Sick of Manchester rental costs

[Cinammonroll]

I know it's one of the biggest cities and there are many jobs here, but it's just not affordable to rent.
I take home about £1750 net per month, I'm looking for a better paid job.
If we're supposed to be spending roughly a third of our pay on accommodation.. the most I could afford would be a houseshare, or a small bedsit with everything in one room.
If you want a flat that's more affordable, you're looking at approx 10 miles away from the city centre. Even flats in inner city undesirable areas are expensive.
I live with my partner luckily and split costs. However our rent has just increased by £175 pcm. Yes we'll get a small payrise in April, but it doesn't match the costs.
I've just been on rightmove and looked at rent in places like Blackpool. I know it's a more deprived area, but rent is astronomically cheaper than Manchester.
I'm contemplating leaving the city, obviously depemds on my partner too but it's just not affordable at all.
We went to view a crappy 1 bed flat for 575 without any utilities or council tax, and were told we were one of 12 visits that afternoon.
Has anybody else found this and decided to move to a cheaper area?

OP, I Wasn’t sure I agreed with you at first as we rented a 2 bed flat a 20 min tram ride from manc city centre 6 years ago for £500 and I had a quick look in a few places i know for you and there was either nothing available or starting at £800 to £850 or completely luxury for £1300 plus.

Youre right rent has gone up a lot.

anyone who thinks private rented accommodation now is both expensive and scarce needs to look at what is coming down the line for private landlords. One of the reasons that rents are going up is that more and more people who have been AST landlords in the past are coming out of the sector and either selling up or if they are in holiday areas converting the rented properties to holiday lets. The pendulum has swung so far in favour of tenants that being a landlord now is just way too risky particularly in city centres. whilst there are some lovely tenants around. there are some who are not. they move in and dont pay rent and it takes months and months - 18+ - to evict. during which time, not only have they not paid the rent they have caused damage. In addition, the govt is hell bent on introducing new EPC standards which relate to energy efficiency and are such that many older properties just will not be able to meet the new standard without throwing thousands and thousands at them. so pretty soon, a lot of those older, solid rental homes in cities and very rural areas (stone built ones) wont be able to be rented and the numbers available for people to rent will drop again. Being a landlord is a business like any other. it has to wash its face financially and cover fixed and variable costs as well as generate a profit. you only need one non payer in a small portfolio to lose two years worth of income. Its never been more attractive as an AST landlord to come out of the sector and yet the govt have no intention of encouraging landlords to stay in and instead not only are they driving them out but at the same time they arent putting any policies in place to provide these "lost" homes elsewhere. Unless someone in govt has the balls to swing the pendulum a bit the other way, this is going to get so much worse. and yes, I know that there are scummy landlords as well but the reason they exist is because the council completely and utterly fail to enforce the laws that already exist against them.

575 is cheap as chips for rent. I cant see you renting anywhere half decent even further out for less than that

It's not a race to the bottom. My rent in London was £1675 for a 1 bed flat. 7 years ago. My mortgage on a small 3 bed terraced 40 miles out of London is £1670.

People pay much, much more than you & your partner do, and earn a very similar amount to you.

Doesn't sound too bad to me. I pay £866pm for a tiny studio flat in London and I live alone. It's also above a shop and that's cheap compared to a lot of other studios in the same area.

exactly.. my rent was £2150 pcm in London, i now commute for circa 1.45hr 5 times a week, each way and own a house with a £685 mortgage. These are the choices we just have to make.

tbh i live in z3 london (45 minute commute) and we are closer to our workplace than the majority of our colleagues. Its not that we necessarily earn more (DH's boss has a 1.5 hour commute but thats because he has a house in a commuter town, rather than our flat). A lot of higher earning people may live further out because the housing stock they want is only available for £2 million in z3. Yes you can get a terraced house at £1.4 million but you can easily get a detached outside the M25. And on higher salaries, the commuting costs are a far lower percentage.

However, for people on a lower budget, this isn't the case. The flats and small terraces outside London in a commuter town 1.5 hours away are not cheap enough to even account for the increased commuting costs.So it is cheaper to buy a small 2 bed flat in London than buy a small terraced outside London esp when you account for two people's commuting costs. However, many people choose to move further out despite it being more expensive because there is the lifestyle factor and the fact that people want to live in a house even if its not big. I do know someone who did the reverse- rented a house in surrey 1.5 hours away but bought a 1 bed flat in Canary Wharf! He says its a total gamechanger!

575 for a 1 bed flat?????????
I’m moving to Manchester!!
I live in London. A lot of people spend about half their pay on rent here. Whoever stocks this high rent/house prices thing needs to realise it’s a way of strangling an economy as people don’t have money to spend on anything else and it’s just making landlords rich… oh wait, I get it.
check how many MPs are landlords….

It's sad that people are just resigning themselves to such situations, happy to pay over half their income on rent.

DS(30)is single and houseshares in the city centre, his room is quite small but I don't think it is a huge amount he pays, he realises that if he wants to live in the city centre this is what he has to do, he is quite happy about it though and has a good life. £575 sounds cheap for two people

I understand completely OP, I moved here over a decade ago and the increase in rents and house prices in that time has been absolutely batshit. As you have also found there is so much competition for properties, its taken a friend 6 weeks of turning up to see places with 15-20 other people interested before she's found a house share.

Being from London originally I had hoped the rest of the country could learn something from the housing shit show down there.

Public transport here is also getting worse for connectivity to the cheaper areas, with cuts to bus routes. Anywhere on the, admittedly excellent, tram network is hundreds of points more expensive than the area next door.

Exactly. Leigh and Wigan (the two locations mentioned by OP) are absolute shitholes. Not nice places to live at all, and not well connected

Don't worry about paying more to live in your SE commuter towns and SW market towns, I guarantee you don't want to live in Wigan

Don't move to Blackpool.

Preston is about 50 minutes from Manchester, if you want to live in a city, and much cheaper. This place near the station and the (huge) park is £400 a month (I'm sure you could get nicer, this is just for illustration).

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/129686213#/?channel=RES_LET

If you want a pleasent little town Chorley is closer on the same line. This one is in Addlington, 35 min by train from Picadilly. £475 isn't cheap for the area but I suppose that's because it's right next to the station.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/130834277#/?channel=RES_LET

What else can we do? What else are you doing about it?

They aren’t happy to, a lot of the time they HAVE to. The south of England is extortionate almost everywhere.

@mummymeister well put though does not solve the immediate problem. I'd support an end to any more holiday lets in some areas.

The £175 a month rent increase seems steep even allowing for inflation.

I'm not sure what you can do about it though. £575 seems the going rate for a major city centre parking space never mind a flat.

Yep, the old southerners-have-it-good is beginning to be exposed for the lie it is I think!

SOME. PEOPLE. DONT. HAVE. A. CHOICE. 👏🏼

You however do. So you can look for something better. Expect to pay more money for it.

For what it's worth, I don't live in London. I live in a pretty run down East Midlands city. And £575 is still very very cheap around here. Even with a long commute. This is what renting in 2023 is like (and has been for the last 5-6 years at least).

My god all the race to the bottom posts from people living in London. It's absolute shit having to pay the rents in London and make the compromises associated with it. Moving to Manchester 15 years ago was a bloody revelation and its so sad to see the city going the same way. When I started my first job up here everyone over 20 was a home owner! Small sample I know but my mind was blown. I really feel for the young people today, especially those on minimum wage or who are tied to an area through shift work and public transport limitations.

Pay more and go for something like this.
15 mins on the train into town and the bus to Oldham in the other direction.
www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/130527332#/?channel=RES_LET

Don't look on OpenRent. Failsworth (M35 but actually Oldham) has some insane rents.

High rents are bad for the economy but indicative of a system having too much pressure exerted on it.

@mummymeister Not usually one to say we need to look after landlords better but eviction needs to be quicker. For that, support and social housing needs to increase and improve otherwise homelessness will just increase and Putting families/people long term in B&Bs isn’t an answer.
who is benefitting? Or is it sheer incompetence and ‘short termism’ from government?

Agreed 🤬

I don't live in Manchester or London. You are being unreasonable to expect low rent for a lively and bustling city like Manchester. Like you say, you can move to Blackpool and rent for a lot less. Moving to a cheaper area is a move a lot of us have made.