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

Just came back from celebrating Christmas with my parents. They live in one of the mes houses off hyde park.They bought it over fifteen years ago having sold their house in Wimbledon. My father us a retired academic and my mother worked p/t. They were migrants who came to London in the mid-90s without any savings. London has really changed since then. Their mews used to be full of fairly normal elderly professionals, now all the houses are rented out and they have more Tesla than you could shake a stick at

@seekinglondonlife

How do poor people manage? One of the breakfast ladies told me both her and her husband are both hotel staff (so I assume NMW) and they have 3dc (all teens). They live 15 minutes walking distance from Hyde Park. Is the housing benefit very generous here? I was under the impression that families were being forced out of London due to benefit caps.

Why would you think a working couple would be on housing benefit?

I would say the only downsides are air pollution, and noise/lots of people around you.

@Aprilx because 2XNMW cannot go far when paying the London rents?

We live near the Southern end of the Northern Line (3 stops from the end) and bought our house 15 years ago - probably couldn’t afford it now. That said, you could get a 3-bed house near us for £600,000, the area is still diverse, lots of families and good links into the centre. Areas like Streatham and SE London where there is lovely housing stock and no tube (but trains into the centre and plenty of buses) are more affordable. We could get way more space for our money out of London but we love all the things you mentioned and wouldn’t be happy elsewhere. Not to say others aren’t happier outside of London. Each to their own!

@onelittleone I had more than a passing glimpse through the windows when out on my walk and the people looked 'normal'. Sitting on the sofa watching TV or reading a book in their pyjamas. Not exactly the tuxedo wearing aristos I imagined

Zone 3 and can bike to town in 30 mins. Rent is £2,300 a month for a 4-bed of about 1,200 sq ft. Our household income is £160k-ish. You can rent a family home near us for about £1,800, but below that everything's rather small. Buying from scratch is nearly impossible at the moment.

There are still council properties in central London. Obviously not enough for everyone who wants them but they do exist and people do live in them.

Hotels have managers and other higher paid staff, @seekinglondonlife. It's not universally NMW.

I lived in emergency accommodation there and it was 14 families to one toilet and kitchen. The wait list to get out of there was around 10 years and the rent was over double what my mortgage is for a 4 bed semi in the countryside. I used to love London as a young person, but I either lived with multiple other young professionals and could afford to go out and enjoy London, or live in a studio flat and could barely afford to go out. After getting married it was a bit easier with two incomes. We were lucky with the flat that I rented, but friends were not and those that lived closer to the centre either paid extortionate amounts to do so or lived in grim and probably not legal conditions; lots of friends had mould issues, one place I looked at wasn't even big enough to fit a proper bed in the room. I go back now and the spark has definitely gone now I've gotten older. My village I moved to is going through a period of gentrification and I've met quite a lot of other mums who have moved here from London. I'm a teacher and since September we've had about 5 kids join from London too. So I think in answer to your question, many people don't manage to sustain that way of life. Certainly not without parental or spousal support.

Life long Londoner here. We live in zone 4 in a 5 bed house we bought for around £900k a year ago. We’re both very high earners (can go up to £200k if we include bonus). We moved from a zone 2 ex council flat we bought for £400k and sold for £450k. My husband is from another country where they have 100% mortgages, he sold when he moved here and made a decent profit which helped with the deposit for the zone 2 flat. Otherwise no help from family or inheritance.

We wouldn’t live anywhere else. We love it.

@seekinglondonlife

How do poor people manage? One of the breakfast ladies told me both her and her husband are both hotel staff (so I assume NMW) and they have 3dc (all teens). They live 15 minutes walking distance from Hyde Park. Is the housing benefit very generous here? I was under the impression that families were being forced out of London due to benefit caps.

It might be that they have a council/housing association property. Someone upthread mentioned that the rent for a council flat in London is £400 or so per month. Or perhaps they've inherited a property and therefore don't need to work in highly paid professions as don't have a mortgage or rent to pay?

Um they don't live in the centre basically and they don't live in nice areas. Go to Thornton Heath and have a look round, you might understand a bit more!

When I first started working I lived in house shares in Clapham, Balham. Moved to z4 when moved in with DH. Accepted an hour commute.

Both professionals on decent salaries, no way we could afford to live central.

(to answer your question: I can only afford to live here (zone 3/4) as DH got a payout due to disability and bought the house with cash)

I live in London and have three DC in a two-bed. Two DC in a two-bed is really normal. I earn about the national salary, Dh earns less. We don’t get any benefits. But we did buy nearly 20 years ago.

My DH and I have both been on 6 figure salaries since our thirties, which is why we could afford our 4 bed house in zone 3. The vast majority of people I work with in the City who earn around the 30-60k bracket (think PAs, marketing execs, administrators, back office sort of jobs) and who have families live in Essex, Kent, Hertfordshire etc and commute in to work or for leisure.

We live in SE London which is historically cheaper as no tube. We have amazing overground trains though. From my house I have access to trains into Victoria, Charing Cross, Canada Water and through to Highbury and London Bridge.

Houses are smaller for sure and a lot of my friends have bought doer uppers that they're working on over time.

We were 'lucky' as my DH inherited our house (obviously not lucky to lose a close relation young but lucky to be left a house) so we have no mortgage or rent to pay. We've also been working in London for many years on London wages which tend to be higher as well.

Day to day I don't think we spend a lot of money. There's lots that free to do in London for sure. Childcare was our biggest expense by far.

All in all though I love living here and won't be leaving any time soon.

I’m a lone parent on about 40k a year (though mh own business) and my mortgage for a 3 bed house in a lovely bit of zone 3 is £500 a month.
BUT I bought my first house in 2002 in Hackney for £166 - that’s why I can afford it now as I have a lot of equity. But I love it. I love the community, the mix of people, amazing food and culture and miles and miles of Epping 5 mins walk from my house. It just feels alive and vibrant that most other places don’t in the Uk. Plus people aren’t small minded or parochial on the whole which is a huge factor.

@seekinglondonlife they are probably older if they have teen DC so they might have bought before prices went crazy. Probably a flat too and bought under right to buy. my ex landlord was a waiter in a restaurant and he exercised right to buy but instead of living in his flat, he rented it out.

The people most likely to leave london are people in the middle tbh. I hesitate to say this but from what I observed, its mainly white british middle income people. They are most likely to have parents who have retired to the countryside or have always lived outside London so no support network for DC. That and the high house prices/high cost of childcare make moving out very tempting. Born and bred londoners like my DH with parents in London (and who belong to minority communities) are more likely to stay. Its why only 40% of London is white British.
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I live in zone 5! Even then my mortgage is enormous.

@stalkersaga I understand that. The ones I'm talking about are breakfast servers and in housekeeping, so I would assume are closer to the NMW end of the payscale.

@seekinglondonlife my MIL earns below NMW as a freelancer! she lives in london and owns her house. Bought in 1997 of course. She is 58 but I think even if she was 10 years younger, she might have still managed to buy in london, all things being equal... She was also a single mum to 4 kids practically as her husband did not work; so actually a single mum to 5 kids...

And if the breakfast server was young, he would probably be flat sharing or even room sharing.

My relative bought a flat in ' rough' areas.. they became gentrified.. they then bought again in an up and commimg area.. they now have a house with a garden .

They were quite challenging areas.