To wonder how expensive London will get in the next few years?

[ComingUpTrumps]

I travel into London every day for work and have found it getting more and more expensive (it is already very expensive of course).

I love London - the restaurants, museums, theatres, galleries, parks etc - but it is so expensive to travel around the city and to live there.

AIBU to think London and the surrounding counties will just get more and more expensive to live in over the next few years?

The reason I ask this is also because I’m curious about how we can manage this. I guess it’s partly the responsibility of the mayor of London to manage things like transport costs and to stop them from getting too high (although I realise TFL is really struggling for funding after the pandemic) and housing, but I definitely think it’s also the government’s job.

YANBU - London is crazy expensive. It might well get more expensive in the next few years - I expect it will. Especially with ongoing inflation and the fact that it’s still a very desirable place to work and live in for lots of people.

Pretty depressing thread 😭 the U.K. is definitely getting pricier. I’m thinking of moving from where I live atm (Home Counties, so not London but not far away) to somewhere cheaper, as house/travel costs have just got ridiculous.

YANBU - it’s absolutely savage. London and particularly the immediate surrounds are painfully expensive and it has definitely worsened rapidly.

Agree :( it is so pricey now. I’m hoping something can be done to make it more affordable for people to live here though.

DS lives in London and definitely TFL have made transport / buses more expensive and less freely available. Not necessarily pandemic - Ds thinks over promising and not enough in the pot. CoL living don't know I am not sure a grocery shop is more expensive but rent / mortgage just keep an eye out for areas you like. Some have gone down in price . Not all.

YANBU at all. My rest increased almost 20% last year and my council tax 15% to a total of £900 monthly, combined. That’s for a 2BR housing association flat. I’m waiting to see what happens this year.

Going even to my local cinema costs a fortune, never mind into the city.

I’m seeing a time when I have to claw my way to a higher income or say goodbye 🤷🏽‍♀️.

According to Forbes London isn't even in the top 10 of the world's most expensive cities.

Ah really sorry to hear that - that’s a really tough situation. Housing costs are becoming pretty unsustainable.

Our salaries are too low. There needs to be more correction but that drives more inflation so it is difficult to implement . Its all a plan to inflate away the covid debt.

Yep - the problem is that wages here aren’t increasing in line with prices. Our economy is stagnant while inflation is high.

I’ve lived in a couple of other cities (Toronto, Berlin) and while COL was similar or higher (Berlin rents were lower, Toronto rents were higher) wages were much higher in both cities, both in real terms and in terms of purchasing power.

People in quite normal jobs had significantly higher living standards than they do over here. Bigger houses, better cars, more discretionary spending power.

My husband grew up in Crystal Palace (1990s) He doesn't recognise it now as it's so gentrified. London has always been stupidly expensive as one of the world's great cities in a relatively expensive country. It isn't going to get any cheaper.

I was struck when reading Raymond Briggs’ (The Snowman) cartoon type story of his parents (Ethel and Ernest*) that in the pre war 1930s his parents - father a milkman, mother a housewife - were able to buy a 3 bed terraced house in Wimbledon.
Dh grew up not far away in Wimbledon and knows the street. Such houses would now almost certainly fetch £1m.

*BTW for anyone unfamiliar, a wonderfully entertaining but also very moving read.

It's becoming ridiculous. We are switching more and more to really basic days/nights out or visiting friends at home because going out and doing things is just so expensive. A couple of drinks and a pizza in a mid-range restaurant plus a cinema ticket and a round of drinks afterwards is easily approaching the £100 mark each, whereas pre-pandemic we'd budget £120-150 for a slap up meal or good meal and cocktails.

We are lucky in a way it's generally just us doing it as adults. I can't imagine the costs involved in taking children on a day out now. Even if it's a free museum, lunch for an adult and a couple of kids is probably the majority of our household's weekly food budget.

Public transport within London isn't expensive. Yes, the prices have increased but it's still not expensive. I remember explaining to a non-Londoner that the temporary £2 bus fare that was adopted in most of the country didn't apply in London - because London bus fares were less than £2.

If that is 900 for both bedrooms, you are in luck. DS is paying more than 900 pcm for a room in a flat with no living room, bills on top. More than half his graduate take home pay just for a roof over his head and a tiny kitchen with no space to sit and eat! It's insane. But he just loves London so much. It is still a great city.

Not for me, I live in a council house in London (know I will get hate for that 😂) and I find travel very cheap and kids are free!

I agree about public transport. My 40 minute commute into London via mainline train is more than double what I used to pay travelling from Zone 4 to the same destination via the Underground. Also the bus - less than two pounds for the bus? It costs me £8 to go by bus from where I live to the next nearest town.

I find supermarket food is also cheaper compared to where I live.

Everything else is more expensive, though. No hope for anyone in the near future.

I agree that bus fares are okay - especially because you pay a flat rate for one bus journey, no matter how far you’re travelling, and because of the ‘hopper’ fares where you can change buses 2 or 3 times (can’t remember exactly) in an hour for the same price as just taking one bus. It’s just tubes/trains that are more expensive (I understand why, as they are more convenient than buses, most of the time).

Ahh what do you mean about inflating the Covid debt?

Such a good point re house price inflation @GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER (and on a side note, I’d love to read that story - I remember hearing about it when it was adapted into a cartoon for TV a few years ago).

I think houses will get more and more expensive in the UK (particularly around London and the South East, and other capitals or big cities e.g. Edinburgh, Manchester, York). I am concerned that we will get to a point very soon where more people are renting than buying, and not able to buy because places are not affordable for them. I think we’re already very close to that point.

That will obviously affect things like peoples decisions and abilities to start a family, because they might not feel they have enough space to raise a family or enough money to do so - which is of course affecting the birth rate.

I think if this government is serious about doing something about the birth rate, they need to make childcare cheaper (separate issue, I know, and not easy to do), raise wages and make housing cheaper (again not easy to do).

I think house building will need to get amped up significantly and planning rules will likely need to change a lot too. Having said that, it’s hard to tell when this will happen - if ever, as it’s such an unpopular political decision. No one wants houses built or massively revamped or extended, on their doorstep.

Even visiting has become extortionate. I used to go every year for 3-5 nights but accommodation prices seem to have mire than doubled since COVID. I'm talking 2* hotels, not the Ritz. It's cheaper to go abroad.

more people are renting them buying though. I'm from York but live in London. I can only just afford to buy in York. I can't afford to buy in London and I'm looking at shared ownership. Last year I was renting a room in a house here for £1200 I moved to a cheaper place for £850 but this place has no living room and I'm having to share with people significantly older than me and it is ruining my mental health. But it's to increase my deposit, I'm mid 20s and it is just so depressing.

unless housing becomes cheaper in London, then the problem is only going to get worse. Schools are having to close because there is not enough kids for the schools because people are moving out of London because it is too expensive.

The trouble is neither political party wants to fix the housing problem, because the people that they need to get the votes from don't want to build more houses. We need a mass building program in this country. I have considered leaving the UK.

Sorry to hear about your situation, it sounds really tough 🌺 I agree that lots of people are leaving London, which is changing the demographics of the city, both in terms of the ages of its residents and the income level. The inequality level in London is definitely becoming worse. I think that must be the case in other big UK cities too, but on a smaller scale.