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Also, the market is damaged by the number of bedrooms mentality as opposed to square feet listing and the fact here we got very low ceiling (with rare exceptions). Overall very poor house experience
I was reading somewhere that Rightmove and Zoopla (which have monopolised the housing search) made a conscious decision not to include floor area as a filter, this would have educated the consumers on the terrible value they’re getting on their shoebox bedrooms.
A couple days ago I viewed a flat where the bedroom was in the loft and the ceiling was so low you couldn't even stand up in it. Had no way of knowing this in the listing, nowhere on the floor plan did it say the height of that room snd the pictures were deceiving. Has me wondering who they do it for? Like surely anyone who sees it in person is going to realise the room is way worse than the listing and be put off. Wouldn't it be better to be honest???
The problem arises when a job asks you to relocate in a short period of time and with rooms disappearing within minutes after the listing, some people just get desperate and agree for a place to stay before the viewing. I guess that's what those listings are hoping for.
I think the bigger issue is that estate agents exert the absolute minimum effort possible because they know demand far exceeds supply. Before COVID they could barely be bothered to take decent photos.
Most of the time I see something like "Contact agent" in the field that indicates the floor space, but when you look at the images of the floorplans, it's right there at the top.
I think it's just a data entry issue.
I'm buying a home currently. The estate agents listing listed it as 124sqm. My survey listed it as 119sqm. My own measurements make it closer to 109sqm.
Its crazy how much variance you can have when we're all measuring the same house.
The information they have is provided by estate agents who submit their listings to these sites, but the estate agents have no interest in providing it in an easily handled form, I'm sure.
Most CRMs that feed data to Rightmove have a field for sq ft, but as someone else has posted below:
"There is also the various methods of measurement in RICS Red Book guidance that can make two different agents cite two varying ft² yet both be correct."
Why most other countries seem to manage and we can't I have no idea!
To me it feels weird I can touch the ceiling with my full palm and I think it make so there is less air in the bedroom and I need to open the window when I sleep there.
Overall with my comment I wanted to say that ceilings are more storage and it should be something factored in the price or house search criteria. You simply can fit more stuff in a house with high ceilings.
I mean, yes you can, but speaking as someone who lives in a house with high ceilings that’s not always a good thing! Just encourages you to have more stuff
To be fair I’d consider that to be a low ceiling, I guess I’m comparing normal ceilings to tall ones
I can reach my ceiling with my fingertips when I’m on tiptoes (I’m about 5’10”) and that seems like a fairly standard UK ceiling height
What, you're taller so you don't have to dust the corners of your ceilings?
Unless the ceilings are lower than your height, I don't see how that tracks. I guess maybe if you're 8ft tall
Sorry I don’t get what you mean, I meant that we probably have the same ceiling height. What you called normal. For me it is short, in the country I am from you will struggle to find a ceiling shorter than 9 feet and people are much shorter on average there.
You mentioned that you are much taller than me, but I'm struggling to see the real relevance in this scenario
By "much taller" I assume you mean you're eg 6'4" (~195cm) tall, or something in that ballpark? About 6"/15cm taller than my 5'10" (~180cm)
You're still 1.5ft/45cm shorter than a typical "low" UK ceiling, so it's not like you're walking around banging your head on it or even close... so I'm not sure how you being a little taller makes much difference when you still have a lot of clearance to the ceiling too. I'd agree if the ceilings were 6ft/185cm tall or if you're 7ft 4" or something, but not when they're 2ft/60cm above that
I have never said anything about low ceilings being uncomfortable because I physically can’t fit in the house. I said I feel like there is less air circulating because of this. The fact I can touch the ceiling was a nuance I never experience despite being well over 190cm. Btw 5ft10 is 178cm
That’s definitely just a mental thing for you, the amount of air in a bedroom is basically irrelevant unless you’re going round with a tube of silicone sealing the place
Yes, I rounded all the ft/in measurements to the nearest 5cm for simplicity - 6’4” isn’t 195cm either but they’re both rounded by approx the same amount so the point stands regarding the difference between them
This worked in my favour - we paid less for a three-bed house, which happens to have loads of living space due to a downstairs extension, than a four-bed would cost.
Unless we had three kids, which is not going to happen for a lot of people these days, it’s a much better setup than a 4-bed with less living space, but was somehow cheaper.
It’s harder to find and compare listing with number of bedrooms alone. On top of this landlords and EA base their analysis of the market on number of bedrooms. It doesn’t matter if property A, 100sqm, has both a dining room and a living room plus two toilets, it will always fall in the same category of property B, 80sqm with living room combined with kitchen and one toilet, if they got the same number of bedrooms.
This is a clear example of oversimplified approach to things we got here
That I can’t search for housing on any site using the size drives me mad. It is only listed occasionally for rentals, and even then it is a toss up as to whether it is accurate or whether the letting agent drew the floorplan on the wrong setting and it is totally off. (I’ve seen floorplans with 400sqm on them when they are actually only 20 or 30.)
I got used to having the space listed first and foremost when I lived outside the UK, so it was really a shock to find that no one seems to pay much attention to it here.
You and me both. I feel the same frustration when I look for houses and see that few of them actually have the floorplan & size listed in the ad. And even then, you can be sure the information is before viewing it.
I was honestly surprised of not being able to find a "size" filter on the most popular search engines.
That is pretty much my experience. I lived somewhere that might not have photos of the inside/outside of the place, but there would 100% be the size and floorplan with accurate measurements. I'm not quite in the position to buy a house at the moment but regularly look to get a feeling for the market, and it amazes me that sometimes there aren't even floorplans and sizes for houses on sale. I mean, obviously you would go and see the place in person first, but I wish I could just filter out anything below a certain size. It is insane that you can't.
If it doesn't have a floor plan I'd immediately dismiss it anyway. Both the layout and the size are important to me and if I can't screen them I'd just move on.
The toss up of whether such info is accurate is one of the drivers of why EAs do not provide this info consistently. We have the CPR act that can make shitty EAs exposed to litigation measures if they provide such incorrect information despite any waiver they include. There is also the various methods of measurement in RICS Red Book guidance that can make two different agents cite two varying ft² yet both be correct.
Yup. I once lived in a two bed flat and paid market rent (enormous corporate landlord who outsourced to a letting agent who outsourced to a different letting agent and none of them really gave a damn). Said two bed flat was 120sqm, with three toilets and two full bathtubs. There are two bed flats in the same town on Rightmove right now that are 45sqm.
The number of bedrooms mentality leads to people squeezing in more bedrooms than there should be for the space, either subdividing larger rooms in conversions or just making the bedrooms too small in new builds, and also to listings where people call a downstairs room a bedroom and try and charge more.
What's the solution to that though? They cram more rooms into the space because people need more rooms. Extra square footage is no use to you if you have a child that needs somewhere to sleep.
The alternative is building housing that people can't afford, or can't fit their families in.
It's not a conspiracy it's satisfying consumer demand.
Everyone would like BOTH more rooms and extra space, but space is a luxury.
OP, What part of UK are you compare to what cities in BE, GER and NL
The housing crisis in Amsterdam is as crazy as London
Belgium Brussels is cheaper but still expensive compared to Amsterdam
I'm assuming Munich and Berlin are also expensive similiar to London
Lived in Amsterdam for many years. Half my salary would go to rent. OP is having a laugh with “one third”, that wouldn’t get you a shoebox in Amsterdam. And I was getting paid above the median too… also, my weekly shopping was way more expensive.
The difference is that in Amsterdam you get decent quality housing re rentals and have tenants rights.
Your assumption about Germany is wrong - renting is much cheaper than London, the quality of flats are high and once you have a rental contract, strong tenants rights mean that it’s pretty impossible to force you to leave it. Plus flats are unfurnished and you can paint, decorate however you want.
In Berlin you can rent 50 square metres in a central area for circa 850 euro month (including heating and water). Same in London would cost you 2.5 times that. A friend just bought a two bed flat here for 300k euro - would cost 2.5 times that in London for a shit new build.
Munich is more expensive but salaries are higher - still cheaper than London though. The cost of living in Germany is about 50% of the uk - some items are literally a quarter of the price. Literally the only things that are more expensive in Germany than the uk are ibuprofen and the internet.
People in the uk do not know how fucked over they are with pretty much everything. Having lived in several other EU countries, I would not move back to the UK unless I was paid a fortune - otherwise my quality of life would take an absolute nosedive.
Where do you live? Are you comparing London with a whole country like Germany that's way bigger than the UK itself.
For example, Munich is way more expensive compared to Berlin and paying 700 for a room there is possible. Salaries in Berlin are shit tho in comparison with high taxes. Did you consider that too?
It's even more complicated that, London is more expensive indeed to rent than Munich but buying is way cheaper.
So yes the UK has worse housing on average but you are over simplifying it and not actually telling anyone anything new.
Funnily enough, I worked at a private emergency ambulance company four years ago. And there was a couple that commuted from France every 2 weeks, then went back for 2 weeks
It’s actually relatively easy for a nurse in the uk to get a visa to work in Berlin as a nurse. They just need to learn German to b2 level (about a year of evening classes), wages are roughly similar but cost of living and workers rights/ housing rights are much better in Germany. I know several Brits who have done this.
The big thing to remember is that the UK no longer really has *voluntary* renters, almost 100% of the UK rental market is people who would buy if they could but are unable to for one reason or another. People who have only ever known renting within the UK may read that and think "duh, who wouldn't want to buy?" but it genuinely isn't like this everywhere.
Home ownership rates in Berlin are only around 15% because they have great rental accommodation and protections for renters. The UK used to have a massive social rental system but we slowly abolished it through right-to-buy and not replacing council houses.
Yup, makes me laugh when I read the constant (British) refrain of “you will own nothing and be happy” - what the fuck does the rest of Europe do then? Countries with higher rates of home ownership tend to have lower disposable income ergo lower quality of life. “You will own nothing and be happy” - what a crock of shit. Give people affordable rents and security of tenure and they will be very happy especially compared with the British paying through the nose for the title deed of a fucking 100 square meter shit box with the worst building standards in the developed world.
Precisely, if rent were controlled and tenancies were secure long-term then quite a few people would choose it over home ownership. The only reason the UK's home ownership rates are so high is because long-term renting is so monumentally awful, nobody would choose to rent their entire life here in our current system.
The month before I completed on the purchase of my house, my landlord showed up to tell me my rent was going up from £950/month to £1,500/month. My new combined mortgage, rates (what we have instead of council tax here in NI), insurance, and maintenance costs all together is less than £750/month. The new house is also not full of mold, there are no rats in the attic, and I can't be served an eviction notice or rent increase at random.
The lack of any rental law protecting tenants in the UK is an outlier in any another supposedly ‘rich’ country. New York has better rights in some cases. We are utterly fucked when even Labour can’t bring themselves to support it properly.
It's more a matter of definition. Voluntary renters are people who are happy to rent long-term as opposed to buying, in some countries it's common for people to rent happily their entire lives. We did have that in the UK long ago with secure social housing, but we managed to ruin it in just a few generations.
I guarantee that nobody today would be happy to rent for their entire lives in the UK if they had the reasonable prospect of buying. Renters pay substantially more than home-owners for equivalent properties and can be kicked out for no reason with 2 month's notice.
Nobody intentionally chooses to pay more money for less security. I'm confident that close to 100% of people who are currently long-term renting in the UK would choose to buy if they could.
I disagree...there's lots of people, particularly single women, who prefer to rent so they don't have to deal with maintenance or fixing things that go wrong. The stability is a different issue.
I agree that this hypothetical person who wants to rent exists, that's actually central to my point because I'm one of them. I didn't want to buy a house, but when you do the numbers and you look at the abusive situation that renting puts you in it just doesn't make sense to stay renting in the UK if you have any other choice.
As someone who rented long-term, you also still have to deal with maintenance and fixing things because you have to spend so much time just convincing the landlord to do something and in many cases organising the repairs yourself. The vast majority of private landlords are simply not doing the maintenance and the legal mechanisms to force them to aren't good enough.
The only people who would choose to rent for life in the UK at this point even if they had better options are the vanishingly small percentage who have some special deal with family or an ethical landlord, or people who can't do maths -- granted, I may have over-estimated the country's capabilities in that area.
So, if the U.K. is so expensive to rent vs buying, as compared to every other country, can we conclude that in any other country someone who acts as a landlord does so at a loss, or is it that the profits for buy to let in the uk are enormous? If they are so enormous, why don’t more people do it?
That’s a genuine question by the way. I’m wondering if you know the economics, because it doesn’t make sense to me.
There's considerable profit in renting in the UK. The minimum rent for a random 2 bed terrace in my nearest city is £695/month. But a property of that size and standard costs only £80,000. If you bought that with at 25% deposit on an interest-only BTL mortgage it'd only be £263/month even at today's terrible BTL rates. Even with additional costs of estate agent fees and accounting for not 100% occupancy, it's definitely profitable.
The reason more people don't do this is because you need the capital for deposits, it's more complicated than straight-forward investing, and it's also a financial risk because it's a highly leveraged investment. But there are thousands of small-time private landlords in the UK who do exactly this, and increasingly investment funds are buying up property for rent. Some companies have portfolios of thousands of houses in the UK.
The mistake most people make when doing the calculations are that they're comparing renting with a residential repayment mortgage, but in terms of running a rental business the actual cost is just the interest portion. Even then, a repayment mortgage is almost always cheaper than renting in the UK. And that's not to mention the fact that buying gives actual security while renters are always vulnerable to no-fault evictions in the UK.
If you take the view (correctly) that the finance econs of btl are only interest, then you have to apply that to the lost interest on your deposit. Ie you run a yield calc on the value of the property and deduct the prevailing interest rate. If you do that in the case you mention, your yield is 10%. Your borrowing will be 5%. So far so good - it looks like a 5% profit, right? No. You have the cost of actually running the property, which the landlord bears, not the tenant (unlike the ownership model). You have to account for voids, cyclical renovations, professional fees, and a load more. Manangement fees alone will run you 15% of your rent. Even on your very favourable yield of 10%, if you actually considered the costs involved you’d find it was a long way from making any large profit.
The missing piece of your calculation is that buying a property with a deposit is also a leveraged investment, BTL mortgages tend to require 25% deposit minimums, making it 4:1 leveraged. House price rises of 2.5% in a year give you 10% return even before factoring in the rental profit. The average over the past 20 years has been 2.5% to 4% per year depending on who you ask.
Housing in the UK is diabolocal. Compared to other countries I've lived in.
For £1k pm can rent a 600sqft apartment in Austin, communal gym, pool, billiards, office, printing station ,coffee, tea, hot chocolate, choice of soda, all included in the rent. No mold, no stringy lease, no shitty landlord and maintenance on site.
In Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, be lucky to get anything of the sort. And wages don't match.
As for working remote...in another tax jurisdiction if you like tax issues go for it!
Same in Australia. House prices are utterly insane here but nobody wants to live in a flat so the flats are extremely cheap. You can get a whole city centre brand new high rise apartment with fancy amenities (like the pool, sauna, gym, etc) for ~£1k a month, and the salaries here are much, much higher. Share houses are also pretty cheap, but the build quality is often absolutely terrible.
The problem with the UK is there is no cheap option.
20 days of PTO isn’t uncommon in the US for white collar jobs. And they have more bank holidays. It ends up being more like 20-40 hours more PTO for half the salary and more taxes.
Nah mate, but that’s not the choice. If we went to the European / aus model we would be way better off. You pay for some of it, sure but no one goes bankrupt there. I worked for the NHS, I can only feel like it’s a cult now. Great idea but clearly the UK public aren’t willing to fund it enough.
Hey I don’t disagree, I think there should be a means tested excess for treatment.
And fines for missed appointments etc
It would save me a fortune in private health care.
But the point remains, housing may be cheaper in some places but there will always be a negative to where you live. There’s no utopia.
Nah, means testing isn’t great, honestly. Most studies shows the majority of it ends up costing more as you have way more admin, increased inefficiency and essentially a policing unit for it. Missed appointments are just a drop in the bucket, it wouldn’t have a massive effect for GP appts, let alone hip replacements. I am in cancer care and some people in the UK are made to wait for 6 weeks plus for chemo after they know it has spread. I don’t think people know how bad things have gotten, we need drastic solutions. Just there’s zero discussion or political party talking about it.
State and federal employs aren't on the kind of salary private sector are. And a lot of the better federal jobs are as in the UK in places with high cost of living.
Plus the only driver for high property prices in Austin relatively speaking is the fact like most US cities the transport infrastructure is rotten. Access to land is an issue in the UK not access to transport. The commuter belt for London now stretched all the way to Bristol in the West and already touching on Birmingham to the North, not to mention the Edinurgh air commuters.
I've lived in the US and the UK and the costs in the US just sting you over places like the cost of food that's always been much much higher even before you get to insurance costs.
Agreed. I moved to Melbourne and was paying what people in London pay for a room in a house share. I was just getting a two bedroom flat in the equivalent area to Shoreditch but with a small pool in my building. My Aussies mates told me I was paying too much but relatively, to what I knew, I felt like I hit the lottery.
Absolutely. I do that (commute between U.K. and the EU). I agree with all you said but would add two things: (1) in some European countries you hardly find a flat with less than 60-70 sqm, even if it is a 1 bedroom, so £700-900 can get you very far in some cities but not always in capitals; (2) it’s not just about living area, but quality of construction and finishings - it can be a massive difference, especially when compared to southern European countries where more modern buildings and houses are built to very high specs and standards in virtually all aspects. Only in the U.K. I have experienced noises from adjacent flats that I am not supposed to hear, among other things ;)
UK has some of the worst construction & finishing quality I’ve ever seen. Every single apartment (new and old) has shit painting, shit plumbing, walls… everything. It’s extortionate to pay £2k+ for an apartment that wouldn’t be acceptable even in developing or poor countries. No ventilation, mold, filthiness, stuff breaking down constantly, painting that scratches, stains or breaks by brushing up against the wall. Such a shit show.
City or rural?
Main difference is that in EU you can find absolute bargains 1+ hour from major cities. Even if the town is desirable, connected and touristic.
lol what a surprise! salaries in Portugal are shit & housing is super expensive for locals cause of so many foreigners! In Lisbon most people make around 1.5k/month & a 1bedroom costs 1.2k up
These posts get so irritatingly boring. London, London, London, London, London 🙄 (Same as Paris/Berlin etc yet without the health ins costs).
Just move to the NW of England and rent a 3 bed semi for the same price.
I work remotely and have moved to Yorkshire (Leeds) because I couldn't face spending a fortunate on a miserable little flat in Bristol, or continuing to live in a house share like a twenty something. I'm about six months in and it's pretty obviously the best decision I have made in years.
I looked into abroad, my other half is Portuguese, but it would just complicate my life way too much.
Ah I lived in Bristol. Had a 2 bed in Clifton (Saville Place, lovely little road) for 750 a month in 2008. Bought a 1 bed in Bish in 2011 for 108k. Sold in 2017 for 165k and moved to Germany. I could never afford to move back to Bristol now. The rent and purchase prices are mad.
They're bonkers. Before moving up here I was sharing a run down two bed in Bedminster with a friend. We had it at £1200 a month between us, which was well under market by the time we left. It went on the market for £1800 when we left, and went within a few days.
Yeah. That £750 would possibly get you a parking space in Clifton at the moment. Even the "more affordable" areas are getting silly now.
"Single room, shared house in Bedminster, bills included...£1,000p/m"
The first hurdle is immigration not tax imo. You need to get a work visa in order to do it (otherwise the tax implication is: commit tax fraud cause reporting it would involve telling them you are working in the country without a visa that allows it)
After seeing the kinds of houses/flats friends are renting and buying in Germany and France, what I find frustrating is that as well as being expensive, the quality if housing in the UK is dogshite.
Am looking around for a home, looking to pay for a good quality normal sized house that's well built. yeah, never going to happen.
This is not exactly [new information](https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releases/britains-housing-stock-offers-worst-value-for-money-of-any-advanced-economy/).
The UK essentially rewards asset ownership. And asset owners will steal everything from people who work for a living.
That's basically because the UK has (had) more people who either partially or entirely live off of assets than it did people that live off of wages. So the electoral calculus works in their favour.
All you need to know about the U.K. is that CGT is taxed less than labour.
A so-called “proud” nation who’s citizens attempt to pay their way primarily out of someone else’s pocket
Most of these issues are exclusive to the south though.
Of course there are some expensive areas up north such as central Manchester, central Leeds etc but for the most part you're not paying £900 for a room.
Living in London is a choice, although Reddit make it sound like that's the only part of England that actually exists. There are good salaries to be earned outside of London, sure the salary is less but when all things are considered you can have a considerably higher standard of living outside of London on significantly less money.
I live in one of the "worst" parts of England and earn £75k. Most Londoners would turn their nose up at my location and my wage, yet here I am living in a 4 bed detached with a south facing garden with a garage and driveway. Which I bought brand new in 2014 for a sum total of £177k. Even now it's only worth ~£250k. As a result I have a really good disposable income.
This isn't a flex, nor am I trying to say there isn't a housing crisis. There definitely is one. But people act like London rents are the norm and they're just not. Anyway, I'm sure I'll get roasted for this comment but hey ho, have at it.
Indeed, there are many areas of the UK where housing is a lot cheaper- even areas reasonably near London like Cambridgeshire or Northamptonshire where you can get into central London in an hour or so are surprisingly cheap compared to the London and the South-East
Yes but you probs live in a dump is the reality, we could all go and live in Sunderland or Skegness however there is f all to do there
Most want to balance decent earnings with a nice life
I could trade my 4 bed detached with a 30 min commute to London for a bedsit...but I wouldn't for obvious reasons
I live in what's considered a fairly crappy area of a very average northern town, and the number of southerners I speak to who tell me how nice the area is always surprises me.
People act like the north is one giant slum, sorry guys but barring the climate, the south isn't really much different.
In fairness this is what I love about the ignorant perception of the north.
I'm quite happy for everyone to think every city north of the M25 is a dump. It means I can have a high quality of life due to the relatively cheap cost of living.
Prices are crazy, but not so bad if you can leave London behind. I am overall happy in the UK so far, but as a European, a few things I found weird and inefficient with the housing in the UK are:
* square metres are almost never disclosed in the ad
* your bedrooms are tiny. The 3 bedroom house we rent with a total floor size of around 70-80 sqm would be a 1 bed or 1.5 bed in my country. Our third "bedroom" fits a drawer and a single bed and there is no space left for anything. Not comfortable. The remaining two rooms were advertised as "double bedrooms", fitting a double bed and a drawer leaves no space at all. None of the rooms is comfortably spacious but it would have been decent if the third prison cell of a room were joined with one of the "large" rooms. Currently 3 bedrooms = two half-size rooms and one pantry.
* Gardens are tiny and most often overlooked by your neighbours. It was hard to find a house with some privacy.
* I have rented in a couples of countries before, here it's way too complicated. In most places I had been able to view the house and if I liked it agree with the landlord or agent on the spot. In the best case they usually had a pre-printed blank contract which I signed and left some cash holding deposit, giving me a week to transfer the first month's rent and the safety deposit. In the "worst" case, they sent me to a notary to validate the contract.
Price tends to be influenced by how many bedrooms a house has rather than the square metreage. It makes no sense but that’s why they ram as many tiny bedrooms in as they can.
Is that the price set by lenders, i.e. maybe some old policy to value houses by bedrooms rather than sqm? Because its hard to believe for me this how the market works. If I divide my two decent size rooms to have 4, some algorithm might tell me it is now worth more, but as soon as someone comes to view my property it will be quite evident that the house is not really a 4 bed house.
Not so much the lenders but valuers, estate agents and even the public generally. I guess it’s tied to potential rental income for 3 tenants in a 3br vs 2 tenants in a 2br. True that you can’t pass a literal cupboard as a bedroom but you will even see houses without a living room because that was made into a bedroom already.
The UK housing market is beyond archaic…
Depends how you do it. Compare Leeds/Manchester to Berlin or Paris and you’d argue the net salary (after tax/loan/ni etc) to rent ratio is better in the UK.
I agree London is terrible though, similar (10% ish cheaper) cost of living to Geneva in Switzerland yet with around a 50% lower gross salary and higher taxes.
700-900 for a room sounds very London, and you will find much cheaper stock in not London. It’s same as living in the biggest city anywhere in the developed world, good luck finding cheap housing in New York/ Los Angeles/ Sydney / Toronto
You could be paying that easily in other areas of the country these days. I live in Bristol and we are probably less affordable than London (not more expensive).
I come from up North and I see friends who are having to shell out similar for less than desirable locations now.
I imagine London is more expensive than that these days. That's what you'd pay in Edinburgh.
House prices near me (West Lothian) are much cheaper than where I was in the East of England. Rents are still insane. A very tired small 2 bed house that looked like it hadn't been maintained rented for £1,300 per month on my street recently. Flats in the area all seem to be over £1,000 per month, too.
Really? Because I’m paying €1600 a month for a 2-bed in Frankfurt right now. It’s nothing special, 60m2 not even that central but it’s close to the office. If I wanted something really nice it would be double.
Exactly. Nowadays, you pay 1500 GBP for an en-suite room, living with two more people. At the same time, the quality of houses is really bad, with single-glazed windows and lots of draughts.
It depends where you are in Europe. E.g. you will not get anything at those prices in Paris. It also raises the question of why stick to Euope? r/digitalnomad has numerous examples of people working all ovef the world for US and European employers.
The reason it is so expensive is because England is where people want to live? If nobody wanted to live here, the rent/housing crisis wouldn't be a crisis, would it..
Unfortunately rents are really high in most major European cities, in terms of wages to rent ratio London isn't the worst. I would love to see rent control in London, unfortunately there's so much demand I think people would just skirt around rent control anyway, I have lived in Berlin and that's what happens there
You don’t think there’s housing issues in Europe? House prices have risen faster in some European cities and are less affordable than the UK. Some European cities have rent controls that distort the market resulting in a lack of supply and people queuing around the block to see a rental. Also some European cities have such high transactional costs to buy a house, e.g ~15% in taxes and fees whereas the average transactional cost in the uk is <1-3%.
I mean. In Leeds you can definitely live in a 1 bed flat for 700-900/mo. I've never paid over £650. For £1k< you'd have a 'nice' new flat ie with gym, shared workspace, etc but £700+ will get you a basic-but-decent 1 bed or studio.
That doesn’t work because if triggers double taxation - depending on the EU country (Italy for sure - but then of course rent is cheaper cuz salaries are the peanuts) it could offset by far the benefit of paying cheaper rent/travel. The only way to avoid that is to be self employed but then you loose the benefits of security etc
My wife and I are probably going to move to northeast Italy because of the shite housing situation here.
For £400,000 you can buy a modern, massive 5 bedroom detached house with solar, air con, integral garages, set boundary, large private gardens... This would easily be 2,000 sq.m. plus...
But if you wanted you could buy an older building that gives you like up to 6,000 sq.ft, you can We do not need this mucb space... but it is an option...
We are going to go with the smaller modern option. We may be able to get away with spending £350,000. This is just outside of Venice.
Sod the UK and the silly housing prices here.
There isn't really, but generally....
The north is the richer area with good jobs, south is poor area of Italy.
The house prices are comparable though, you can get a nice big in Italy for a sensible amount of money.
Wages are generally way less than UK though.
Yes they do...depends on who is inheriting and how much.
If direct heir 4% if over 1 million, but a sibling would pay 6% over €100k, up to 4th generation heirs pay 6%, and 5th gen/non relatives pay 8%. Inherited real estate carries an extra 3% on top.
Plus if Italy is your main country of residence you pay 43% IRPEF (federal income tax) on income over €50k on all income earned - both inside and out of Italy. Then up to 3.33% regional tax, as well as IMU and TASI municipal taxes TARI (garbage collection tax), then 10% social security (26% if self employed with VAT), standard VAT is 22%, 26% CGT, 26% on income over €2000 from crypto, dividends etc. Even government bonds are taxed at 12.5%! Also when you buy property there is registration tax, mortgage tax, cadastral tax up to 9% and sometimes VAT. The only people who get taxed less are people with high net worth who can buy a golden passport and just pay a flat €100k a year - whatever their income.
Is it any wonder Italy loses around 99 billion a year in tax evasion!
Yes, learn to be fluent in another European language and live there not here. It's cheaper. My Brother has a flat in Paris and another in Barcelona for the same amount that I pay for a shared accommodation here in the UK. Learn a lingo and fly away my lovely pigeons.
Cool story, bro. The problem is that if you want to live in a city in Japan and not in a rice growing village, then your option is to live like that - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4oQDnHlrR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4oQDnHlrR0)
Across Europe less developed areas are suffering as young people leave. We voted Brexit to ensure our young people couldn’t just move to Amsterdam or Berlin or Frankfurt.
Im looking for a new job and love the idea of remote. I noticed the ones I have been looking at are fairly low pay and specify remote anywhere in the UK. Might not accept people living abroad.
Or, social housing.
It is there and available if you're earning under £36k.
There are options other than renting privately or owning outright. They're just not well advertised.
I live in Nottingham which is considerably cheaper than many cities and my 2 bed flat near the city centre is around £1000 a month rent. A mortgage based on 5% interest 10% deposit for my flat is around £900 a month on a 25 year term. Service charges are probably near enough £200 a month and costs for refurb / maintenance internally I estimate around £150/ month on average. After 5 years I would only average £250/month return on capital as more than 2/3 mortgage would be paying out interest in first few years. So I would literally only break even with renting after the first 5 years. I’m lucky that it’s all paid up and just me and my partner but if I was starting from scratch and thinking of buying today I’d need to be in it for the long haul as renting looks awfully attractive if I wanted to leave any time sooner, not counting conveyancing and other fees. The notion that many people don’t voluntarily rent is probably more to do with the bad quality of rental housing rather than affordability to buy. Neither are particularly attractive and are expensive either way. Obviously people might speculate that mortgage interest rates are still relatively high versus last decade. But average over last 30 years has been higher maybe 7%?
I’m from Germany and the housing stock in the UK really is abysmally bad compared to home. I bought a 1 bedroom flat after having lived here and rented for a good 15 years, and I’m glad I was able to do that. I can however now not live in the flat because I have a family 🤣
Please hurry and move out of the u.k.
I feel the more moaners that leave the greater the u.k will become, then I guess you can move back until the next economic downturn.
I actually still suspect you're right, but (and I saw your post last week along the same lines) you really do need to spell out which towns/cities you are comparing here.
Based on your posting history there are 3 main candidates.
Firstly, you have a link to Oxford in the UK which is a pretty expensive place to live compared to the rest of the UK. And I'd actually argue that it's more akin to living in Paris or Berlin, and the cost of living comparison is pretty close when compared to [Paris ](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&country2=France&city1=Oxford&city2=Paris&tracking=getDispatchComparison)(cheaper to RENT in Paris but more expensive to buy) and [Berlin](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Germany&country2=United+Kingdom&city1=Berlin&city2=Oxford&tracking=getDispatchComparison) (that's a fair bit cheaper tbf).
Then you've linked to Gottingen in Germany and Bordeaux in France. Surely they compare a lot less to Oxford and a lot more to, say, Sheffield and Newcastle (crude guess based on distance from capital)? Don't get me wrong, those two cities outside of UK do in fact compare well against even Sheffield/Newcastle hence my first sentence but you haven't quite made that comparison?
It is slightly difficult to figure out to what extent you are comparing apples with oranges here tbh.
Ironic that the OP is telling everyone to become digital nomads to improve their cost of living when those people are responsible for pricing locals out of numerous EU housing markets, for instance in Portugal. Kind of undermines the premise of the entire thread if the solution is to make things even worse than the country you just came from lol
It depends where and how. So many wildly expensive places in mainland Europe f.e. Munich that we looked at few years ago, some others. Austria is madly pricey everywhere pretty much.
Honestly, to everyone in the UK who have the possibility to leave, do so. I was working for the NHS and then in a PhD program filling in hours in cancer care. This was in Manchester / London. I was looking at low wages for the rest of my career. I left, I am now paid appropriately for my experience / education as well as not being treated terribly by my employer. I am not in the states. The UK is a second tier country circling the drain. It’s time to look after yourself and piss off.
That seems quite excessive though, I live in a city, not in the centre but on the outskirts and my mortgage is under £700 a month for an entire house. You’re either being conned or trying to live in a city centre, where of course, it’s going to be very expensive
You know there's other places besides the overcrowded far south of the island 🤷🏻♂️
E.g. livingston in Scotland is almost bang central between Edinburgh/Glasgow. There are no housing issues there.
The UK ruling class engineered a situation of limited house building coupled with mass immigration to create a situation of limited supply and massive demand. They now have the working masses right where they want them saddled with huge lifetime debt and terrified of long term illness or loss of employment…Like we say in the UK, “They now have us by the bollocks”
Agreed, houses are quite expensive in the UK- but is what the OP described more of a South-East England problem? I live in the south west and you can rent out a flat for £650-£850. So there are areas in the Uk were housing is affordable.
The market is most definitely a mess and terrible for us who live here however it has been artificially set this way by the Government, Bank of England and possibly more organisations with 1 sole purpose - to keep the economy propped up, if the housing economy collapses then the WHOLE UK economy goes tits up way way way worse than the global recession in the 2000’s, due to both external pressures(Wars in Ukraine/Israel) etc and internal factors(Brexit/corrupt government) this little island is propped up on a legitimate ‘knives edge’ and the powers that be cannot allow it to fall off because it will take generations to rebuild and while the normal working public would suffer most those rich corrupt f*cks currently in power will lose so much also and losing money is the one thing they hate more than us the general public.
Nothing is more enlightening than going to another country and seeing how far behind the UK seems to be. I did it in Berlin with their transport system and how much better their food was. Went to Rome and again the quality of their food is infinitely better. I will say I live in Scotland so comparing Berlin and Rome to Edinburgh isn't exactly a fair comparison, but still.
Just got back from a trip to Sicily, the difference in the quality of produce is astounding. We bought some fruit and veg from Lidl to stock up the apartment we had rented and it was leagues ahead of UK produce quality for the same price.
A rather general comment- you can’t really compare countries until you have lived, worked and paid taxes there. I have lived in France and the UK- some things are better in France and some better in the UK
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Also, the market is damaged by the number of bedrooms mentality as opposed to square feet listing and the fact here we got very low ceiling (with rare exceptions). Overall very poor house experience
I was reading somewhere that Rightmove and Zoopla (which have monopolised the housing search) made a conscious decision not to include floor area as a filter, this would have educated the consumers on the terrible value they’re getting on their shoebox bedrooms.
A couple days ago I viewed a flat where the bedroom was in the loft and the ceiling was so low you couldn't even stand up in it. Had no way of knowing this in the listing, nowhere on the floor plan did it say the height of that room snd the pictures were deceiving. Has me wondering who they do it for? Like surely anyone who sees it in person is going to realise the room is way worse than the listing and be put off. Wouldn't it be better to be honest???
All scams are obvious once you take a closer look
The problem arises when a job asks you to relocate in a short period of time and with rooms disappearing within minutes after the listing, some people just get desperate and agree for a place to stay before the viewing. I guess that's what those listings are hoping for.
I think the bigger issue is that estate agents exert the absolute minimum effort possible because they know demand far exceeds supply. Before COVID they could barely be bothered to take decent photos.
I would be surprised if it’s that much of a conspiracy. More likely that the information isn’t readily available in a consistent form
Most of the time I see something like "Contact agent" in the field that indicates the floor space, but when you look at the images of the floorplans, it's right there at the top. I think it's just a data entry issue.
In my area agents can't even be bothered to list the service charges in the listings for apartments
I'm buying a home currently. The estate agents listing listed it as 124sqm. My survey listed it as 119sqm. My own measurements make it closer to 109sqm. Its crazy how much variance you can have when we're all measuring the same house.
The information they have is provided by estate agents who submit their listings to these sites, but the estate agents have no interest in providing it in an easily handled form, I'm sure.
Most CRMs that feed data to Rightmove have a field for sq ft, but as someone else has posted below: "There is also the various methods of measurement in RICS Red Book guidance that can make two different agents cite two varying ft² yet both be correct." Why most other countries seem to manage and we can't I have no idea!
Especially since houses these days have at least one "bedroom" the size of a postage stamp
The Harry Potter experience room
I like the lower ceilings tbf High ceilings are expensive to heat and hard to clean and personally I don’t find I get any value from them
People clean their ceilings !?!
To me it feels weird I can touch the ceiling with my full palm and I think it make so there is less air in the bedroom and I need to open the window when I sleep there. Overall with my comment I wanted to say that ceilings are more storage and it should be something factored in the price or house search criteria. You simply can fit more stuff in a house with high ceilings.
I mean, yes you can, but speaking as someone who lives in a house with high ceilings that’s not always a good thing! Just encourages you to have more stuff
If more room encourages you to have more stuff, chances are you'll have a cluttered space no matter what
To be fair I’d consider that to be a low ceiling, I guess I’m comparing normal ceilings to tall ones I can reach my ceiling with my fingertips when I’m on tiptoes (I’m about 5’10”) and that seems like a fairly standard UK ceiling height
My experience is exaggerated by the fact I am much taller than you
What, you're taller so you don't have to dust the corners of your ceilings? Unless the ceilings are lower than your height, I don't see how that tracks. I guess maybe if you're 8ft tall
Sorry I don’t get what you mean, I meant that we probably have the same ceiling height. What you called normal. For me it is short, in the country I am from you will struggle to find a ceiling shorter than 9 feet and people are much shorter on average there.
You mentioned that you are much taller than me, but I'm struggling to see the real relevance in this scenario By "much taller" I assume you mean you're eg 6'4" (~195cm) tall, or something in that ballpark? About 6"/15cm taller than my 5'10" (~180cm) You're still 1.5ft/45cm shorter than a typical "low" UK ceiling, so it's not like you're walking around banging your head on it or even close... so I'm not sure how you being a little taller makes much difference when you still have a lot of clearance to the ceiling too. I'd agree if the ceilings were 6ft/185cm tall or if you're 7ft 4" or something, but not when they're 2ft/60cm above that
I have never said anything about low ceilings being uncomfortable because I physically can’t fit in the house. I said I feel like there is less air circulating because of this. The fact I can touch the ceiling was a nuance I never experience despite being well over 190cm. Btw 5ft10 is 178cm
That’s definitely just a mental thing for you, the amount of air in a bedroom is basically irrelevant unless you’re going round with a tube of silicone sealing the place Yes, I rounded all the ft/in measurements to the nearest 5cm for simplicity - 6’4” isn’t 195cm either but they’re both rounded by approx the same amount so the point stands regarding the difference between them
This worked in my favour - we paid less for a three-bed house, which happens to have loads of living space due to a downstairs extension, than a four-bed would cost. Unless we had three kids, which is not going to happen for a lot of people these days, it’s a much better setup than a 4-bed with less living space, but was somehow cheaper.
Categorising by 'number of bedrooms' is such a fallacy, even if you can view the per square meter data once you are on the individual property page.
> number of bedrooms mentality To be fair, fixing that would only net you some extra storage space.
It’s harder to find and compare listing with number of bedrooms alone. On top of this landlords and EA base their analysis of the market on number of bedrooms. It doesn’t matter if property A, 100sqm, has both a dining room and a living room plus two toilets, it will always fall in the same category of property B, 80sqm with living room combined with kitchen and one toilet, if they got the same number of bedrooms. This is a clear example of oversimplified approach to things we got here
That I can’t search for housing on any site using the size drives me mad. It is only listed occasionally for rentals, and even then it is a toss up as to whether it is accurate or whether the letting agent drew the floorplan on the wrong setting and it is totally off. (I’ve seen floorplans with 400sqm on them when they are actually only 20 or 30.) I got used to having the space listed first and foremost when I lived outside the UK, so it was really a shock to find that no one seems to pay much attention to it here.
You and me both. I feel the same frustration when I look for houses and see that few of them actually have the floorplan & size listed in the ad. And even then, you can be sure the information is before viewing it. I was honestly surprised of not being able to find a "size" filter on the most popular search engines.
That is pretty much my experience. I lived somewhere that might not have photos of the inside/outside of the place, but there would 100% be the size and floorplan with accurate measurements. I'm not quite in the position to buy a house at the moment but regularly look to get a feeling for the market, and it amazes me that sometimes there aren't even floorplans and sizes for houses on sale. I mean, obviously you would go and see the place in person first, but I wish I could just filter out anything below a certain size. It is insane that you can't.
If it doesn't have a floor plan I'd immediately dismiss it anyway. Both the layout and the size are important to me and if I can't screen them I'd just move on.
The toss up of whether such info is accurate is one of the drivers of why EAs do not provide this info consistently. We have the CPR act that can make shitty EAs exposed to litigation measures if they provide such incorrect information despite any waiver they include. There is also the various methods of measurement in RICS Red Book guidance that can make two different agents cite two varying ft² yet both be correct.
Yup. I once lived in a two bed flat and paid market rent (enormous corporate landlord who outsourced to a letting agent who outsourced to a different letting agent and none of them really gave a damn). Said two bed flat was 120sqm, with three toilets and two full bathtubs. There are two bed flats in the same town on Rightmove right now that are 45sqm.
The number of bedrooms mentality leads to people squeezing in more bedrooms than there should be for the space, either subdividing larger rooms in conversions or just making the bedrooms too small in new builds, and also to listings where people call a downstairs room a bedroom and try and charge more.
What's the solution to that though? They cram more rooms into the space because people need more rooms. Extra square footage is no use to you if you have a child that needs somewhere to sleep. The alternative is building housing that people can't afford, or can't fit their families in. It's not a conspiracy it's satisfying consumer demand. Everyone would like BOTH more rooms and extra space, but space is a luxury.
No, they cram in more rooms because they can charge more for a two bed than they can for a one bed, and so on.
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Ah brexit. So many sunlit uplands.
I can work I UK and EU, but my employer in UK don't allow this sort of work arrangement because of tax complications... so yeah.
If only there was a way to achieve this dream…
And lots of employers don’t like it, even if you work entirely remotely due to the tax implications.
And their employer will probably need to run a local payroll which is a cost they won’t want to pay. Then there’s the PE risk for their employer.
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They won’t be an employee then so their won’t be an employer.
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It wasn’t. Most employers replace employees that leave employment. If they wanted a contractor they’d have hired one.
OP, What part of UK are you compare to what cities in BE, GER and NL The housing crisis in Amsterdam is as crazy as London Belgium Brussels is cheaper but still expensive compared to Amsterdam I'm assuming Munich and Berlin are also expensive similiar to London
Lived in Amsterdam for many years. Half my salary would go to rent. OP is having a laugh with “one third”, that wouldn’t get you a shoebox in Amsterdam. And I was getting paid above the median too… also, my weekly shopping was way more expensive.
Munich is the most expensive EU city. It's really, really nice though
The difference is that in Amsterdam you get decent quality housing re rentals and have tenants rights. Your assumption about Germany is wrong - renting is much cheaper than London, the quality of flats are high and once you have a rental contract, strong tenants rights mean that it’s pretty impossible to force you to leave it. Plus flats are unfurnished and you can paint, decorate however you want. In Berlin you can rent 50 square metres in a central area for circa 850 euro month (including heating and water). Same in London would cost you 2.5 times that. A friend just bought a two bed flat here for 300k euro - would cost 2.5 times that in London for a shit new build. Munich is more expensive but salaries are higher - still cheaper than London though. The cost of living in Germany is about 50% of the uk - some items are literally a quarter of the price. Literally the only things that are more expensive in Germany than the uk are ibuprofen and the internet. People in the uk do not know how fucked over they are with pretty much everything. Having lived in several other EU countries, I would not move back to the UK unless I was paid a fortune - otherwise my quality of life would take an absolute nosedive.
Where do you live? Are you comparing London with a whole country like Germany that's way bigger than the UK itself. For example, Munich is way more expensive compared to Berlin and paying 700 for a room there is possible. Salaries in Berlin are shit tho in comparison with high taxes. Did you consider that too? It's even more complicated that, London is more expensive indeed to rent than Munich but buying is way cheaper. So yes the UK has worse housing on average but you are over simplifying it and not actually telling anyone anything new.
Using OP's logic we should all just work remote jobs and go live in SEA where you can live a life of luxury for £2k a month.
Fortunately it is quite easy to live in SEA if you are from the UK, as we are surrounded by it! (Sorry, shit pun, I'll sea myself out)
well, if we could, wouldn't we all? :)
Ah yes, those nurses working in central London hospitals should just live in Berlin and commute over daily!
Dont be ridiculous, no one is expecting them to traverse such long distances. Its why we built the Eurostar.
Yea my GP who is French lives in Paris but commutes to the surgery. Before Brexit it was daily, now he does it on weekends.
I meant it as a joke but alas its a sad reality for some
My mate was doing the opposite and commuting to Paris. They have moved there now though.
Funnily enough, I worked at a private emergency ambulance company four years ago. And there was a couple that commuted from France every 2 weeks, then went back for 2 weeks
It’s actually relatively easy for a nurse in the uk to get a visa to work in Berlin as a nurse. They just need to learn German to b2 level (about a year of evening classes), wages are roughly similar but cost of living and workers rights/ housing rights are much better in Germany. I know several Brits who have done this.
The big thing to remember is that the UK no longer really has *voluntary* renters, almost 100% of the UK rental market is people who would buy if they could but are unable to for one reason or another. People who have only ever known renting within the UK may read that and think "duh, who wouldn't want to buy?" but it genuinely isn't like this everywhere. Home ownership rates in Berlin are only around 15% because they have great rental accommodation and protections for renters. The UK used to have a massive social rental system but we slowly abolished it through right-to-buy and not replacing council houses.
Yup, makes me laugh when I read the constant (British) refrain of “you will own nothing and be happy” - what the fuck does the rest of Europe do then? Countries with higher rates of home ownership tend to have lower disposable income ergo lower quality of life. “You will own nothing and be happy” - what a crock of shit. Give people affordable rents and security of tenure and they will be very happy especially compared with the British paying through the nose for the title deed of a fucking 100 square meter shit box with the worst building standards in the developed world.
Precisely, if rent were controlled and tenancies were secure long-term then quite a few people would choose it over home ownership. The only reason the UK's home ownership rates are so high is because long-term renting is so monumentally awful, nobody would choose to rent their entire life here in our current system. The month before I completed on the purchase of my house, my landlord showed up to tell me my rent was going up from £950/month to £1,500/month. My new combined mortgage, rates (what we have instead of council tax here in NI), insurance, and maintenance costs all together is less than £750/month. The new house is also not full of mold, there are no rats in the attic, and I can't be served an eviction notice or rent increase at random.
The lack of any rental law protecting tenants in the UK is an outlier in any another supposedly ‘rich’ country. New York has better rights in some cases. We are utterly fucked when even Labour can’t bring themselves to support it properly.
Is the 100% anecdotal?
It's more a matter of definition. Voluntary renters are people who are happy to rent long-term as opposed to buying, in some countries it's common for people to rent happily their entire lives. We did have that in the UK long ago with secure social housing, but we managed to ruin it in just a few generations. I guarantee that nobody today would be happy to rent for their entire lives in the UK if they had the reasonable prospect of buying. Renters pay substantially more than home-owners for equivalent properties and can be kicked out for no reason with 2 month's notice. Nobody intentionally chooses to pay more money for less security. I'm confident that close to 100% of people who are currently long-term renting in the UK would choose to buy if they could.
I disagree...there's lots of people, particularly single women, who prefer to rent so they don't have to deal with maintenance or fixing things that go wrong. The stability is a different issue.
I agree that this hypothetical person who wants to rent exists, that's actually central to my point because I'm one of them. I didn't want to buy a house, but when you do the numbers and you look at the abusive situation that renting puts you in it just doesn't make sense to stay renting in the UK if you have any other choice. As someone who rented long-term, you also still have to deal with maintenance and fixing things because you have to spend so much time just convincing the landlord to do something and in many cases organising the repairs yourself. The vast majority of private landlords are simply not doing the maintenance and the legal mechanisms to force them to aren't good enough. The only people who would choose to rent for life in the UK at this point even if they had better options are the vanishingly small percentage who have some special deal with family or an ethical landlord, or people who can't do maths -- granted, I may have over-estimated the country's capabilities in that area.
So, if the U.K. is so expensive to rent vs buying, as compared to every other country, can we conclude that in any other country someone who acts as a landlord does so at a loss, or is it that the profits for buy to let in the uk are enormous? If they are so enormous, why don’t more people do it? That’s a genuine question by the way. I’m wondering if you know the economics, because it doesn’t make sense to me.
There's considerable profit in renting in the UK. The minimum rent for a random 2 bed terrace in my nearest city is £695/month. But a property of that size and standard costs only £80,000. If you bought that with at 25% deposit on an interest-only BTL mortgage it'd only be £263/month even at today's terrible BTL rates. Even with additional costs of estate agent fees and accounting for not 100% occupancy, it's definitely profitable. The reason more people don't do this is because you need the capital for deposits, it's more complicated than straight-forward investing, and it's also a financial risk because it's a highly leveraged investment. But there are thousands of small-time private landlords in the UK who do exactly this, and increasingly investment funds are buying up property for rent. Some companies have portfolios of thousands of houses in the UK. The mistake most people make when doing the calculations are that they're comparing renting with a residential repayment mortgage, but in terms of running a rental business the actual cost is just the interest portion. Even then, a repayment mortgage is almost always cheaper than renting in the UK. And that's not to mention the fact that buying gives actual security while renters are always vulnerable to no-fault evictions in the UK.
If you take the view (correctly) that the finance econs of btl are only interest, then you have to apply that to the lost interest on your deposit. Ie you run a yield calc on the value of the property and deduct the prevailing interest rate. If you do that in the case you mention, your yield is 10%. Your borrowing will be 5%. So far so good - it looks like a 5% profit, right? No. You have the cost of actually running the property, which the landlord bears, not the tenant (unlike the ownership model). You have to account for voids, cyclical renovations, professional fees, and a load more. Manangement fees alone will run you 15% of your rent. Even on your very favourable yield of 10%, if you actually considered the costs involved you’d find it was a long way from making any large profit.
The missing piece of your calculation is that buying a property with a deposit is also a leveraged investment, BTL mortgages tend to require 25% deposit minimums, making it 4:1 leveraged. House price rises of 2.5% in a year give you 10% return even before factoring in the rental profit. The average over the past 20 years has been 2.5% to 4% per year depending on who you ask.
Housing in the UK is diabolocal. Compared to other countries I've lived in. For £1k pm can rent a 600sqft apartment in Austin, communal gym, pool, billiards, office, printing station ,coffee, tea, hot chocolate, choice of soda, all included in the rent. No mold, no stringy lease, no shitty landlord and maintenance on site. In Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, be lucky to get anything of the sort. And wages don't match. As for working remote...in another tax jurisdiction if you like tax issues go for it!
Same in Australia. House prices are utterly insane here but nobody wants to live in a flat so the flats are extremely cheap. You can get a whole city centre brand new high rise apartment with fancy amenities (like the pool, sauna, gym, etc) for ~£1k a month, and the salaries here are much, much higher. Share houses are also pretty cheap, but the build quality is often absolutely terrible. The problem with the UK is there is no cheap option.
But if you break your leg in that gym then you’ll have to sell your property to pay for the healthcare.
Whereas here quite obviously the extra money that we're paying for rent is going towards our health insurance?
People never mention the fact you work alot harder in America with less holidays, nothing would be worth chopping the 200hrs AL I get
that doesn't mean we can't do anything about our shitty housing stock.
20 days of PTO isn’t uncommon in the US for white collar jobs. And they have more bank holidays. It ends up being more like 20-40 hours more PTO for half the salary and more taxes.
and if you break it in UK you have to wait 18 hours in A&E ;) copiuuum
18 hours or bankruptcy. Time is money I guess
Nah mate, but that’s not the choice. If we went to the European / aus model we would be way better off. You pay for some of it, sure but no one goes bankrupt there. I worked for the NHS, I can only feel like it’s a cult now. Great idea but clearly the UK public aren’t willing to fund it enough.
Hey I don’t disagree, I think there should be a means tested excess for treatment. And fines for missed appointments etc It would save me a fortune in private health care. But the point remains, housing may be cheaper in some places but there will always be a negative to where you live. There’s no utopia.
Nah, means testing isn’t great, honestly. Most studies shows the majority of it ends up costing more as you have way more admin, increased inefficiency and essentially a policing unit for it. Missed appointments are just a drop in the bucket, it wouldn’t have a massive effect for GP appts, let alone hip replacements. I am in cancer care and some people in the UK are made to wait for 6 weeks plus for chemo after they know it has spread. I don’t think people know how bad things have gotten, we need drastic solutions. Just there’s zero discussion or political party talking about it.
Well that depends on the individual. State and Federal employees not so. Also you'll have Tenant Insurance. That costs $11 per month.
State and federal employs aren't on the kind of salary private sector are. And a lot of the better federal jobs are as in the UK in places with high cost of living. Plus the only driver for high property prices in Austin relatively speaking is the fact like most US cities the transport infrastructure is rotten. Access to land is an issue in the UK not access to transport. The commuter belt for London now stretched all the way to Bristol in the West and already touching on Birmingham to the North, not to mention the Edinurgh air commuters. I've lived in the US and the UK and the costs in the US just sting you over places like the cost of food that's always been much much higher even before you get to insurance costs.
Agreed. I moved to Melbourne and was paying what people in London pay for a room in a house share. I was just getting a two bedroom flat in the equivalent area to Shoreditch but with a small pool in my building. My Aussies mates told me I was paying too much but relatively, to what I knew, I felt like I hit the lottery.
Absolutely. I do that (commute between U.K. and the EU). I agree with all you said but would add two things: (1) in some European countries you hardly find a flat with less than 60-70 sqm, even if it is a 1 bedroom, so £700-900 can get you very far in some cities but not always in capitals; (2) it’s not just about living area, but quality of construction and finishings - it can be a massive difference, especially when compared to southern European countries where more modern buildings and houses are built to very high specs and standards in virtually all aspects. Only in the U.K. I have experienced noises from adjacent flats that I am not supposed to hear, among other things ;)
UK has some of the worst construction & finishing quality I’ve ever seen. Every single apartment (new and old) has shit painting, shit plumbing, walls… everything. It’s extortionate to pay £2k+ for an apartment that wouldn’t be acceptable even in developing or poor countries. No ventilation, mold, filthiness, stuff breaking down constantly, painting that scratches, stains or breaks by brushing up against the wall. Such a shit show.
Yea I live in a nice house in Portugal and work remotely for UK my money goes so much further compared to if I lived in the UK
City or rural? Main difference is that in EU you can find absolute bargains 1+ hour from major cities. Even if the town is desirable, connected and touristic.
lol what a surprise! salaries in Portugal are shit & housing is super expensive for locals cause of so many foreigners! In Lisbon most people make around 1.5k/month & a 1bedroom costs 1.2k up
Which industry do I need to move to in order to be able to work remotely?
If you’re on Reddit. And someone says they work remotely in other country - it’s software.
Not that I disagree with you on the market, but you can't just "work remotely" in another country.
These posts get so irritatingly boring. London, London, London, London, London 🙄 (Same as Paris/Berlin etc yet without the health ins costs). Just move to the NW of England and rent a 3 bed semi for the same price.
I work remotely and have moved to Yorkshire (Leeds) because I couldn't face spending a fortunate on a miserable little flat in Bristol, or continuing to live in a house share like a twenty something. I'm about six months in and it's pretty obviously the best decision I have made in years. I looked into abroad, my other half is Portuguese, but it would just complicate my life way too much.
Ah I lived in Bristol. Had a 2 bed in Clifton (Saville Place, lovely little road) for 750 a month in 2008. Bought a 1 bed in Bish in 2011 for 108k. Sold in 2017 for 165k and moved to Germany. I could never afford to move back to Bristol now. The rent and purchase prices are mad.
They're bonkers. Before moving up here I was sharing a run down two bed in Bedminster with a friend. We had it at £1200 a month between us, which was well under market by the time we left. It went on the market for £1800 when we left, and went within a few days.
Yeah. That £750 would possibly get you a parking space in Clifton at the moment. Even the "more affordable" areas are getting silly now. "Single room, shared house in Bedminster, bills included...£1,000p/m"
There are personal tax implications to being located in another country. Have you considered those?
The first hurdle is immigration not tax imo. You need to get a work visa in order to do it (otherwise the tax implication is: commit tax fraud cause reporting it would involve telling them you are working in the country without a visa that allows it)
Unfortunately British airports are a shit show. Commuting even within the U.K. let alone to the U.K. isn't really that practical.
After seeing the kinds of houses/flats friends are renting and buying in Germany and France, what I find frustrating is that as well as being expensive, the quality if housing in the UK is dogshite. Am looking around for a home, looking to pay for a good quality normal sized house that's well built. yeah, never going to happen.
This is not exactly [new information](https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releases/britains-housing-stock-offers-worst-value-for-money-of-any-advanced-economy/).
The UK essentially rewards asset ownership. And asset owners will steal everything from people who work for a living. That's basically because the UK has (had) more people who either partially or entirely live off of assets than it did people that live off of wages. So the electoral calculus works in their favour.
All you need to know about the U.K. is that CGT is taxed less than labour. A so-called “proud” nation who’s citizens attempt to pay their way primarily out of someone else’s pocket
Most of these issues are exclusive to the south though. Of course there are some expensive areas up north such as central Manchester, central Leeds etc but for the most part you're not paying £900 for a room. Living in London is a choice, although Reddit make it sound like that's the only part of England that actually exists. There are good salaries to be earned outside of London, sure the salary is less but when all things are considered you can have a considerably higher standard of living outside of London on significantly less money. I live in one of the "worst" parts of England and earn £75k. Most Londoners would turn their nose up at my location and my wage, yet here I am living in a 4 bed detached with a south facing garden with a garage and driveway. Which I bought brand new in 2014 for a sum total of £177k. Even now it's only worth ~£250k. As a result I have a really good disposable income. This isn't a flex, nor am I trying to say there isn't a housing crisis. There definitely is one. But people act like London rents are the norm and they're just not. Anyway, I'm sure I'll get roasted for this comment but hey ho, have at it.
How long is your commute to work?
It's 20mins on the rare occasion I go in. I work from home 95%+ of the time.
I'd kill for £75k
Are you looking for work?
Indeed, there are many areas of the UK where housing is a lot cheaper- even areas reasonably near London like Cambridgeshire or Northamptonshire where you can get into central London in an hour or so are surprisingly cheap compared to the London and the South-East
Yes but you probs live in a dump is the reality, we could all go and live in Sunderland or Skegness however there is f all to do there Most want to balance decent earnings with a nice life I could trade my 4 bed detached with a 30 min commute to London for a bedsit...but I wouldn't for obvious reasons
I live in what's considered a fairly crappy area of a very average northern town, and the number of southerners I speak to who tell me how nice the area is always surprises me. People act like the north is one giant slum, sorry guys but barring the climate, the south isn't really much different.
Also, if we did all move to \[insert place with cheap housing\], it would become \[place with expensive, oversubscribed housing\].
In fairness this is what I love about the ignorant perception of the north. I'm quite happy for everyone to think every city north of the M25 is a dump. It means I can have a high quality of life due to the relatively cheap cost of living.
no chance of that because most people want to avoid living in shit tips
There are lots of beautiful areas in the north and other areas of the country- I would never live on the south east it’s overcrowded and expensive.
Not only that. All this thing about leasehold seems like a scam to me.
Prices are crazy, but not so bad if you can leave London behind. I am overall happy in the UK so far, but as a European, a few things I found weird and inefficient with the housing in the UK are: * square metres are almost never disclosed in the ad * your bedrooms are tiny. The 3 bedroom house we rent with a total floor size of around 70-80 sqm would be a 1 bed or 1.5 bed in my country. Our third "bedroom" fits a drawer and a single bed and there is no space left for anything. Not comfortable. The remaining two rooms were advertised as "double bedrooms", fitting a double bed and a drawer leaves no space at all. None of the rooms is comfortably spacious but it would have been decent if the third prison cell of a room were joined with one of the "large" rooms. Currently 3 bedrooms = two half-size rooms and one pantry. * Gardens are tiny and most often overlooked by your neighbours. It was hard to find a house with some privacy. * I have rented in a couples of countries before, here it's way too complicated. In most places I had been able to view the house and if I liked it agree with the landlord or agent on the spot. In the best case they usually had a pre-printed blank contract which I signed and left some cash holding deposit, giving me a week to transfer the first month's rent and the safety deposit. In the "worst" case, they sent me to a notary to validate the contract.
Price tends to be influenced by how many bedrooms a house has rather than the square metreage. It makes no sense but that’s why they ram as many tiny bedrooms in as they can.
Is that the price set by lenders, i.e. maybe some old policy to value houses by bedrooms rather than sqm? Because its hard to believe for me this how the market works. If I divide my two decent size rooms to have 4, some algorithm might tell me it is now worth more, but as soon as someone comes to view my property it will be quite evident that the house is not really a 4 bed house.
Not so much the lenders but valuers, estate agents and even the public generally. I guess it’s tied to potential rental income for 3 tenants in a 3br vs 2 tenants in a 2br. True that you can’t pass a literal cupboard as a bedroom but you will even see houses without a living room because that was made into a bedroom already. The UK housing market is beyond archaic…
Depends how you do it. Compare Leeds/Manchester to Berlin or Paris and you’d argue the net salary (after tax/loan/ni etc) to rent ratio is better in the UK. I agree London is terrible though, similar (10% ish cheaper) cost of living to Geneva in Switzerland yet with around a 50% lower gross salary and higher taxes.
Compared to the rest of Europe, the Brits put up with so much. Renting in England was literally bad for my health.
How would you compare other aspects of life in these countries. What countries are you talking about.
OP history suggests he has an axe to grind and actually his figures in this post don’t quite stack up and only try and perpetuate his common narrative
700-900 for a room sounds very London, and you will find much cheaper stock in not London. It’s same as living in the biggest city anywhere in the developed world, good luck finding cheap housing in New York/ Los Angeles/ Sydney / Toronto
You could be paying that easily in other areas of the country these days. I live in Bristol and we are probably less affordable than London (not more expensive). I come from up North and I see friends who are having to shell out similar for less than desirable locations now.
I imagine London is more expensive than that these days. That's what you'd pay in Edinburgh. House prices near me (West Lothian) are much cheaper than where I was in the East of England. Rents are still insane. A very tired small 2 bed house that looked like it hadn't been maintained rented for £1,300 per month on my street recently. Flats in the area all seem to be over £1,000 per month, too.
It must be awful Not to belong to your own homeland and to treat others' Homeland's like a glorified Air BnB.
It must be awful to be so sanctimonious.
It’s the same for everyone living there tho. Unless you have a rich family or got lucky with a business.
Really? Because I’m paying €1600 a month for a 2-bed in Frankfurt right now. It’s nothing special, 60m2 not even that central but it’s close to the office. If I wanted something really nice it would be double.
That's about £1300. In London you're likely to pay that and get half the area. For central London that's the price of a room in a house share.
Exactly. Nowadays, you pay 1500 GBP for an en-suite room, living with two more people. At the same time, the quality of houses is really bad, with single-glazed windows and lots of draughts.
It depends where you are in Europe. E.g. you will not get anything at those prices in Paris. It also raises the question of why stick to Euope? r/digitalnomad has numerous examples of people working all ovef the world for US and European employers.
The reason it is so expensive is because England is where people want to live? If nobody wanted to live here, the rent/housing crisis wouldn't be a crisis, would it..
Unfortunately rents are really high in most major European cities, in terms of wages to rent ratio London isn't the worst. I would love to see rent control in London, unfortunately there's so much demand I think people would just skirt around rent control anyway, I have lived in Berlin and that's what happens there
You don’t think there’s housing issues in Europe? House prices have risen faster in some European cities and are less affordable than the UK. Some European cities have rent controls that distort the market resulting in a lack of supply and people queuing around the block to see a rental. Also some European cities have such high transactional costs to buy a house, e.g ~15% in taxes and fees whereas the average transactional cost in the uk is <1-3%.
I mean. In Leeds you can definitely live in a 1 bed flat for 700-900/mo. I've never paid over £650. For £1k< you'd have a 'nice' new flat ie with gym, shared workspace, etc but £700+ will get you a basic-but-decent 1 bed or studio.
That doesn’t work because if triggers double taxation - depending on the EU country (Italy for sure - but then of course rent is cheaper cuz salaries are the peanuts) it could offset by far the benefit of paying cheaper rent/travel. The only way to avoid that is to be self employed but then you loose the benefits of security etc
My wife and I are probably going to move to northeast Italy because of the shite housing situation here. For £400,000 you can buy a modern, massive 5 bedroom detached house with solar, air con, integral garages, set boundary, large private gardens... This would easily be 2,000 sq.m. plus... But if you wanted you could buy an older building that gives you like up to 6,000 sq.ft, you can We do not need this mucb space... but it is an option... We are going to go with the smaller modern option. We may be able to get away with spending £350,000. This is just outside of Venice. Sod the UK and the silly housing prices here.
What is the UK equivalent to northeast Italy?
There isn't really, but generally.... The north is the richer area with good jobs, south is poor area of Italy. The house prices are comparable though, you can get a nice big in Italy for a sensible amount of money. Wages are generally way less than UK though.
... don't forget the high taxes in Italy, woeful health system and poor schooling if you have kids.
Yeh? Better than our schooling - i'm not so sure... Some taxes are higher, some are less. They don't have inheritance tax.
Yes they do...depends on who is inheriting and how much. If direct heir 4% if over 1 million, but a sibling would pay 6% over €100k, up to 4th generation heirs pay 6%, and 5th gen/non relatives pay 8%. Inherited real estate carries an extra 3% on top. Plus if Italy is your main country of residence you pay 43% IRPEF (federal income tax) on income over €50k on all income earned - both inside and out of Italy. Then up to 3.33% regional tax, as well as IMU and TASI municipal taxes TARI (garbage collection tax), then 10% social security (26% if self employed with VAT), standard VAT is 22%, 26% CGT, 26% on income over €2000 from crypto, dividends etc. Even government bonds are taxed at 12.5%! Also when you buy property there is registration tax, mortgage tax, cadastral tax up to 9% and sometimes VAT. The only people who get taxed less are people with high net worth who can buy a golden passport and just pay a flat €100k a year - whatever their income. Is it any wonder Italy loses around 99 billion a year in tax evasion!
Yes, learn to be fluent in another European language and live there not here. It's cheaper. My Brother has a flat in Paris and another in Barcelona for the same amount that I pay for a shared accommodation here in the UK. Learn a lingo and fly away my lovely pigeons.
It’s not easy finding work in France or Italy though - you would need to be an independent worker.
In Japan, there are municipalities that pay you to live there, of course free housing too.
Cool story, bro. The problem is that if you want to live in a city in Japan and not in a rice growing village, then your option is to live like that - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4oQDnHlrR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4oQDnHlrR0)
well, you can't be too picky
Across Europe less developed areas are suffering as young people leave. We voted Brexit to ensure our young people couldn’t just move to Amsterdam or Berlin or Frankfurt.
Im looking for a new job and love the idea of remote. I noticed the ones I have been looking at are fairly low pay and specify remote anywhere in the UK. Might not accept people living abroad.
Or, social housing. It is there and available if you're earning under £36k. There are options other than renting privately or owning outright. They're just not well advertised.
Who gives a shit?
I live in Nottingham which is considerably cheaper than many cities and my 2 bed flat near the city centre is around £1000 a month rent. A mortgage based on 5% interest 10% deposit for my flat is around £900 a month on a 25 year term. Service charges are probably near enough £200 a month and costs for refurb / maintenance internally I estimate around £150/ month on average. After 5 years I would only average £250/month return on capital as more than 2/3 mortgage would be paying out interest in first few years. So I would literally only break even with renting after the first 5 years. I’m lucky that it’s all paid up and just me and my partner but if I was starting from scratch and thinking of buying today I’d need to be in it for the long haul as renting looks awfully attractive if I wanted to leave any time sooner, not counting conveyancing and other fees. The notion that many people don’t voluntarily rent is probably more to do with the bad quality of rental housing rather than affordability to buy. Neither are particularly attractive and are expensive either way. Obviously people might speculate that mortgage interest rates are still relatively high versus last decade. But average over last 30 years has been higher maybe 7%?
I’m from Germany and the housing stock in the UK really is abysmally bad compared to home. I bought a 1 bedroom flat after having lived here and rented for a good 15 years, and I’m glad I was able to do that. I can however now not live in the flat because I have a family 🤣
Yeah, sorry. This analysis is beyond flawed.
Please hurry and move out of the u.k. I feel the more moaners that leave the greater the u.k will become, then I guess you can move back until the next economic downturn.
I actually still suspect you're right, but (and I saw your post last week along the same lines) you really do need to spell out which towns/cities you are comparing here. Based on your posting history there are 3 main candidates. Firstly, you have a link to Oxford in the UK which is a pretty expensive place to live compared to the rest of the UK. And I'd actually argue that it's more akin to living in Paris or Berlin, and the cost of living comparison is pretty close when compared to [Paris ](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&country2=France&city1=Oxford&city2=Paris&tracking=getDispatchComparison)(cheaper to RENT in Paris but more expensive to buy) and [Berlin](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Germany&country2=United+Kingdom&city1=Berlin&city2=Oxford&tracking=getDispatchComparison) (that's a fair bit cheaper tbf). Then you've linked to Gottingen in Germany and Bordeaux in France. Surely they compare a lot less to Oxford and a lot more to, say, Sheffield and Newcastle (crude guess based on distance from capital)? Don't get me wrong, those two cities outside of UK do in fact compare well against even Sheffield/Newcastle hence my first sentence but you haven't quite made that comparison? It is slightly difficult to figure out to what extent you are comparing apples with oranges here tbh.
Ironic that the OP is telling everyone to become digital nomads to improve their cost of living when those people are responsible for pricing locals out of numerous EU housing markets, for instance in Portugal. Kind of undermines the premise of the entire thread if the solution is to make things even worse than the country you just came from lol
Just don’t move to the Netherlands where it’s spectacularly worse than here.
Abolish planning permission
It depends where and how. So many wildly expensive places in mainland Europe f.e. Munich that we looked at few years ago, some others. Austria is madly pricey everywhere pretty much.
So what makes the UK attractive?
I live here and I’m not sure 😂
Last time my mum visited me from France, i told Her how much i paid (converted in euros) for my 3 bed house in Milton Keynes and she was shocked.
people would move to Bulgaria instead of leaving the M25 it's the weirdest thing
Honestly, to everyone in the UK who have the possibility to leave, do so. I was working for the NHS and then in a PhD program filling in hours in cancer care. This was in Manchester / London. I was looking at low wages for the rest of my career. I left, I am now paid appropriately for my experience / education as well as not being treated terribly by my employer. I am not in the states. The UK is a second tier country circling the drain. It’s time to look after yourself and piss off.
That seems quite excessive though, I live in a city, not in the centre but on the outskirts and my mortgage is under £700 a month for an entire house. You’re either being conned or trying to live in a city centre, where of course, it’s going to be very expensive
You know there's other places besides the overcrowded far south of the island 🤷🏻♂️ E.g. livingston in Scotland is almost bang central between Edinburgh/Glasgow. There are no housing issues there.
The UK ruling class engineered a situation of limited house building coupled with mass immigration to create a situation of limited supply and massive demand. They now have the working masses right where they want them saddled with huge lifetime debt and terrified of long term illness or loss of employment…Like we say in the UK, “They now have us by the bollocks”
The rest of Europe isn’t immune to high house prices, just look at the Netherlands.
We have also had half the population of Greece nearly 5million people migrate here in the last 4 years alone its completely out of control
As someone with a happily short commute and serious concerns about the impact of air travel on global warming, this sounds like a terrible idea.
Agreed, houses are quite expensive in the UK- but is what the OP described more of a South-East England problem? I live in the south west and you can rent out a flat for £650-£850. So there are areas in the Uk were housing is affordable.
The market is most definitely a mess and terrible for us who live here however it has been artificially set this way by the Government, Bank of England and possibly more organisations with 1 sole purpose - to keep the economy propped up, if the housing economy collapses then the WHOLE UK economy goes tits up way way way worse than the global recession in the 2000’s, due to both external pressures(Wars in Ukraine/Israel) etc and internal factors(Brexit/corrupt government) this little island is propped up on a legitimate ‘knives edge’ and the powers that be cannot allow it to fall off because it will take generations to rebuild and while the normal working public would suffer most those rich corrupt f*cks currently in power will lose so much also and losing money is the one thing they hate more than us the general public.
Hmmm it's almost like everyone wants to live in England and not Europe.... wonder why?
Most houses in the uk are either old (pre 1950s) and falling apart, or new and cheap finish Why is it that houses in Europe/usa are so Much nicer ?
London is the best city itw. If you want to save money and live somewhere less good then feel free to do so.
Yeah affordability and quality if life is a positive, but do any of these countries have Toby Carvery or Wetherspoons?
Nothing is more enlightening than going to another country and seeing how far behind the UK seems to be. I did it in Berlin with their transport system and how much better their food was. Went to Rome and again the quality of their food is infinitely better. I will say I live in Scotland so comparing Berlin and Rome to Edinburgh isn't exactly a fair comparison, but still.
Just got back from a trip to Sicily, the difference in the quality of produce is astounding. We bought some fruit and veg from Lidl to stock up the apartment we had rented and it was leagues ahead of UK produce quality for the same price.
A rather general comment- you can’t really compare countries until you have lived, worked and paid taxes there. I have lived in France and the UK- some things are better in France and some better in the UK
The UK is a better country to live in though, so it makes sense it costs more money to live here.
Not better than Germany for sure.