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'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

citylab.com

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Re: 'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

#91

Post by smoyer »

pjc50 wrote: post #67
srgvd wrote: post #57

Single earner with 2 kids living in London on top-1 percentile income here. 60% of that monthly income is going towards rent, taxes and utilities for a terrace in Zone 4, plus nursery charges for our toddler. My wife can't find a job here, as she's an ex-journalist, and not a native speaker. No tax allowances (due to £100k+/y income) and no recurse to public funds (I'm on Visa, and not an EU citizen) doesn't help eit…

Single yearner With great typo comes great wisdom.

I'd say it might be a Freudian slip (but there's no sex involved) ... a subconscious thought?

Re: 'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

#92

Post by srgvd »

pjc50 wrote: post #67
srgvd wrote: post #57

Single earner with 2 kids living in London on top-1 percentile income here. 60% of that monthly income is going towards rent, taxes and utilities for a terrace in Zone 4, plus nursery charges for our toddler. My wife can't find a job here, as she's an ex-journalist, and not a native speaker. No tax allowances (due to £100k+/y income) and no recurse to public funds (I'm on Visa, and not an EU citizen) doesn't help eit…

Single yearner With great typo comes great wisdom.

Thanks for pointing that out. Not good enough with the language to appreciate the pun.

Re: 'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

#93

Post by zo1 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #35
3princip wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I suspect, but it's crazy. The average salary in London is £27k, a senior dev will earn 3x that (I'm guessing). And that's still barely enough to live comfortably. I guess that's the point of the campaign in the linked article, but I can't see how that will change, unless the financial bubble bursts.

And finance will pay you more than double that, and give you a 100% bonus on top of that again. http://oxfordknight.co.uk/jobs/all-jobs/core-risk-and-pricin...

Oxford Knight looks like some sort of recruitment agency. Any link to the actual institution offering that?

Re: 'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

#94

Post by 3princip »

grey-area wrote: post #87
3princip wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I suspect, but it's crazy. The average salary in London is £27k, a senior dev will earn 3x that (I'm guessing). And that's still barely enough to live comfortably. I guess that's the point of the campaign in the linked article, but I can't see how that will change, unless the financial bubble bursts.

and that's still barely enough to live comfortably. Many people live comfortably in London for far less than 90k gbp, it all depends on your expectations and requirements.

Even with rent prices? If I was single it wouldn't matter, I could live in a shoe-box, but a family needs a little extra room. And we're a very frugal family.

It's interesting that growing up in London my single-parent mother on an income between 40-50k managed to buy a house and raise two kids. We lived comfortably.

That house is now worth 6x more than the price she payed. Her salary today (she's retired) would be almost the same. That's why I can't imagine doing the same thing she did, even on a 2x salary.

I'm not complaining, just thinking out loud.

Re: 'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

#95

Post by willyt »

jon-wood wrote: post #51
rjaco31 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can rail transport be that expensive? (I'm genuinely asking)

You'd be even more incredulous if you had to ride on a London bound commuter train every morning. If you're lucky you'll get to stand in a space large enough that you don't have to stick your head in someone's armpit. If you're incredibly lucky, or get on at one of the first stops on the line, you might even get a seat.

London Underground standard 'crush loads' are 4 people per square meter of floor space for the entire floor area of the train carriage.

Re: 'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

#96

Post by tensorproduct »

camillomiller wrote: post #60
tensorproduct wrote: post #49

I have sort of a different experience. I just moved to London, from Dublin, a few months ago. I make a good, but not outrageous, salary: pretty close to a reported average for software developers in London. I live in a somewhat rundown area, just outside zone 1. The rent is expensive, but not unmanageable. I have flatmates; the area feels safe; its close enough to bus and tube lines that getting around is simple. I l…

How old are you? You mention that you have flatmates, but not everybody wants to live in a shared apartment far into their thirties, especially if you would like to find a place for you and your partner. The problem is that housing in London looks like a commodity that big sharks trade like many other long-term investment commodities. Problem is, that's the places where people would actually like to live that you're…

I'm late-twenties/early-thirties. I'm probably just on the old side to still be perfectly happy to rent a room in a shared apartment. If I find myself in a long-term relationship then I imagine my priorities will change, but part of the reason I moved to London was because I thought it would be easier to meet romantic prospects.

I completely agree that property prices in London are insane, and that the political system is doing nothing to reign it in (quite the opposite, from my point of view).

But, from what I've experienced, if you don't want to buy your own property, then it's perfectly possible to live in London without earning crazy hedge fund money.

Re: 'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

#97

Post by sghi »

peteretep wrote: post #71
srgvd wrote: post #57

Single earner with 2 kids living in London on top-1 percentile income here. 60% of that monthly income is going towards rent, taxes and utilities for a terrace in Zone 4, plus nursery charges for our toddler. My wife can't find a job here, as she's an ex-journalist, and not a native speaker. No tax allowances (due to £100k+/y income) and no recurse to public funds (I'm on Visa, and not an EU citizen) doesn't help eit…

Or, ya know, do what everyone else does and commute in?

I understand that is a possible option, but isn't the whole point of this that it's not feasible to live in the city? Being forced further out to commute is kind of the point.

Re: 'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

#98

Post by yeureka »

toong wrote: post #76
yeureka wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£1500 for the mortgage, plus bills, council tax, land rent, home insurance, repairs, etc... that is around £2000 per month not counting food, travel, clothes and entertainment. So realistically you need to earn £3000 after tax to be able to afford it, which translates to a pre-tax salary of £50k. We are lucky to earn more than that but the vast majority of people I know would not be able to do it. We barely feel midd…

That is £50k for two, so £25k each ? That's about UK mean gross income and below London (2007:£27,868) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom

That is correct, however when you apply for a mortgage the bank doesn't really add both incomes equally and the only reason we were able to borrow £300k is because I earn more than £50k.

Also, interest rates are extremely low at the moment and we will be paying only around 4%.

I prefer not to think what will happen if the BOE needs to raise interest rates.

Additionally if we want to have kids, that's another £12k per year per kid for a nursery if my gf wants to keep her job.

I never earned this much in my life and I never felt to financially insecure at the same time.

Re: 'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

#99

Post by icebraining »

mseebach wrote: post #61
icebraining wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That pesky "democracy" and "giving everybody a voice" Can people from outside of London who want to live there vote on those issues?

Most of the planning policy that affects the current housing shortage (along with most things in the UK, really) is decided nationally, so I'm going to have to go with "yes". But ask yourself this: Given where you live now, how do you feel about people who don't live where you do deciding what should happen where you live, because it would suit them (not you) better?

Most of the planning policy that affects the current housing shortage (along with most things in the UK, really) is decided nationally, so I'm going to have to go with "yes".

Fair enough, could be a local ordinance (I'm not from the UK).

But ask yourself this: Given where you live now, how do you feel about people who don't live where you do deciding what should happen where you live, because it would suit them (not you) better?

I think "how would you feel" arguments are generally poor - biased people make selfish choices, and I'm not immune to it.

That said, I'm not saying that outsiders should be able to choose; you made a comment about it being democratic, and I was curious if it was true. I don't consider a system where only the incumbents would be allowed to vote as "democratic" - even if I could consider it better than a democratic system.

Re: 'Nobody My Age Can Afford to Stay Here Forever'

#100

Post by mseebach »

crdoconnor wrote: post #74
peteretep wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It speaks volumes that you implicitly put the rights of > Russian oligarchs and Arab oil barons to buy property > (which they often leave empty) above those of the > working and middle classes of London. Sure. But if we'd been having this conversation 20 years ago, it'd have been the rights of the Yuppies above the East End families, and then 200 years ago, it would have been those wealthy landed gentry pushing out…

>you still don't seem to see the irony of bearded new media workers being priced out of the same market they were busy pricing others out of a decade ago. Because there is no irony. I bitched about that too. I don't want ANYBODY priced out. >I'm also curious about just how many Arab Oil Barons and Russian Oligarchs you think there are, as a percentage of an 8m person city? One unoccupied oil baron's mansion in Centra…

> One unoccupied oil baron's mansion in Central London could be demolished and replaced by affordable housing for hundreds of people.

LOL. No.

The politics of building on the greenbelt might be thorny, but it's nothing compared for what it'd be like to suggest demolishing listed regency buildings anywhere, much less central London.

The best you can hope for is to replace the extremely wealthy absent foreigner with an extremely wealthy resident (foreigner or not).

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