really glad I live in the suburbs in Texas.. mortgage on new construction 300m^2 is $2000/mo, my commute is 25 minutes and my salary higher than Londoners..
Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration
51–60 of 101 posts
Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration
#52I lived at The Collective. Horrible, horrible place.
The price is ridiculous for a small cage in a crappy industrial area. Facilities are so-so, everything is made to a very low standard. For the same price you can get _so_ much better close to the city centre.
When I lived there the place was infested by young people doing tons of drugs and partying in the common areas. It was well known that several dealers lived in the building but as the staff were also massive cokeheads nothing ever happened.
To fill up the building The Collective housed people on placement through the government. That resulted in some interesting personalities. For example a guy who beat his girlfriend to blood in front of their kid and dragged her out by her hair through the reception.
The general manager was however fired when he, coked off his head, used his masterkey to enter a girls room in the middle of the night to 'talk'.
UBER also had their driver HQ on the ground floor when I was there which resulted in a lot of catcalling and weird behaviour from angry drivers in the reception.
Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew a woman in her 50s in London that was commuting daily 6 hours from one of the outskirts to another outskirt on the opposite side for a low-paying SWEng job. Frankly, why do people even bother moving to London/UK? Unless you are a finance person, a money-laudering crook from abroad or a top-school PhD in a hot field, your prospects are slim.
> Unless you are a finance person, a money-laudering crook from abroad or a top-school PhD in a hot field That's a very accurate description of London.
There's almost 9 million people here, y'know.
Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration
#54My entire time in the UK I've lived in flatshares - out of sheer necessity due to the ridiculous rent prices. This "co-living" space is no exception in that respect. Only somehow they manage to spin it as "hip" to live in a shoebox for 1000£ a month. This is just making money off of the dire housing situation, imho, by squeezing the maximum amount of people into a building. It's probably fine for short term tennants…
Having to share a flat in London was a good 50% of the reason for me moving to Madrid. Wanting to live in your own home is not so much to ask. Sadly, this seems to be a trend in many other places too - even in Madrid itself it's not that realistic to live alone if you are young and on a local wage.
Same here. I realized I needed a big pay rise to continue living in London, given what living alone costs. With the other 50% of my reasons, I ended up moving to Copenhagen.
The choice in London seems to be between a tiny, grotty apartment within 45 minutes of the centre, or something a bit nicer but also further out. Friends with the former had no money left to go out. Friends with the latter couldn't be bothered to travel the longer distance to come out.
Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration
#55My entire time in the UK I've lived in flatshares - out of sheer necessity due to the ridiculous rent prices. This "co-living" space is no exception in that respect. Only somehow they manage to spin it as "hip" to live in a shoebox for 1000£ a month. This is just making money off of the dire housing situation, imho, by squeezing the maximum amount of people into a building. It's probably fine for short term tennants…
Having to share a flat in London was a good 50% of the reason for me moving to Madrid. Wanting to live in your own home is not so much to ask. Sadly, this seems to be a trend in many other places too - even in Madrid itself it's not that realistic to live alone if you are young and on a local wage.
Well, in Valencia you can still rent a 1 bed for around 500 euro in the centre or a 3 bed for 700 euro near a metro station. Madrid and Barcelona are another story though.
Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration
#56My entire time in the UK I've lived in flatshares - out of sheer necessity due to the ridiculous rent prices. This "co-living" space is no exception in that respect. Only somehow they manage to spin it as "hip" to live in a shoebox for 1000£ a month. This is just making money off of the dire housing situation, imho, by squeezing the maximum amount of people into a building. It's probably fine for short term tennants…
I actually stayed in this building (Collective Old Oak) briefly a couple of years ago while I was waiting to move into a new flat.
It's pretty awful, to be honest. I was aware of the small room size and didn't mind that too much. The real problem is that the building seems very cheaply constructed. Poorly ventilated, no air conditioning, and very noisy due to cheap (non-acoustic) glazing units that don't seem to seal properly, and non-existent soundproofing between rooms.
It's also a rather scummy part of London with tons of traffic, noisy industrial neighbours, and generally run-down, heavily littered environs (but I did enjoy riding my bike down the adjacent canal towpath route into central London!). In a decade or so this might improve as the area is planned to be redeveloped with the HS2 interchange station etc.
On the other hand, there were some genuinely interesting people and events going on at the time I was there. They did seem to have succeeded in creating a nice community feel.
But if people are really paying £1000/month for a room here, they're being ripped off! There is much better quality accommodation, in better neighbourhoods, available for that sort of money.
Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration
#57My entire time in the UK I've lived in flatshares - out of sheer necessity due to the ridiculous rent prices. This "co-living" space is no exception in that respect. Only somehow they manage to spin it as "hip" to live in a shoebox for 1000£ a month. This is just making money off of the dire housing situation, imho, by squeezing the maximum amount of people into a building. It's probably fine for short term tennants…
Having to share a flat in London was a good 50% of the reason for me moving to Madrid. Wanting to live in your own home is not so much to ask. Sadly, this seems to be a trend in many other places too - even in Madrid itself it's not that realistic to live alone if you are young and on a local wage.
Back in 2003 I managed to find a tiny bedsit, with a shower in one corner, sink + countertop oven in another, and bed in the third. It was a shared toilet, and cost half my take home wage.
I couldn't afford a proper 1 bed studio for £800 (with a separate bathroom), nor could I afford to commute on tube (I found one 35 minute walk from work), but it did the job.
I couldn't abide living in a house share, however somewhere that's effectively a hall of residence, with a kettle and microwave in my room, would be far more preferably than a house share.
18 months after my salary had increased enough that I could afford a 1 bed flat in Twyford and the commuting cost (cheap car, free parking due to shift work, 7 days a fortnight), which was great
My mortgage in 2018 on a 4 bed house in Cheshire is less than I paid for the rent on that flat in Twyford in 2004.
Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In London, living on your own after university is basically impossible (unless you live very far out). Disagree, since I'm doing it right now 3 years after uni. I'm not paid amazingly, below average salary for London but above average for the rest of the UK. However half my paycheck goes on rent. My commute is about 45 minutes by tube or 20 minutes by motorbike so it's not too far out. The trick is to find an area…
Can you fill in some actual numbers and a location here? Because that seems just atypical from this description.
Quite reluctant to give actual figures so these are fudged. Salary of £45k, rent £1.2k/month, edge of zone 2/3, tube line within one minute walk, overground and another line quite close. Can't remember what area it is and I'm god awful at estimating area but I'd say the flat is about 500sqft?
Can't give location, sorry. I've doxxed too many people before on less information.
Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I realize that most landlords consider themselves as doing a service but sometimes they don't seem much different from domain squatters. It's not really a service, what would happen if they didn't exist? Everyone only buys homes for living in as needed, drastically lower prices, more innovation based businesses that actually contribute to making the world a better place?
So if you can't afford or don't want to buy a place, you shouldn't have a roof over your head?
You’re thinking in the context of the status quo, you would be able to afford it. If you don’t want to there are friends, family, hotels. This is a hypothetical of course but I’m just posing the question of what would happen if the people who own 1000 homes (all to themselves) didn’t exist. This is only half the issue anyway, the major problem is supply constraint and I'm not going to get into that :-)
Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration
#60I'm so glad I don't live in London any more.
When I did, last decade, I paid in the range of £300-700 a month for a flat or a house I shared with friends. We always had decent sized rooms, a good kitchen etc
A grand a month to live in a room smaller than the Travelodge is just awful.
Now I live on the South coast, I work in London sometimes when the money is right, I work in Dorset, Hampshire, West Sussex and Surrey otherwise.
In the city I live in (Southampton) you can rent a 3 bedroom house for £850 pcm. You might even be able to buy a place to live eventually.
Life is so much better.