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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

#61

Post by leonagano »

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…

I'm Brazilian living in London. You're absolutely right that houses in Brazil are much bigger and cheaper than in London. But you say that Brazil is pretty safe too? Really depends on the city. I feel much safer here in London than in Sao Paulo

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

#62

Post by nelsonic »

Having lived in London for 10 years and shared most of that time I can see the appeal of Co-living for the community aspect. The reason many people (but clearly not all, judging from the comments in this thread!) find "The Collective" to be "value for money" is because it "includes" so many amenities such as "Cinema", Gym & Co-working space. When these are factored in, £1000/month is "not bad" for London. It's obviously a grossly over-priced outside of London in the same way that £7 for "Avocado & Eggs on Toast" seems "reasonable" in Shoreditch (London) but "absurd" anywhere outside of the Capital!

Having (personally) visited "The Collective" recently I felt they were trying to "force" the community aspect and were more interested in "ticking boxes" with their facilities than actually making them great. For example the "Library" had very few decent books (lost of empty shelves) and was more of an "interior design" magazine picture than an actual useable space.

The author of the (BBC) Article (Winnie Agbonlahor) is clearly not the "target market" for the co-living value proposition, however she finishes her article noting that: "In a different phase of my life - definitely."

And I have to agree 100%; if I were "young and single" it would be a great way to meet and socialise with like-minded people.

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

#63

Post by mavdi »

leonagano wrote: post #61
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…

I'm Brazilian living in London. You're absolutely right that houses in Brazil are much bigger and cheaper than in London. But you say that Brazil is pretty safe too? Really depends on the city. I feel much safer here in London than in Sao Paulo

I'm a Londoner living in Sao Paulo for a year now. I haven't had any security issues whatsoever for now. I do however follow the Brazilian common sense rules of keeping one safe when going out.

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

#64

Post by corobo »

williamdclt wrote: post #42
corobo wrote: post #12

Three grand a month for a cage! You can almost rent six 3 bedroom semi-detached houses for that where I am! (~150 miles north of London). Sublet or rent with others if you need the company Don't embrace the cage, embrace remote working

A lot of people (me included) hate remote working

Enough to live in one of these co-cupboards though?

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

#65

Post by isostatic »

mayniac wrote: post #27
ghaff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you can't afford or don't want to buy a place, you shouldn't have a roof over your head?

We had a decent council housing system in the UK which provided affordable rents. That and housing cooperatives/housing associations replacing landlords would be ideal. I agree with the person you're replying to, the vast majority of landlords don't contribute anything to society and the idea that housing is an investment should be stopped.

I was a landlord -- I bought a flat in 2007, the day later Northern Rock went bust, and 6 months later the identical flat below mine sold for 60% of the total -- I was in £60k negative equity. Fortunately I resisted the mortgage sales guy and went for a tracker, so paid very little in mortgage (The interest part was about £150pcm).

Fast forward 5 years, still £30k of negative equity, however SWMBO is pregnant so we need to move. Rented out our place, rented somewhere near Manchester, moved, then told my boss at the time I'd moved.

Over the next 4 years we rented out, and between various repairs, service charges, etc made an average £500 a year profit, patently not worth the stress - especially if the tenants had moved out. My half of the £500 a year was taxed in the final year at 60%.

So all that's left to make it 'worth' buying a house is the increase in house price, which in England has averaged about 3% pa over the last 13 years.

If you want to form a housing cooperative, nobody will stop you. If you want to live in the centre of London you're going to be spending a lot of money though - it's supply and demand. If you want to rent or buy somewhere cheap, move further away, plenty of choice to buy a house for under £100k, in some really nice places, not far from Manchester or Leeds. Don't blame the landlords though.

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

#66

Post by mayniac »

Symbiote wrote: post #40
mayniac wrote: post #31

Earlier 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…

"A few hundred pounds below market value" makes a huge, huge difference. If your salary is around £30,000, you'll take home around £1,900 a month after tax and student loan payments. Spending 50% on rent is already huge, spending £300 more (66%) would be madness.

Agreed: I've just looked around and it's closer to £100-200 cheaper per month, but it's hard to compare when you factor in anything more than just number of bedrooms and rough square footage. I did find out I'm paying about £100 a month more than the estimated payments on a 30 year mortgage which seems cheaper than most. I'm in the £40k range which makes it slightly less significant but not by too much.

Either way there's not a huge amount of choice in London. I had to find a room in a flatshare a few years ago and I struggled to find anything under £700 which was remotely reasonable (ie double bed, room for a desk and some floor space).

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

#67

Post by nelsonic »

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…

@vrbelli I would love to read your "Top 10 List of Improvements" if you were able to re-build "The Collective" from scratch. I have no connection to "The Collective" I'm just curious how it could be "fixed".

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

#68

Post by dpifke »

I've stayed at Roam in Miami, London, and Bali. I was at the London location as the same time as the author of the linked article, and am currently at the tail-end of a three week stay in their Miami property.

I think to compare the pricing to a long-term lease, or the facilities to a luxury hotel, is to miss the point. The biggest value proposition is in having a community of like-minded people from the moment you walk through the door. I've never met so many friendly, diverse, interesting people as I have each time I've stayed with them.

I sold my home in San Francisco at the beginning of 2015 and have been a full-time nomad since then, staying mostly in hotels. I am 10X more social and more productive when I stay at Roam. Being in a city where you don't know anyone, and aren't a native-speaker of the language, can be very lonely. Having to track down laptop-friendly coffee shops, or commute to co-working spaces, or hunt restaurants for lunch and dinner, can consume a ridiculous percentage of your day. Roam completely solves these issues by facilitating a community, providing great co-working spaces, and having a well-stocked commercial kitchen.

Is it more expensive than living on your own? Not compared to SF or NY (or zone 1 in London, where the old London property was). And not compared to a hotel.

Is it as nice as a 5-star hotel? Nope (at least none of the rooms in which I stayed). But I'd rather walk out the door of my room and be invited to drinks with friends, than waved at by a bellhop.

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

#69

Post by isostatic »

mayniac wrote: post #58
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

£45k is an enormous salary, especially for someone in their 20s. 85% of the country earn less than that.

Looking at median London salaries from 2015 (which I have to hand), and assuming a 10% increase on that, you earn more than average for all but two boroughs - Tower Hamlets (i.e. docklands) and the City

[1] http://www.itv.com/news/london/2015-11-19/how-does-your-sala...

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

#70

Post by gaius »

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.

An outsider coming to London and not living in the centre needs to deal with the cognitive dissonance that they would actually be materially better off and generally happier in Manchester or Newcastle or Edinburgh.
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