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

@Houseofvelour I agree with what @simonjt says. It’s not a straight equivalence between a 5 bed house and a “tiny” one bedroom flat. There is lots of middle ground. However for you, it sounds like “detached” is a big deal. Detached property is of course harder to find, and eye-wateringly expensive, in London. There is, however, lots and lots of terraced Victorian housing stock (some of which is also eye-wateringly expensive, with beautiful rear extensions making them pretty spacious) but some people find it too hard to get over the association between terraces and lower working class Coronation Street life, or have concerns about neighbour noise, or can’t get their heads round not having external access to their back garden, or a driveway with off street parking.

I grew up in a Victorian terrace in a small regional city, and it was quite a prestigious street in my home town. By contrast the detached houses locally were mostly a bit 1970s boxy soulless housing estate style.

My husband and I were talking the other day about how much we gain on heating costs having both sides of the house insulated by our neighbours. Similarly, parking in the street is what I grew up with, it means I am a parallel parking ninja and I much prefer that to reversing on to a driveway. We would like to have somewhere to charge an electric car though.

@onlychildhamster you’ve lost me re no CGT on the sale of London property, but tax payable elsewhere in the U.K. Aren’t the tax rules are the same nationwide- no CGT payable on the sale of your primary residence?

@HaveringWavering yes, detached is quite important to me as I have Tourette's and before being detached, was constantly anxious about disturbing the neighbours (I'd had a few complaints).
We spend an absolute fortune on heating as we live in a house built in the 1800's with high ceilings so I can see the appeal of terraced.
I live in a lovely area with lots of terraced housing.

@HaveringWavering well yes. That PP's point was you would spend less on property outside London. My point was that spending more money on your primary residence assuming property holds its value and you sell up later on would attract less taxes than someone who spent less on primary residence and bought a BTL/invested in shares.. the only issue I suppose is your primary residence is extremely illiquid. In the present environment, inflation would erode your savings by 5 % year on year so you have to minimize the amount of cash in your bank account and most people with spare money would invest or buy additional properties. I also think that the government are more likely to tax those investments activities than people's homes and in the present situation, they probably need to given that the higher rate tax base is actually quite small for a country the size of the UK..

I don't think it's that different to "naice" areas outside London especially in Southeast. If you look at smaller cities or well connected suburbs in Oxford, Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester.. even in the home counties and popular market towns in Sussex, Herts, Bucks etc. They are as pricey (sometimes more expensive) as a z5/6 equivalent house plus £30-£60 for a return train ticket. It only gets cheaper if you go for a village that will add parking costs / a lot of time whenever you need to commute. (Or you are wealthy enough to give up your job to chauffeur DC etc around)