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Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

#71

Post by swarnie_ »

vrbelli wrote: post #52

I 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 i…

This sounds shockingly similar to a lot of 1st year student dorm blocks I've been in around the country

Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

#72

Post by jamienicol »

darrenf wrote: post #26
misnome wrote: post #16

> The only co-living options in the UK are currently in London The only places branded with this buzzword, certainly. There are many, many people sharing a house with other people they don't otherwise know. And, of course, student accommodation. I wonder how much these rooms (which the article says were built for students) were actually going to cost for the students that would have lived there before it was bought a…

For my entire career (I'm a lifelong Londoner) I've been bemused by newcomers to the city who essentially refuse to even consider living beyond zone 2. I grew up on the border of Z3/4 and now live in Z6, but have worked either in zone 1 or beyond it (in travel terms) since late 1996. My gut feeling is that the horrific prices in the centre are very much tied to what seems to be a perception that the outskirts suck.

I'm from Scotland but moved to London a few years ago for work. I very much have that perception. Like many people from other parts of the UK I moved to London for the excitement. I wouldn't want to live in Zone 1 but there's plenty of places in Zone 2/3 which are lively and fun to live in.

Maybe I just don't know the best places in Zone 6, but my perception is that they feel like small towns which just happen to be on a tube line, if you're lucky. Even in zone 3 it's a lot more suburban than where I used to live in Glasgow.

If one day I have to move to Zone 6 because it's cheaper, then I'd much rather move to somewhere like Glasgow or Manchester, live centrally with more space, and for cheaper still.

Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

#73

Post by yardie »

bitL wrote: post #29
darrenf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my entire career (I'm a lifelong Londoner) I've been bemused by newcomers to the city who essentially refuse to even consider living beyond zone 2. I grew up on the border of Z3/4 and now live in Z6, but have worked either in zone 1 or beyond it (in travel terms) since late 1996. My gut feeling is that the horrific prices in the centre are very much tied to what seems to be a perception that the outskirts suck.

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.

Given their age and the commute I can imagine the company was in the city center, which was an ideal commute. Then, later, relocated to the city outskirts, an unideal commute. If she owns her home she may not want to move and sell.

Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

#74

Post by isostatic »

mavdi wrote: post #35

This is just depressing. A lot of the people here can get a remote job for perhaps 10% less income, move to somewhere cheap but with great internet and spend 50% less housing/food and leisure. My internet connection in Brazil is 10x better than what I had in London. My apartment is at least 3x bigger and 100x nicer. Food is awesome, people are nice, weather is lovely and if you're not acting like a dumb gringo, it's…

> it's pretty safe too if London's latest murder spree hasn't convinced you yet

The London murder rate is projected to be 180 this year, about 2 per 100k

Rio's murder rate is 18 per 100k - about 10 times worse than London.

Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

#76

Post by whywhywhywhy »

everyone wrote: post #8

£1,000 to nearly £3,000 a month fuuuuuuuuuuuuckin ell

Even by London prices that's utterly absurd, you can get an entire one bed flat for yourself for £1000 and I don't even mean having to move far out I'm talking walking distance of shoreditch.

Wouldn't wish flatsharing """co-living""" on anyone, what a nightmare.

Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

#77

Post by MistahKoala »

vrbelli wrote: post #52

I 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 i…

> When I lived there the place was infested by young people doing tons of drugs and partying in the common areas

The impression I get is that these are living arrangements for people who enjoyed shared accommodation at university and would quite like to continue it. Not so much living without loneliness, but continuing and/or maximising their youthful capacity to live as they'd like. I don't necessarily have a problem with that if it doesn't impinge on others, although it feels a bit like they're just paying to shortcut access to a hedonistic theme park rather than making their own way. It might be a stretch to say this, but there's something slightly Westworld about it.

Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

#78

Post by antihero »

These sound utterly bleak and awful. If you want to live in a collective space, just go into a house-share, you can find a nice enough room for £600-800/month. Or if you go further from the centre, you can rent flats etc. I pay £1,000/mo for a single bed with small garden 3 mins walk from Crystal Palace station (though I did get very lucky). My commute is a perfectly pleasant 40 mins to Shoreditch.

The problem is that people seem to want to live right in the centre, whereas if you're on a reliable public transport route (and TfL is fairly reliable). Knowing what areas are awful and which ones are lovely is nice, too.

If you move down towards Greenwich, Sydenham, Peckham, Deptford, New Cross etc there's much better options in much nicer areas, and if you're happy living places with good transport links that are shittier in general you could hit up Stratford, Mile End etc.

Zone 3 seems to be a sweet spot. Then it's £160(ish)/month to get pretty much anywhere by transport.

Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

#79

Post by loftyal »

darrenf wrote: post #26
misnome wrote: post #16

> The only co-living options in the UK are currently in London The only places branded with this buzzword, certainly. There are many, many people sharing a house with other people they don't otherwise know. And, of course, student accommodation. I wonder how much these rooms (which the article says were built for students) were actually going to cost for the students that would have lived there before it was bought a…

For my entire career (I'm a lifelong Londoner) I've been bemused by newcomers to the city who essentially refuse to even consider living beyond zone 2. I grew up on the border of Z3/4 and now live in Z6, but have worked either in zone 1 or beyond it (in travel terms) since late 1996. My gut feeling is that the horrific prices in the centre are very much tied to what seems to be a perception that the outskirts suck.

Contracting in SWE is lucrative.

Re: Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

#80

Post by m_t »

vazamb wrote: post #14
bitL wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany seems to be doing way better.

Flatshares ("WG" , Wohngemeinschaft) are extremely common in Germany. For anyone under 30 living in a major city it is absolutely normal to share a flat with 1-3 other people.

Here's one big difference: it's also common in London for people over 30.

Which in other European capitals is an age where you would more likely live with your partner and start a family, rather than live like a student.

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