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.

Record numbers of people their 30s and 40s are leaving London but....there are also record numbers of people their 30s and 40s living in London.

The population of the city has increased greatly in the past two decades. There are just more people doing everything.

I think large scale new developments like imperial wharf are a bit of a misleading guide. They are popular with certain foreign buyers who like things being big, new and shiny.
Much smaller scale new builds don't seem to have this - someone has just built a block of nine flats in the corner of my street and they are all occupied including at least two families with small kids. Another small development nearby on some old garages also seems to have lots of people coming and going.
Some friends live in a fairly large development on the old hospital at mile end which is still being built and it is packed with young families.
Brits tend to not want to live in large gated communities, I think. So the imperial wharf style stuff is just not to taste.

I think other large cities will get some benefits from a push to look outside London (Bristol house prices have taken sharply for example) but lots of small towns are doomed, really. Cities are the future in a knowledge based economy where workers will change jobs regularly - you need economies of scale and flexibility by having a large potential work force to recruit from.

To to be able to live in London you either need to be either above average earners or on full benefits.

Born and bred in east London, was renting a 3 bed downstairs maisonette for £395 a week. Cost of childcare was sky high. Wages were not rising in line with costs. Moved to rural village in the west of England and now renting a 4 bed semi for £575 a month

Wages are not as high (both teachers) but cost of living is so much better.

Didn’t want to leave London, my friends and family but I’d no choice.

but it is showing the reduction in new jobs and a pattern thats mirrored across so many industries

Again, you're misunderstanding, it's a huge base that is still growing, so you would expect to see a reduction in growth as the base increases. At some point they approach saturation point. They aren't there yet. But it's irrelevant, the base is so big.

And new companies are choosing to set up there and contributing to that growth, and with it the population increases.

London is heaving because rents are heavily subsidised by housing benefit or LHA and so many low paid workers are subsidised with tax credits so they can afford to stay. That keeps a floor on rents so landlords can still make a mint and business doesn't have to pay a proper wage. Take away all these artificial props designed to funnel money to the wealthy and rents and the cost of living would fall as we would see real price discovery (the actual market rate, not the subsidised market rate).

I think in certain areas house prices might have plateaued or dipped slightly but around where I live (North London) everything is selling within a few weeks.

Same with friend in another area and another friend in another area altogether.

I think by reading the headlines and looking at the reality there is either some over dramatic or very poor journalism going on or it is fake news.

Read an article last year about a house being reduced by £1Million. If I remember the figures correctly. I think it was to show how house prices are crashing. I know the area and the road even after its £1million price reduction it was still about £100,000 over priced.

It wasnt a one off designer house it was a house in a cul de sac that was the same as the next house and the next one etc which were going for about £700,000.

Isn't there a problem with companies moving to other EU offices after BREXIT.

I read somewhere that a lot of senior people didn't want to relocate.

That's true - a crazy proportion of renting households in London get LHA, including many with two adults working full time. This certainly distorts the picture. (And we're all collectively paying for it - yay.)

Again, you're misunderstanding, it's a huge base that is still growing, so you would expect to see a reduction in growth as the base increases. At some point they approach saturation point. They aren't there yet. But it's irrelevant, the base is so big.

I'm not just because I dont agree with you. City jobs are now growing faster in other places outside of london for the first time. This is significant, along with some insitutiuons saying they are leaving a small base of people in london and investing in other cities.

I'm looking at early trends and the knock on affects in the long term future, not tomorrow.

Agree about housing benefit, its not a popular view on MN but it is proping up rents. You either need to be rich or poor to bring up a family in london. Those in the middle have a tough time unless they bought at reasonable prices a while ago.

I think it would be a good thing if people start moving out of London. Living in a big city isn't for everyone but a lot of people love it.

Good point re the change in flexi working & working from home. I think younger generations seem to expect this more. My sibling is freelance & was working for a company in London who decided to keep him in remotely whilst he worked in Spain for 3 months. I couldn’t imagine that & it opens up a world of different places to live.

I WISH it would become a ghost town. Yet alas rising property prices/over population/rubbish transport network still doesn't put people off from flocking here. Its overstuffed as it is and keeps getting fuller. Government needs to do FAR moreand quickly to offer massive incentives- to businesses/families/home owners etc to move to other parts of the country and stop making everything so London-centric. It cant cope- just too many people everywhere.

@kewcumber I meant of high profile buildings in the middle of town, rather than new build flats etc - but using the top end of the market in this way pushes prices up further down

London is also heaving because they get a disproportionate amount of funding and money invested compared to the rest of the country which attracts more people in.

I think there needs to be a rent cap in London tbh to drive down the prices.

People of my parents age could get a nice house in zone 2 on one wage.
I don't know how old you or your parents are but I couldn't afford a house anywhere and moved North in 1987 so I could buy a house in a decent area.

By anywhere I meant anywhere in London or surrounding areas Kent/ Essex.

I think reforming housing benefit to make it a short term emergency measure rather than a long term benefit would drive down price. Not sure how that would be done without alot of pain though. Thanks gordon!

i love the city lifestyle so if we did relocate it would definitely be too another city. Friends & neighbours have gone to Bristol, Edinburgh & Manchester. Another is looking at Birmingham (HSBC).

my parents moved to london in the late 70s, wasn't late 80s another housing bubble?

To echo other posters my dad had a good job so could afford the 5 bed on the leafy street in the 80s. However plenty of my school friends lived in 3 bed terraces with only 1 parent working & the income partner was a police officer, teacher etc. Normal jobs. Now you need what an income of 200k to afford that?

wasn't late 80s another housing bubble? Yes, and astronomical mortgage interest rates with Endowment Policies as standard. So much for my generation having it easy.

As long as people want to live there, prices will stay high. When they don't, prices will fall. London will never be a ghost town as long as so many jobs are there.

It comes and goes. The little 3 bed terraced we bought in zone 5 in 1984 can be bought on the same wages today of the same people - London lawyer and head of dept teacher. Even in 1984 we could not afford a house in Ealing so had to live further out. London comes and goes in terms of population and popularity. Rents and house prices are currently falling in London.

In 1984 my midwife could not believe we owned our house as most people rented of our age! It was so hard to get teachers to move form the North we started life in a school flat and local nurses lived in the nurse's home as rents and house prices were out of reach for many in 1984.

However I certainly accept it is hard today. My son's 2 bed house in Chesham (on the tube - just) cost £325k about a year ago. Soho 1 bed flat to rent can be £24k.

City jobs are now growing faster in other places outside of london for the first time. This is significant, along with some insitutiuons saying they are leaving a small base of people in london and investing in other cities

It's not because it's only growing faster in terms of percentages, it's not growing faster in terms of actual numbers of jobs. Does that make sense? And it's not about growth in isolation, it's about the size of the base also. London's base is huge and still growing. It needs to plateau, but even then it will still dwarf all the other cities and then some. Seeing percentage growth in other cities does not mean London is declining. It's not. The number of new jobs there still far outweighs the number of new jobs elsewhere. You need to look at the absolute number and not the percentage.

@freegazelle @dearreme

Of course graduates get bored after 5 years living in a cramped shared house - but that's not a London thing - that's a city thing. I can say the same of all my friends who once lived in the centre of Birmingham, Edinburgh, Bristol...

Yy missbrick. Might not have been in the "nice areas" that glamorousgrandmother wanted to buy in, but places like Hackney, Harringey, Brixton etc all had plenty of ordinary people buying houses even 25 years ago. No chance of that now.

Where I live (highest economically city in the country allegedly) the local residents are being priced out daily. It's horrendous. 'Luxury' homes going up everywhere and rents completely out of reach - and the average life expectancy varies by 10 years from one part to another less than 4 miles away. Economic growth is fabulous, but not at the expense of those who have lived here all their lives. Very sad.