the number in 2017? Do you remember this happening for most of the 90's?

Or when the number of robberies per year was higher per capita than it is now? In the 80s, 90s and 2000s?