To think London will become a ghostown

[dearreme]

People of my parents age could get a nice house in zone 2 on one wage. People of my age if they bought 10 or so years ago could get a little flat on two full time wages. And of my friends any that didn't buy have now left for other cities or are planning an exit.

Younger people I work with now are planning on never even moving to the city as they know the quality of life is so much better in other cities.

What will happen to london? It seems like much of K&C has been purchased by people as a store of money and is left empty.

Less jobs are apparently being created now, with employers favoring other locations in europe or the UK.

I grew up in London and am lucky enough to have a good central-ish house but am moving out to get better house/quality of life and will also encourage my children to find a good quality of life which might not mean London. (Hard to say, as I am such a Londoner!)

My bugbear is that other countries manage to spread out more evenly between countries, e.g. Washington has politics, LA has film industry. We cram everything into one big black hole. Then you have houses in Stoke-on-Trent which cost a pound. Some clever big company should relocate there and offer massively subsidised housing to all its employees.

Iamagreyhoundhearmeroar

What logic? That people I know are struggling to sell?

Demand causes high prices, rendering property unaffordable to many. Obviously the idea of London as a ghost town comes from wrongly only thinking about those priced out, and ignoring those pricing them out.

But there is a good question buried inside the logical contradiction of the original one. How are people affording to buy?

I've bought into the idea that things are worse than ever, as my home has increased in value five-fold over a period of time when my wage, doing the same job for the same company, has been completely static. So it's absolutely true that I couldn't afford to buy the home I own today, if I were starting from scratch.

There was another thread on this where I dug up some figures that showed, to my surprise, that London property is not really much more expensive now relative to wages than it was 30 years ago. (The figures showed rental spending as a proportion of salary not much changed. Rental costs must track property prices on average over time.)

So I can only conclude that my personal situation is explained by wages being depressed in my sector. I have seen the vast majority of IT jobs in the multinational I work for depart to lower-paid countries.

It is still possible that things are objectively a lot worse than the figures I looked at imply, if people are living in much less property now than they would have chosen to occupy 30 years ago. There are no figures for that, but if there were I think they would only change the numbers a little.

It's true that there are thousands of basically portfolio properties standing empty - there's that block by Vauxhall where only 2 people are registered to vote or something - and prices are going up and up. I myself left London for that reason.

I don't think it'll become a ghost town per se; what seems to be happening is that it is homogenising and losing its character. Immigrants cannot afford to be central; nor can artists or anybody poor who might have potential. Big parts of Soho have been developed; the rents in Chinatown are skyrocketing so that the restaurants, supermarkets etc are forced out; the music shops on Denmark Street are dwindling. This is happening all over the place. Pubs, clubs, cafes, studio spaces, specialist shops, galleries etc are closed down by developers or because they can't keep up with the rent. I question what the cache is in living in an area of London when all that makes it unique and interesting has been squeezed out, but that's just me.

Lots of creatives are leaving the city now which I think will have a huge impact. It used to be that they'd move to an affordable area - Shoreditch, Peckham, Stoke Newington etc - but those areas are now all thoroughly gentrified (partly as an effect of those creatives), and they are instead moving to Bristol, Manchester, Margate etc. I've found it crushing to survive in London on a low income: it's exhausting, you work as many hours as you can, you cannot prioritise your own creative projects and you don't have the spare energy for them anyway. London doesn't support the realities of being an artist/maker/etc - it's robbing itself of so much new talent and energy.

What I really hope is that soon London will start to lose its clout; there is increasing creative industry and life in all these other cities, and I think this will have a rejuvenating effect on their economies. What I would like is for London to be destabilised as the centre of the UK; it is barely possible to be an artist/maker there, or to bring up a family. I am incredibly grateful that I do not have to have my baby in London: there's a lot I miss but my god I'd have had to make a lot of difficult choices about my life in order to keep afloat.

We had this chat in the office at work recently, as most people are commuters. Our views were similar to the OPs. It seemed to us that most London residents are either young house-sharers or older, settled people who have been there for many years. The 30/40 year olds wanting family houses all lived outside.

No, MissBrick . That those houses will somehow become abandoned and unoccupied due to the struggle to sell.
They’ll change ownership; or they won’t. Nobody’s running for the hills.

Huh? But if it does become a ghost town the prices will fall so low that everyone move back.

And actually prices have been static or falling the last few years. We bought last year and being a buyer was quite interesting and we saw a lot of properties not shifting. It’s cyclical, always has been, and looking a tiny, tiny bit more affordable at the moment.

A friend of dh’s (mid 40’s) grew up in Balham and always laughs at how he couldn’t wait to leave - and we were so excited to buy and live in Balham!

His parents terrace is now worth 7figures.

So maybe your op holds true but it would mean living in a less desirable area that becomes “gentrified”

I visited London loads in the 80’s and places like k&c and zone 2 have always been expensive.

But yabu in “ghost town” it will just adapt and change.

No, MissBrick hmm. That those houses will somehow become abandoned and unoccupied due to the struggle to sell.
They’ll change ownership; or they won’t. Nobody’s running for the hills. Gosh I’m confused, where did I state that?

I work in property and until recently was based in central London. Yes there are properties being bought as second or third homes and so left empty for a lot of the time but of my company's portfolio of clients this was at absolute absolute most about 5%. London will never be a ghost town unless an apocalypse.

It's true that there are thousands of basically portfolio properties standing empty

"Thousands" is an insignificant proportion of the London property market.

The idea that properties are being left empty long term is mostly a myth. The mayor commissioned research that showed more than 99% of new-build properties were fully occupied within two years of the developers leaving. It was speculated that the reason for the myth is people seeing new tower blocks with most of the lights out during those first two years.

www.telegraph.co.uk/property/house-prices/almost-no-evidence-london-homes-owned-foreign-buyers-left-empty/

I also think what gets overlooked is that certainly in my lifetime (mid 30s) a lot of the housing market was driven by constant demand so people could move up the ladder propelled by low interest rates, good jobs & equity. That’s certainly how I have 400k equity, however anyone who bought where I live in the last few years (nappyvalley) won’t have seen much growth vs what they paid.

People have been predicting a house-price crash in London for years, still yet to happen.

I lived there for 30 years & in that time the population increased by nearly 3 million, to put that into context that's the same as the entire population of Greater Manchester.

Ghost town, not in any of our lifetimes.

The creative industries are still here, although you need to make sacrifices to get on and start making money at it.

But then you always did! I know people who are now top advertising creatives who started on 7k in the 90s and had two jobs.

I doubt it but it would be nice if the rest of the country got a slice of London.

I'm amused by how weirdly offended people are by this thread OP

How will London become a ghost town? Property prices are a function of demand, if nobody can afford to buy them prices will fall.They’re still buying...

People are buying, but lots of them are sitting empty.
IN a way it's not so different to holiday areas that are all "owned" but not inhabited. The super rich can buy loads of property.

All the "it's packed" comments aren't taking in to count how many people just commute to London. I live two hours aways and I know loads of London commuters. Not to mention the 19 million tourists that London gets.

That doesn't mean it won't wear away as an actual community that people grow up and raise their children in. It could turn in to some sort of financial Disney Land that people visit to make money but no one lives in.

I think OP, that a lot of business will start moving outward and that London won't always be as special as it thinks it is which will eventually make the prices drop.

My conclusion is that we shouldn't try to second-guess the market. It's OK to encourage more building to match demand, I like that lots of high-rises are going up. If we see structural inequalities than we can try and address them directly. For example, it seems wrong if over a period of 50 years we arrive at a situation where to be a Londoner you need to have had parents who left you a London property. The way to address that is through inheritance and/or gift taxes, not by interfering with property market prices.

Most of my friends from up North have all moved here.

People can either afford a house, a flat or to rent a room. With 4-6 adults in each house I don't think it risks being a ghost town.

You're just at the family stage age - which is when many love out, to be replaced by th young or rich

coffee I agree with this. As the Houses of Aparliament are crumbling I really do think the time has come for the government to move out of London and base itself in Birmingham or Manchester. It would also be no bed thing to geographically separate politics from finance.

There is a bit of an overdue price correction going on, but I don't believe prices will drop much further. In fact, I think now is probably a good time to buy. London will never be a ghost town, as a pp has said, it is the centre of everything - law, politics, technology, finance, the arts etc.
And it is costly to commute too far.

Prices won't drop or not by any large amount, they may stabalise and not increase as fast as they did.

The impact of foreign landlords/empty properties is vastly over exaggerated here.

And I love London & don’t know anything else as parents are immigrants.

pikehau I grew up near there & apart from tube there was nothing there. Where my parents bought was nice so cost about 70k in the 80s but now worth 2m or so.

If you look at census data, London is packed. The innner London areas are seeing population growth about 300k people a year, and a bit more for the outer boroughs. And that's separate from and in addition to any increase in commuter numbers.

I think you could see over a million departures from London before it would be noticeable. In terms of people that is. Pricing out key workers might be apparent sooner, but that wouid just speed up the rate of more affluent departures as London became less desirable because of scarcity of services.

"It would also be no bed thing to geographically separate politics from finance."

Would it even be possible though? Wouldn't HQs of businesses that want to be near Government all move too? After all, it's why they're in the capital in the first place - it all grew together.

I don't think so.

London is a generally low-density city compared to other capitals, and it continues to spread - see the outraged discussed about whether or not Croydon/Sutton/Thamesmead is London/Surrey, whether red buses or 020 phone numbers make it. People continue to buy/rent further out if they can't buy closer. I bought in SE because I couldn't afford NW; a friend bought in Catford because she couldn't afford Brockley, and so on.

People who are young will live in shit conditions and dense flat-shares, which at a macro level increases demand, and London remains a relatively easy place to find unskilled work.

There's a lack of investment in other areas of the country wrt infrastructure etc that continues to make London a draw.

I really wish, though, that the gov't would make it more difficult for non-residents to buy here, though, or require properties to be on sale in the country first for some period of time.