To ask how you afford to live in London?

[seekinglondonlife]

Name changed regular as my family are on MN and I don't want my posting history linked.
We decided to do Christmas in London this year, we've had a crap year and just wanted to get away. We're staying in a fairly central hotel, have been travelling around and exploring by bus everyday and I feel like I really want to move here. The diversity, having shops open on a Sunday past 5pm, the atmosphere, the ability to choose 5 or 6 different ethnic restaurants on the same street. The public transport is fantastic.

I've been looking in so many estate agents windows and cannot get over the cost of rent/to buy a property. How do 'normal' people live here? I've been friendly with a few of the hotel staff, they've lived and worked in London for 20+ years and have raised their families here, but they are on NMW jobs, so how do they do it? Does everyone get housing benefit?

If you feel inclined please say roughly where you live and how much you pay for rent/mortgage. Also what are the downsides? (Apart from the cost of housing!)

TIA

@seekinglondonlife

Also, I have seen so many blocks of what I assume are council/social housing stock. Is it easy to get these properties, or is the waiting list years long?

In the 1990s it was easy to get social housing I was a new teacher and many boroughs offered it to you . Now it isnt easy but if you are on a low income with children you can get some housing benefit

Because you have to take the train for an hour to get to London three or four times a year.

Tbf many people who commute from London into another part have an hour journey door to door.

I think my childhood was probably comparable to kids who grow up in other cities/large towns.

@thecombineharvester

On this, I think a lot of people coming from outside London don't realise that somewhere like, say, Lewisham (trains to London Bridge in 10 mins) is still really London. They think it's almost outside London and then why not live miles out and come in occasionally to shop or for a show? I felt a bit like this the first couple of years I lived here, I kept thinking every move further out would take me 'out' of London and then I'd move there and realise it was still London. I did this because I was looking for cheaper houseshares, but if you're coming from outside with money to buy you might only look as far as zone 2.

The only time I didn't feel like I was in London was when I lived in zone 4 in a very suburban area. I felt like you could be anywhere in the UK, almost - if you left the house you didn't see anyone on the streets. I eventually moved back to a much denser (still cheap) part of zone 3 and am much happier there. I think a lot of people on this thread have expressed that it's not just instant access to theatres and galleries etc that they like but the feel of living in the middle of tons of people, from everywhere in the world. I grew up in a tiny rural village and I love the anonymity of London as well as the friends I've made. I think some people like being here because they quite like - or don't mind - being squeezed into a little flat with lots of strangers all around. You really live your life outside the flat. Which was why lockdown sucked, haha.

On affordability: I moved to London in the early 2000s, saved for over a decade living in houseshares, and only managed to buy a cheapish (under 300k) rundown flat in 2016, and even then only with a bit of family help. I agree it's a bit easier if your family and roots are here, even if that just means you can live at home to save.

I think that’s entirely true about your ‘real’ or significant life usually happening outside your London living space, at least for many central Londoners. We didn’t have any outside space, but when we bought our tiny north London flat, we often took dinner in a basket across the road to the park, and lots of other people would be doing the same, from Orthodox Jewish men, to groups of Turkish grannies to crusties practising circus skills. Life in a car-dependent village, where everyone lived far more inside their own private space, and drove around in their own private transport, was in many ways far less community-minded.

And even though I’m white, I agree about the diversity. I’d never expected to be treated with suspicion as a foreigner, but in fact I got a fair amount of minor-level negativity.

[quote HaveringWavering]**@LondonMummer the OP asked a specific question about Jewish Londoners!

FWIW I am not Jewish and nothing that @onlychildhamster has said has come across to me as creating a negative impression of Jewish people that would give grounds for anti-Semitic interpretation. She’s commented on the economic reality of multi-generations of certain families living in North London, by contrast to people whose parents and grandparents did not grow up here.[/quote]
Using the term ‘Jews’ is in itself inappropriate and inflammatory. As @LondonMummer pointed out, the correct term is ‘Jewish people’.

But I do wonder how long Londoners will out up with it. With WFH and remote working plus rising interest rates becoming more normal - I can see the city becoming rubbish again. I mean we're not leaving as with one kid I literally don't know what I would do without the museums and all the activities.There is only so much time you can spend indoors playing with your kid.But I can imagine that with a more standard family set up -a lot more people might leave.

Where do we go?

@stalkersaga I definitely think there is more of a divide now but can only base it on the areas I know. So growing up virtually everyone of my neighbours & school friends were 2nd gen immigrants like me & had quite a range of jobs. My parents road has changed a lot.
I see it in my dcs primary school where the younger years are less diverse. Secondary schools are more so because lots of people leave or choose private.

It's probably due to less social housing & where families are cramped so end up getting moved out to social housing elsewhere.

I think Ealing Broadway is really buzzy

Ealing Broadway is the opposite of buzzy!

@Onelittleone a record number of FTBs left London to buy this yr or last (can't remember). It's a shame as London needs young people imo.

There's quite a few primary schools across London with falling rolls, obviously this is a wider trend due to falling birth rates but Brexit and families leaving the capital exacerbates it in London. This will
impact on funding & some schools will have to merge or close.

@Onelittleone why would the city become rubbish? People who can afford London will stay and there is a high level of inequality. They may move out to Richmond or Hampstead due to hybrid working but that's still London. The ethnic minorities will still stay; I think, they often have family and their communities here; plus the middle class of China and India is on track to outnumber the middle class in the west so a lot more educated white collar workers who would be eligible for visas and they would be needed to replace the Europeans post brexit. And some will be tempted to move given that house prices in key cities in China would be higher than London.25% of HKers who are thinking of a move to UK have London as their top destination. And of course the people who can get social housing in London would stay; it's probably better for them overall to stay in a place with cheap public transport and which is walkable and where there are plenty of service/gig economy jobs.

And the thing with a lot of commuter towns- they are very sensitive to the expansion of the town in fact they are dead against it. The Tories actually lost an election over it in amersham and chesham. In London there is much less opposition to house building, you can convert large houses into flats, you can repurpose old buildings etc. So it may be that while a lot of people might want to move out of London, the lack of supply may mean they can't without moving another 50 miles away.

I don't think London will ever be undesirable to live in.

It suits a particular sort of person though. Some people just aren't city people.

I love a holiday in the countryside and curling up by a log burner in a cosy cottage with a view of fields outside, but after a week I'm itching to get back to civilisation. I love a country walk, but I wouldn't want that to be my only option for entertainment. I love driving, but I don't want to ever be dependent on a car to get anywhere. I love peace and quiet, but not at the expense of a lack of interaction with others.

I love the buzz of London, the interaction with people of all different ages and stages of life and from a huge range of cultural and racial backgrounds. I love the anonymity but also the sense of community. I love having access to a huge variety of restaurants and shops on my doorstep. I love that I'm in a huge pulsing capital city, but I also have my own neighbourhood shops and restaurants where the owners know my name. I love that I can wander around amazing museums and galleries for free whenever I want, can go to the theatre and see incredible shows whenever I want, can see amazing music and live art and all sorts of interesting and inspiring stuff every night of the week. I love walking home late at night, when the city is quiet and lamplit, and you can feel the history of all the people who've lived here over hundreds of years all around you. I love how things are always changing and yet how much stays comfortingly the same. I love that no matter how familiar the street I'm walking down, there's always something new to notice. I love how I've lived here for 35 years and there are still parts of London I've yet to properly explore. London offers infinite possibilities. It's why I wouldn't live anywhere else.

I don't care how small my flat is or that I don't have a garden, because my life is not lived inside my home. I live in London because I love being out and about in the city. For people who are homebodies and love nothing better than pottering about at home or in the garden, I can see that living in a shoebox would be a nightmare. But for me, living in a large house and garden in a nondescript suburb or town, with nothing much to do and little diversity around it would be hell, because for me sitting indoors and just being at home is the most boring thing in the world.

@Itonlytakesonetree Hello to a fellow teacher. I lived in London at the start of my career and realized I would never be able to afford to own anywhere and would be in a shared house forever. Moved to the Midlands to be nearer family and to be able to afford my own place. We can walk to our local station and be in London in 70 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on the train, so if we want to go down for the day we can (and do, teen DC are very familiar with London museums and sights). You may not need your big girl pants, there are lots of friendly places outside London so you may not miss it as much as you fear. I love our small provincial city and the easy access to the countryside around it and we have a decent standard of living. Good luck in wherever you decide to move to.

I am a Londoner born and bred but now live in Brighton, I would say growing up in South West London initially then South, was much more hum drum, boring suburbia than my dc have in Brighton. The price for my Dad's suburbian London house is comparable if not a bit cheaper to the same kind of house where I live, in the part of Brighton I live in as it is more desirable than my Dad's area. I think there are lots of parts of the south east like that and would say it is surely more a question of how do you afford to live in certain parts of the south east. The answer being - you compromise, we have a tiny yard for outdoor space and when looking at £800000 properties in the desired areas of Brighton the garden becomes only slightly bigger of course no parking although oddly we do have a drive.

My DH is from Camden and his grandparents had a place in Hampstead Heath so inheritance helps. A PP said that born and bred Londoners don't move out of London that's not my experience at all.

What I mean is that until Covid etc, families did put up with living in flats with kids due to the shower commute and say nice schools.Will these same people stay put? Seeing as FTB in London are professionals in their early 30s that means that quite a few people have left. I know people always left but I do wonder who will be left. Whilst a lot of people talk about six fatigue salaries, lots of londoners work in the civil service, architecture, academia, schools, medicine etc......these are all professionals but not everyone will automatically earn six figures once they hit 35/40.

I wouldn't say rubbish but I do remember the decline of the high streets during the recession & lots of areas took a while to regenerate. People with money but not enough will move out & you were probably have more pronounced inequality.

I think the main issue will be that the people are moving are more likely to be young FTBs or those with young families. Remote working in some form is here to stay & we are likely to see more pandemics in the future.

@EnidSpyton do you live very centrally? Personally I think for most people in z4 outwards their lives aren't very different to those living in other large towns/cities.

And we have the same problem with falling birth rates and the closing of schools as a result. It is a problem regardless of being in London or not. As it happens there was a huge campaign to save my DDs infant school so for now it is staying open but who knows what the future will hold and this is because it is very central and in an unaffordable area of Brighton.

Using the term ‘Jews’ is in itself inappropriate and inflammatory. As @LondonMummer pointed out, the correct term is ‘Jewish people’.

@SouthernFashionista I didn’t use the term “Jews”. You quoted my entire post and I said “Jewish people” throughout.

@onlychildhamster is Jewish. She used the term, surely she has the right to call herself whatever she wants? My point was about the substance of her comments regarding the fact that many Jewish families in N London have lived there for generations so bought their houses when they were cheap. I could say exactly the same about my Trinidadian neighbour who bought a house identical to ours on the salary of a sheet metal worker in 1965. 50 years later we two highly paid professionals needed a substantial mortgage to do the same.

A PP said that born and bred Londoners don't move out of London that's not my experience at all.

True, all of my friends from growing up & DHs have left London, some of their parents still live here.

Yes, lots of parents living there still so an ageing population of baby boomers in the homes that are family homes anyway. My brother lives in North London and they can very much afford it but they are probably one of the youngest couples who own a house on their street and they are in their 40s.

@EnidSpyton I am a homebody but I love London. Even the biggest homebody needs to step out of the house and interact with their surroundings and people; if not it would just be like jail. But what you have on offer in London is just better - better museums, better restaurants, more interesting shops and a bigger selection. So you look forward to getting out more. If I lived in a town, i would probably not want to walk around the same town centre or go for the same country walk (as I learned during lockdown).I dont find country walks that interesting anyway.I would probably become a hermit and that would be bad for my overall mental health even if I lived in the biggest house.

We pay around £1000 on shared ownership mortgage and rent in a zone 2/3 area that used to be extremely shabby but has gentrified massively. We can't afford to buy the rest unfortunately so I guess we'll raise the kids here and then buy a 1 bed somewhere shit with our equity! Or move out of London!

[quote gettingto]@EnidSpyton do you live very centrally? Personally I think for most people in z4 outwards their lives aren't very different to those living in other large towns/cities. [/quote]
Yes. I live in zone 1, just on the fringes of the City.

I agree entirely. As I said upthread, that's why I'd never live outside of zone 2 myself. Living in the outer suburbs of London, in my view, is pointless, because you're paying a premium to live somewhere that's not really London and is no different to any other suburban town anywhere else in the country. Having grown up in zone 5, I know of what I speak. It took over half an hour to get into central London on the train and the reality was most people rarely went into London for anything other than work. As a child my parents took me and my siblings into London very rarely. We lived where we did because my parents had grown up there and our family were there - neither of my parents actually worked in central London, so our connection with the city itself was very limited and my parents didn't much like going there. Most of my friends' families were the same. I taught in the London suburbs for a while and I was shocked by how many of my students had never been to London 'proper'. I really don't understand why so many people live in London suburbs and pay the associated higher housing costs when they don't get any benefit from what London has to offer. It makes no sense to me at all.

I think Ealing Broadway is really buzzy

Sorry this tickled me too 🤣

@Thisisworsethananticpated

I think Ealing Broadway is really buzzy

Sorry this tickled me too 🤣

Yes I grew up in Ealing. Ealing Bdy itself now is awful!