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.

"Lies! Unless you want to live somewhere with no jobs or spend hours a day commuting."

Not lies. Go take a look at lots of places in zone 5/6 on good lines.

Bitter and twisted that you'rte not here and couldn't get on the ladder I think.

There are plenty of opportunities, you have to look for them, but you always did, the naice areas have always been expensive and the ones that people talk about being affordable back then, weren't naice areas.

I remember how Crouch End was grotty bed sit land, Finsbury Park had huge levels of poverty and they had to lay in certain bollards and kerb heights to stop kerb crawlers and prostitution. I remember when Kilburn and Queens Park were rough as old boots, and when Notting Hill wasn't desirable.

But no I'm telling lies, all because it doesn't fit the narrative you want.

I think there'll always be people who have no better option that to take a low-paid job in a place where housing or travel costs swallow up most of their meagre income leaving them in poverty. The rich and powerful will make sure that doesn't change.

I understand you Op, Londoners are being priced out so the only people that can afford to get on the housing ladder in London seem to be wealthy businessmen/women or from abroad.

@howabout

The last figures that I saw was 22% on housing benefit, 33% private renting and the rest ownership.

But a massive chunk of those on housing benefit will be council tenants, and many others will be through housing associations.

The idea that you can simply use housing benefit to rent a flat privately in London now, hence keeping rents high, is not correct. As I said there's a massive cap between housing benefit caps and market rent price. Every ad for a flat in London has NO DSS written next to it.

Overseas investors (12%) do not take into account EU investors. In reality these will be a much larger chunk.

free looks like same figures I am quoting - your 22% on HB is as a percentage of total HH rather than just renters.

Where I live the 2 bed HB cap is £500 pm. Public sector pricing / rationing and subsidy inevitably affects the "market" rates in the private sector.

There were plenty of affordable areas in my youth that were maybe not naice but defo safe & still affordable.

I do think that some of the drift from London is couples who live in London but leave when they have kids because they think London is a bad place to have children. I know people like this, not priced out as such but simply have no concept that you would, could or should bring up a family in the inner city. The pollution is an issue, to be sure, but the schools are better, the facilities and services are better, commutes are shorter, transport options more varied.

To the poster upthread querying my thought about separating government from finance geographically - well, it’s how it is in the US and Germany, to name a couple, so I don’t see why it couldn’t happen here. And the distances are hardly epic! I daresay thee are politicians and financiers who wouldn’t want it to happen, but that’s no reason why it shouldn’t. Too many people in our country feel that the rich on London don’t care about them, don’t listen to them, and I daresay they are right to think that.

@river

I'd love to live in London, its my heart and home. I wouldn't even care about the zone or the place. But my higher than average wage would give me a mortgage of 150k max. I've searched and you can barely get a 2 bed flat anywhere for 250k.

You have to have two high earners to buy in London now.

People here are saying houses for 400K in some areas is "reasonable" but even that would take 2 people earning 50k.

free, yes exactly that. When we bought in 1984 we needed about that - the equivalent in 1984 to buy the house we bought which today costs about £400k here in outer London - so you needed t be a trainee or newly qualified lawyer (me) and head of department teacher (him). I, my daughter, my parents - all of us had to buy with two full time salaries and before children arose in 1961, 1984 and today

surely you need to earn a lot more than 50k to qualify for a 400k mortgage? Unless you had a 30% deposit?

@Miss

Not sure, I was going by 4x annual salary which I heard was the max mortgage

@Xenia

I guess it depends where and what, but my Grandma got a lovely 3 bed Edwardian semi near Barnes on a single teachers salary 60 years ago. My dad got a 4 bed doer-upper nearby on a single teachers wage in the 80s, around the same time my mum got a nice two-bed flat in Kilburn on single junior doc wage. Wouldn't be possible now.

Its a fact that the wage to house price ratio has increased dramatically, so I don't think it could have been always the same!

freegazelle oh right you mean 2 earning 50k so 100k income.

Agree free. My early 90s newly qualified salary afforded a 2 bed flat in Central London on x 3.5 earnings multiple. Just checked today's rates and the equivalent multiple for the same job and flat is x 10.

Yes we paid about 450k for what is now 800k 7 yrs ago, salary probably dropped a bit (I earn less & pt) & disposable income defo less due to 1k childcare costs a month

Deptford certainly wasn't gentrified when I lived there in the late 70s/80s I could just about have afforded a flat over a shop in the high street. If it has been gentrified it will be even more expensive. I also knew people in Islington and Stoke Newington in grotty bedsits and squats - most likely multi-million pound properties now.

I'm just saying people leaving London isn't a new thing so maybe the op is right.

I agree it is currently very hard but it does go up and down. We sold three properties in London at a loss in the 1990s including our last home (I am London's worst property owner I suspect).

You can now borrow at under 3% interest so it is not as straight forward as £400k today paying under 3% interest over 30 years on a 95% mortgage and £40k then if interest rates then were 12% and 2.5 joint salaries and hard to get if you were female. If your interest elemen is a quarter of what is used to be but the property costs 10x more but you can borrow over 30 years and can borrow 4x or more on one salary it is not a straight forward sum to work out who is worse off. However I am not saying it isa nice and easy today. I have 3 children who bought in their 20s recently and I know exactly what hte market is like and I think stamp duty is far too high in London and that that is very unfair as if you were buying a one bed flat in say Sunderland where I have relatives SDLT would be different. It should be based on average values of a small 3 bed semi not just on monetary values even after the recent lowering for first time buyers which as ever did not benefit my older 3 as they bought just too early for it.

Does anyone think those buying the flat today for 400k in zone 3 will be able to afford the house in zone 4 for 600k particulary with the threat of interest rises & tax hikes (nhs). I think that’s a lot of the problem, prices have hit the ceiling & things are stagnating plus virtually everywhere has gentrified in terms of prices.

of course it wont

it may be devoid of people like you living there. not the same thing
a ghost town is a deserted place.

I also think where the house prices have been manageable (ish) due to low interest rates what happens when they do start to rise? I actually wanted to upsize last year but I was worried as it wouldnt have been a long term move & I didn’t want to get caught out. If it was a long term less of a problem. Going to do the loft instead.

free a Rightmove search just bought up over 300 2 bed properties for £250k and under. Mostly in east and south east London. None in West or north London, not surprisingly. Up it to £300k and there’s over 1000. And that doesn’t even stretch out to the furthest suburbs. Good number in zones 2 and 3.

I’m a born and bred Londoner in my 40s and I’ve never even considered living in inner north or west London, though I did live in Camden as a student.

I agree that stamp duty should be different in London.

River did you actually browse any of the listings - fixer uppers, cash buyers only, BTLers only and shared equity.

Well, the first page has a couple of cash buyers only, but most seem to be regular flats for sale. And what’s the matter with a fixer upper? People at all levels of purchasing may well have to get a fixer upper for their money.

The people who sold my son his house in Chesham moved further out - I have now forgotten where. This is historically very common too. Even in the 1980s I worked with law firm partners who lived in Kent, Herts, Brighton even, Cambridge, Oxford (and one in Chiswick who had family money and had lived there for years and another in Notting Hill who had no children or financial commitments or school fees so probably have a bit more spare money).

What has changed in some jobs is the people who got the 7.15am train for 40 years from their local country railway station and were always on the 5.45pm back in some higher paid jobs in London will often have to work such long hours the long commute is not so easy although even inthe 80s there was a partners' flat above the office where they could stay the night if they had to work late. Interestingly I noticed rents in Soho recently for a one bed flat not too different from a bit further out (although more expensive than here in zone 5) so may be there is a downward pressure on rents in London at the moment as people leave. I think in the 90s people left too.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_London 1931 London was as full as now. My grandfather's sister trained as a nurse in the 1880s and moved down to London for work purposes from the NE and worked at St George's Hospital almost until she died in 1933. Her nieces had also moved down to London by then too and one of her brothers was there for a time. I think we had a market crash in 1929 (when 3 of her brothers moved to the USA and Canada and did badly and died out there) so people were probably moving into London for work. 1951 it looks as high a population as now too in London. It is interesting how it comes and goes.