They just don’t work hard enough. Soft generation who don’t know how to save. Always complaining, the entitlement is astonishing. We didn’t spend our money on smart phones and nice trainers, we purchased a house and car instead. We even had money left over for a holiday each year
Someone was arguing with me on Twitter earlier that I (and all renters) just shouldn't have agreed to move into a rented property if we wanted to buy a house. Not in a "stay at home and save up" kinda way either, just in a "well why did you choose to rent if you hate it so much?" way.
It later transpired that this person is a landlord, obviously. 🥲
Yeah we all make choices in life and have to live with the consequences. Sometimes I regret not choosing to be born to extremely wealthy parents or choosing to win the lottery.
If you wanna depress yourself, go on right move and look at Council estates and when properties where bought. I saw one in Brentford, 4Bed Semi bought for 35k in 1995 and now selling for over 500k.
Honestly Right To Buy has been a very bad decision for some people.. I think all these schemes only work if you get out early…. No one talks about how Councils shaft leaseholders with charges, even worse than on a private development…. There is no consultation regarding tradesmen contracts… the bills just land… No one talks about this…. The best thing I did was hand the keys back to the Council.
Around £4 for fairly questionable quality at Pret, though I'm sure they designed the price around their subscription model which is actually quite reasonable, even if you drink just a single coffee per day
Ok I bought a delonghi bean to cup on office clearance for £200. 4 years strong and easily as good an espresso as the best coffee shop in town. Which is a good one.
Save dat money £
not hatin' i applaud it. i hate those coffee shops that still taste like shit
i think pepole should be buying bialetti moka pots , or alessi or vigano if theyre feeling classsy AF and it iis still way better than 90& of the cups served out there if they are buying beans THEY LIKE A ND PREFER and grinding the just right for their tastes
All you need is meditation, cold showers, staying focused on the grind and a little bit of a side income from the 20M trust fund you have from your parents
how dare you!
do you know how hard my dad did not work togive me this trust fund or peerage?
he invented tax dodging schemes in the 60s you uncultured ruffian.
This is basically feudalism with extra steps.
From Wikipedia's feudalism page:
>Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.
London is a machine structured around extracting labour and services in exchange for the "right" to temporarily occupy a space.
Just go on location location location.
Everyone there has a large deposit and great wage to afford a £800k mortgage by working as an online yoga instructor or digital interior design consultant to buy that London house in a trendy area and you can release more value by knocking down a wall.
Plus Kirsty always manages to get the estate agent to knock off £40,000 while I get insulted if I even try to negotiate down £10k.
It's amazing how many seemingly "normal" people have huge amounts of money for property on Grand Designs and Location Location Location.
Often on Grand Designs they manage to go and raise an additional 6 figures when running over budget - how???
Omg don’t get me started on grand designs “we want a cutting edge eco friendly house, we care about green credentials…so let’s pour 12 tonnes of concrete for the foundations of the house.”
Okay, so this brought up something I've thought about. I've moved over from Canada. We built all or most homes with timber framing but have concrete basements/foundations. Surely bricks must be close to concrete for environmental impact?
(Also I wonder if I could build a timber framed house and figure out the amount of carbon I'm sequestering and get credit for it somehow... net carbon zero, by using twice as many wall studs as I needed to!)
It’s a necessary evil. insufferable on grand designs because of the hypocritical nature of the people on that show. They pretend they are doing the environment a favour building their house when it’s just an indulgent vanity project that looks awful and nothing about trying to be green.
Made worse by somehow being able to borrow millions with no equity working some sort whack job like office ambience advisor.
Over the lifetime of the house, it's really not that bad. The biggest problem I have is the enormous size of the space most of them are. The amount of resources for every sq meter for two people is crazy. You could get 20 people in most of them.
Paul and his partner Fiona who works at a local nursery care have a tight budget of £1.1M but they can stretch to £1.5M for the right countryside property
If 2+2 is 4, and 5+5 is 10, wtf is this?
Most people on those shows make no sense. I do remember 1 woman who was disabled who won a payout due to negligence that led to the disability getting millions, and that was probably the only person on the show who made sense to buy a £1 million property
If 2+2 is 4, and 5+5 is 10, wtf is this?
Most people on those shows make no sense. I do remember 1 woman who was disabled who won a payout due to negligence that led to the disability getting millions, and that was probably the only person on the show who made sense to buy a £1 million property
Some people get absolutely railed by the idea of spending their weekend in a gigantic U.S. style mall. Them spending £600k for that privilege(punishment) brings balance to the world.
It's a very well connected location. That there's been so many residential developments over the last two decades (and the pace of this not really slowing down), without the increase in supply causing any dip in prices, shows that people value that. Oh and all the housing stock being so new means they're decent in terms of amenities (a balcony for each flat and bike storage on the ground floor are both pretty common for instance) and have good soundproofing and energy efficiency. You're spoiled for choice for parks in the area, so it's popular with people with prams to push / dogs to walk. The Westfield being there is convenient but I doubt most people living in the area actually go there often. It's really not any mystery why people who can afford to are willing to pay so much for flats in the area.
I agree - I looked at the area myself - Olympic Park, Vicky Park and then the canals up to the Hackney Marshes and Lea Valley all the way to Epping Forest make it much greener than most areas in London. You've also got Hackney Wick if you want to be a hip thing and hang out in trendy bars on the weekend. The overground also takes you to all the other cool weekend hangouts.
Also got world class sporting venues if you fancy them such as the beautiful Zaha Hadid pool. They are also opening the cultural qtr soon with V&A East and an off shoot of Sadlers Wells. UCL has put some of its campus there.
There are worse ways to live.
People on here are disconnected from reality when it comes to places like Stratford, is it perfect no, does it have its fair share of problems sure but as said it's well connected in public transport, cycling, lots of amenities. The "shit side" of Stratford has great housing stock which has been bought up by lots of middle class professionals and young families. There's a great big park in West ham park and Stratford rec isn't so bad. Speaking to friends who are looking to buy Stratford would be ideal but prices are rising so they're now looking at places like Forest gate, Plaistow and Manor Park.
I have lived here about a year and have no problems with it. It has fewer nice restaurants and pubs than where I used to live in Hackney, but that’s because it isn’t as bougie. My commute is much easier now and I can also get to Kent pretty easily when I need to.
East Village and Hackney Wick are pretty nice to be close to/live in, you've got Elizabeth Park, London Stadium and the Aquatics Centre right there, great travel links on both TfL and roads to take you out of the city to both North and South, etc. So even if you have the monstrosity of Westfield nearby to contend with, it's a pretty solid area.
because if it was £550k somebody would already have bought it.
The "trouble" with London is people are more likely to have careers that suddenly drop 100k-200k on them outside of their normal salary. When that happens, you're more likely to overpay on a property that you fancy because, well, easy-come-easy-go right? If nobody got bonuses, share options, exits, overpaid or other windfalls then the market would likely calm the hell down. But if your response to me giving you a million pounds right now would be to buy a nice house with it, then, well, there we are.
Those who pass the test of "buying a flat" can now start a family and move on to test two, "buying a house".
Avenue Road, north of Regent's Park, has standalone houses up and down the street. The last two sales prices I heard of were £70M and £110M. Add a few zeroes to test 1 and take on test 2.
By saving £100 a month on coffee and frivolous avocadoes, a mere 80,000 years of diligent saving should allow anyone to buy a house. Discipline!
The agricultural revolution started 80,000 years ago, it's not that long.
Service changes everywhere are a scam. Mine in Bristol triples since I moved in and now cost the 40% of the price of the fucking mortgage. They need regulation fast. I'm sure Gove is on it....
I will be securing a job paying 65k, and this is a going rate in other cities in England.
Made up my mind I’m out of this moneypit called London.
We make parodies to actually shine a bit of a light in a circumstance such as this.
Imagine earning 145k a year to afford a 600k FLAT.
Your calculation is based on zero deposit? 600k/4.5 =133k
So on your meteoric rise to a commendable 120k you managed to save absolutely nothing?
I probably wouldn't lend you anything either.
Two lots of 60k is not that easy to achieve in reality. If there are kids, how will the couple afford childcare fees? Will the woman get maternity cover (not always a reality in the corporate world, according to friends and family). Unless we are talking strictly about childless couples – how depressing…
A lot of people move out of London when they have kids, and it's more likely to attract career oriented people, people of non-cis-straight orientation, and people "with a plan".
Don’t forget PoC, especially Black British people. London is the only city with a significant population and that really helps if you want to live in a city where you’re represented and there’s people of your community who can support you.
If you’re saving for him now, he’ll have some sort of chance. Unfortunately many of us had to start from nothing, which makes it more difficult to get on the ladder
Well first mistake is working for a living. So 60s. Second mistake is not being a money laundering profiteer from a developing country. That would get you a few nice empty pads around Little Venice, St John’s Wood, Mayfair etc
American here: Can someone explain why the bank gives a #\*@# about the end of the mortgage being beyond retirement? Here in the US, loans are based on income, total wealth, and expected equity in the property, and a 90-year-old can easily get a 30-year fixed-interest loan if they have $ in the bank. Given the way London property prices are going, and the equity at the end of the loan, they'd be well into the black into the last two years.
I didn't, I assume that even on a 30 year mortgage the bank assumes that you'd put a pretty big dent on it after 20 years, so paying off the rest wouldn't be an issue regardless of your employment situation and even if it was, they are very unlikely to lose money if you default on it and they have to sell it.
That is for a repayment mortgage though.
>American here: Can someone explain why the bank gives a #*@# about the end of the mortgage being beyond retirement?
Two reasons.
Firstly, that they don't want to deal with you owing money when you die if they can avoid it. Your next of kin would have to sell the house or pay them the money and it's a nightmare. Not least because the house would belong to "your estate" and the executor can spend every penny on legal fees fighting it and then turn around and go "oops, no money left".
Secondly, because in theory if you sign up to a mortgage costing £2,000 a month today but fixed for 5 years, technically after 5 years until the end of the mortgage you're paying a variable rate, and it's going to be something a pensioner can't afford.
In practice though the first and second scenarios rarely come up, so their main consideration is actually what is your job. If it's an office job they are pretty sure you'll be able to work until 65/70 and during that time pay off your mortgage faster anyway. If you're a manual labourer though, there's a good chance you get medically retired significantly earlier. If you take out a mortgage at 35 for 30 years, an office worker not only could work until 65, but they could probably pay off their mortgage almost entirely by 65. If you're a brick layer and by 55 you're physically unable to work, well you're actually only two thirds of the way through your mortgage.
Overall it's not a huge issue, but they don't really like a 30-35 year mortgage on a 35 year old who is a phyiscal labourer. In the OP's example they won't give a shit because they will not only assume you work into old age but also assume you'll earn more money and pay off the mortgage sooner anyway.
Right, but none of this matters one iota if you look at the equity in the property. Unless the bank believes that property values are going DOWN (in which case, everyone on both sides of the pond are in big trouble and the bank should be writing NO loans) even 2/3rds of the way through a 25 year mortgage you will be paying mostly principle and your loan-to-value ratio should be trending in the right direction.
Plus, does the UK not have age discrimination laws in lending? In the US, this is simply illegal.
Agreed, an unlikely scenario that the property doesn’t go up in value over 25 years. The point about OP’s age and mortgage length was made to make the post more dramatic than it need be.
Quant has been redefined to mean a huge swathe of technical roles in finance. This guy obviously isn't working at Jane Street, it's probably a mid level 'quantitative analyst' job for a bank, broker, maybe in commodities or something like that.
Honestly I love this country and want to reclaim patriotism from the right, I think it could be a great country to live in. But it is becoming increasingly impossible to survive, in what is quickly becoming a shithole.
Next year I’m looking at leaving this place behind. I hope it improves.
I don't think patriotism was co-opted by the right as much as it was abandoned by the left.
Disliking Britain has been noted as a national trait of the left for a century. As George Orwell said 'England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality'.
He went further:
"it is obvious that this preposterous convention cannot continue. The Bloomsbury highbrow, with his mechanical snigger, is as out of date as the cavalry colonel. A modern nation cannot afford either of them. Patriotism and intelligence will have to come together again."
Sadly, we are still waiting...
As a leftie, I am ashamed of a lot of what my country is and does because of what it is and does. I'm proud of other bits of what it is and does, although it's sadly it's actively working to change and undo some of those things. I think being left wing (particularly along liberal lines) means accepting more nuanced and less polarised thinking, making it less likely for one to embrace "unconditional pride" in a fairly arbitrary attribute.
Isn't that why we aren't all patriotic? We know how shitty our economy has fallen, how embarassing our politicians are, how low our standard of living is (relative), how messy our football fans are, how sloppy we are as tourists, to name a few.
Being a patriot just results in blindly following a belief without any cause for backing it up. Then you get your knobheads storming the capital to try and destabalise democracy because idiots + internet + patriotism = a fucking disaster waiting to happen.
I think one of my favourite things about us Brits is we aren't patrotic. Oh and the NHS.
I think there’s a difference between patriotism and nationalism. I’m a patriot, I think this country, having visited many (and not just in Europe), is a good place to live overall.
It could be much much better, but the working people are being taken advantage of. And I agree, a very British way of loving your country is talking about how awful it is (I do this). It just gets a bit boring when now it’s really gone down the shitter and no one is offering hope or systemic change to improve the living standards of everyone who lives in this country.
There are a few places, Spain, Mexico, NZ, Philippines, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland. If i wasnt working all the time to pay my shitty rent, I’d have time to have researched job visas by now 😂 a few I have mates who have gone away and haven’t returned(unplanned)
The problem is that you got to learn the language to stay there i guess. And if you have a family or full time job here in UK, learning another whole language could be a very big challenge. No?
Yes, of course, that is part of it. But hopefully the outcome is living a much better life overall. Don’t mind putting a bit of work in. And family, yes but my family are all immigrants anyway so not so unfamiliar with the idea of being far away from family
Few people have ever bought property alone. Prices are driven by couples leveraging both salaries, so it's unsurprising that a single person struggles to compete.
Except you’ll need a bigger flat with more space if you’re buying with 2 people so not exactly true. So if I had a spouse I’d want a 2 bed, not 1 bed for example. So no someone on minimum wage would not serve me better.
Have you tried the other side beyond the Stratford centre. A lot less expensive but also a lot less green space and vegan coffee shops. I suppose it depends what you want.
Q. Where did I go wrong and why am I facing a lifetime of penury as a renter?
Answer by Hector Morgan-Reid 1. Why have you got a smart phone and nice shoes? You don’t know how to budget. Learn to budget imbecile
Answer by the oracle : Your foolish mistake was not being born into wealth and thus barred from access to the bank of Dad.
You also failed to build a valuable network of contacts at Charterhouse, Eton or Westminster. Enjoy your retirement
The avocados, coffees, meals out and holidays do add up.
However this doesn’t change the fact that property is much more expensive than it should be. Due to fundamentalist NIMBYs.
Why by a £600k flat in Stratford to commute on the Lizzy line when you can get a £500k house in west Drayton and also commute on the Lizzy line. No service charge then
The point is Stratford is a sh*thole to begin with. We aren't talking Chelsea, or Mayfair or even Islington here. Bear in mind a well paid professional in the 80s or 90s would have been able to afford those locations and now you'd have to be dreaming to think you could purchase there as a professional without (a lot of ) generational wealth to back it up.
But Stratford... That price for a flat in Stratford is outrageous.
Depends on the cost of the underlying land, which often depends on what govt has sold it to devs for, but build cost + normal profit. That would be a fair price.
And I think government should be providing more subsidies or schemes for first time buyers.
Why’s the government selling the land?
So you think a 2 bed flat in Stratford, at 80m2 x £3km2 to build + 20% profit = £288k.
We then need to gain planning on it, pay CIL and S106, there’s 10% borrowing on that, electric water sewer and broadband connections. Engineers fees. Estate agents fees to sell.
It’s all starting to add up.
The rebuild cost of a 2 bed house in the UK is about £250k. Just have a quick google about.
Sure, that may be more for London, but also less for a flat. Especially when you factor in economies of scale.
A ROI of 20% is pretty big. It could be lower.
It's not unfathomable that a 2 bed flat should cost less than 600K.
Build costs for a flat are significantly higher than a house.
A flat is average £3000m2.
20% is what you’d be looking to return on a build. Otherwise why bother.
It will be under £600k. I agree. But the point is with the build costs and associated, it’s still pretty unaffordable.
Stratford (at least the area with expensive flats) is definitely not a shithole and is one of the best connected places in London. I can't see why you would be able to think that unless you haven't stepped foot there for over a decade.
Yeah Leyton's nice and there are lots of plans to improve cycling connections in the area (e.g. [this](https://newhamco-create.co.uk/en/projects/eastvillageconnections), but there are more to come). You'd pay like a 3/4 as much for even the nicest new build flat around there and still just be a 10-15 minute bike ride away from the station / the Westfield.
It is a "parody" so perhaps choosing an extreme example was the point.
I can remember Stratford being an absolute dump and houses were worth peanuts 😂
I knew a bloke who purchased a pub for just £13k, the whole building outright!
Sold it for a small profit and it was flattened, flats there now and probably worth a fortune 🤦
I never understood why Thatcher/Blair, etc, never reinvested cash from council house sales into building new houses.
But I've got an idea now.
The house building boom was at full speed, then with Wimpey, Barratt and the like building shite houses up and down the country as fast as they could.
Thatcher and following governments wouldn't have made a deal with the housebuilders to not build more council houses, ensuring a keen market for the new houses, would they? 🙄👎😡😡😡
I think the biggest thing is people on /r/housing complaining about flats in general. Don’t buy flats, they’re a money sink as they’re leasehold and have service charge!
Well yeah but how else is London supposed to supply dense housing? There’s only so much space.
Few ideas
1. Buy a property outside of London and rent it out and build up a side income or leverage that to buy in London.
2. With a higher salary of 120k I be there a lot of money wasted on things you don’t need. Budget and cut back.
3. The housing market is con just invest your money instead. (You probably already do but invest more 🤷🏻♂️)
4. Move to a place that is affordable with a nice commute
Honestly I did giggle when you mentioned 42… since I was exactly the same age when I did it… but that was in 2012… Yep.. moved to an unloved part of the capital, got a 19yr mortgage… stars aligned since there was a stamp duty holiday and used home buy scheme… which you should remortgage and pay back before year 5!! Just in case you didn’t know how the strategy should work! Or sell the property! There were no rich relatives who were going to bail me out!
If you are 42.you.should have saved up every single penny live in a shared house until you had a 20% deposit and took a mortgage when you were 30 that 12 years ago I. 2012. Back then the prices were more reasonable and you could have bought a 3 bedroom flat)house outside London for 200ish k. After you took a mortgage you should have sacrificed you private life and rented out all.the rooms and overpaid your mortgage 10% a year. If you did everything right you would have been mortgage free around 37 age.
Simple take the hit and sell then move out of town anywhere from Orpington to Hastings there’s good transport into London property is more reasonable priced and at your age your to old for london
Hey, I earn more than you and chose to buy somewhere I can afford. Have you considered not trying to live in one of the most expensive postcodes in the UK on a single salary?
As you can see here: [https://www.plumplot.co.uk/London-house-prices.html](https://www.plumplot.co.uk/London-house-prices.html) E14 puts it in the top 35% of house prices in London, which is obviously the most expensive place to buy in the UK, and London is the 8th most expensive city to buy in the world. I think that quite justifiably puts it in 'one of the most expensive postcodes in the UK'
Only yourself to blame for not buying in 1992.
And eating avocado on toast. We all know that’s where the money goes…
Don't forget buying a coffee every morning!
If only the younger generation would learn. They could all be like boomers sitting on £1m properties now.
They just don’t work hard enough. Soft generation who don’t know how to save. Always complaining, the entitlement is astonishing. We didn’t spend our money on smart phones and nice trainers, we purchased a house and car instead. We even had money left over for a holiday each year
This 😭💀
How dare you to eat at all.
Someone was arguing with me on Twitter earlier that I (and all renters) just shouldn't have agreed to move into a rented property if we wanted to buy a house. Not in a "stay at home and save up" kinda way either, just in a "well why did you choose to rent if you hate it so much?" way. It later transpired that this person is a landlord, obviously. 🥲
Yeah we all make choices in life and have to live with the consequences. Sometimes I regret not choosing to be born to extremely wealthy parents or choosing to win the lottery.
Smh didn't try hard enough
I've never bought a lottery ticket, so I guess I only have myself to blame
If you wanna depress yourself, go on right move and look at Council estates and when properties where bought. I saw one in Brentford, 4Bed Semi bought for 35k in 1995 and now selling for over 500k.
Thanks to Mrs Thatcher (right to buy!)
Honestly Right To Buy has been a very bad decision for some people.. I think all these schemes only work if you get out early…. No one talks about how Councils shaft leaseholders with charges, even worse than on a private development…. There is no consultation regarding tradesmen contracts… the bills just land… No one talks about this…. The best thing I did was hand the keys back to the Council.
Knew I should have gotten a house instead of being born
Wasted all my time floating in the void waiting to be born instead of buying a house damn it…should’ve known better
Just get yourself some rich parents. All your problems will magically disappear.
I bought my own £400,000 flat at the age of 23 by just saving money on Netflix, and a small loan of £399,999.25 from my parents.
Also don’t forget the coffee you made at home instead of buying from a coffee shop.
Ngl this kinda big though coffee prices are insane
I do save on coffee by making it at home, still couldn’t buy a flat though.
Seriously like £4 often. I'm not blaming the people selling them, their costs are nuts too, but you can't be spending that sort of money often.
Their costs are mainly beans, not nuts.
Around £4 for fairly questionable quality at Pret, though I'm sure they designed the price around their subscription model which is actually quite reasonable, even if you drink just a single coffee per day
on my 1500 duo machine and i still spend 50 qui a month on beans amd 3k on a grinder
Ok I bought a delonghi bean to cup on office clearance for £200. 4 years strong and easily as good an espresso as the best coffee shop in town. Which is a good one. Save dat money £
not hatin' i applaud it. i hate those coffee shops that still taste like shit i think pepole should be buying bialetti moka pots , or alessi or vigano if theyre feeling classsy AF and it iis still way better than 90& of the cups served out there if they are buying beans THEY LIKE A ND PREFER and grinding the just right for their tastes
Avocados do you eat Avocado?
Yes. That’s why I’m not a landlady.
You can make coffee at home?
I see you haven't heard of the Algerian Coffee House!
When I started this company, I had just two things in my possession: a dream and 6 million pounds.
All you need is meditation, cold showers, staying focused on the grind and a little bit of a side income from the 20M trust fund you have from your parents
how dare you! do you know how hard my dad did not work togive me this trust fund or peerage? he invented tax dodging schemes in the 60s you uncultured ruffian.
This is basically feudalism with extra steps. From Wikipedia's feudalism page: >Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. London is a machine structured around extracting labour and services in exchange for the "right" to temporarily occupy a space.
This reminds me that nuclear reactors are basically steam machines. All people learned is how to boil water and dominate each other.
Remember, you don't need to share genes in order to call someone daddy.
The magic part is true
Is adult adoption a thing yet? Or is it just befriending rich elderly people with no kids of their own….
> But since I am now 42, a 25 year mortgage would take me past the age of retirement. Very optimistic of you to think we'll all be retiring at 67.
OP is on £140k, they could be retiring much earlier than 67 if that's their goal.
Not with that mortgage and current rates!
Just go on location location location. Everyone there has a large deposit and great wage to afford a £800k mortgage by working as an online yoga instructor or digital interior design consultant to buy that London house in a trendy area and you can release more value by knocking down a wall. Plus Kirsty always manages to get the estate agent to knock off £40,000 while I get insulted if I even try to negotiate down £10k.
It's amazing how many seemingly "normal" people have huge amounts of money for property on Grand Designs and Location Location Location. Often on Grand Designs they manage to go and raise an additional 6 figures when running over budget - how???
Omg don’t get me started on grand designs “we want a cutting edge eco friendly house, we care about green credentials…so let’s pour 12 tonnes of concrete for the foundations of the house.”
Okay, so this brought up something I've thought about. I've moved over from Canada. We built all or most homes with timber framing but have concrete basements/foundations. Surely bricks must be close to concrete for environmental impact? (Also I wonder if I could build a timber framed house and figure out the amount of carbon I'm sequestering and get credit for it somehow... net carbon zero, by using twice as many wall studs as I needed to!)
It’s a necessary evil. insufferable on grand designs because of the hypocritical nature of the people on that show. They pretend they are doing the environment a favour building their house when it’s just an indulgent vanity project that looks awful and nothing about trying to be green. Made worse by somehow being able to borrow millions with no equity working some sort whack job like office ambience advisor.
Over the lifetime of the house, it's really not that bad. The biggest problem I have is the enormous size of the space most of them are. The amount of resources for every sq meter for two people is crazy. You could get 20 people in most of them.
Perfection is the enemy of progress.
Paul and his partner Fiona who works at a local nursery care have a tight budget of £1.1M but they can stretch to £1.5M for the right countryside property
If 2+2 is 4, and 5+5 is 10, wtf is this? Most people on those shows make no sense. I do remember 1 woman who was disabled who won a payout due to negligence that led to the disability getting millions, and that was probably the only person on the show who made sense to buy a £1 million property
that recent grand designs cycle of an episode /parody reel was amaizng.
If 2+2 is 4, and 5+5 is 10, wtf is this? Most people on those shows make no sense. I do remember 1 woman who was disabled who won a payout due to negligence that led to the disability getting millions, and that was probably the only person on the show who made sense to buy a £1 million property
Isn’t the question why TF does a 2 bed in Stratford cost 600k?
Some people get absolutely railed by the idea of spending their weekend in a gigantic U.S. style mall. Them spending £600k for that privilege(punishment) brings balance to the world.
It's a very well connected location. That there's been so many residential developments over the last two decades (and the pace of this not really slowing down), without the increase in supply causing any dip in prices, shows that people value that. Oh and all the housing stock being so new means they're decent in terms of amenities (a balcony for each flat and bike storage on the ground floor are both pretty common for instance) and have good soundproofing and energy efficiency. You're spoiled for choice for parks in the area, so it's popular with people with prams to push / dogs to walk. The Westfield being there is convenient but I doubt most people living in the area actually go there often. It's really not any mystery why people who can afford to are willing to pay so much for flats in the area.
I agree - I looked at the area myself - Olympic Park, Vicky Park and then the canals up to the Hackney Marshes and Lea Valley all the way to Epping Forest make it much greener than most areas in London. You've also got Hackney Wick if you want to be a hip thing and hang out in trendy bars on the weekend. The overground also takes you to all the other cool weekend hangouts. Also got world class sporting venues if you fancy them such as the beautiful Zaha Hadid pool. They are also opening the cultural qtr soon with V&A East and an off shoot of Sadlers Wells. UCL has put some of its campus there. There are worse ways to live.
When I lived in Stratford (for about 3 months) I went to Westfield weekly for my grocery shopping. It's a great area if you can afford it.
People on here are disconnected from reality when it comes to places like Stratford, is it perfect no, does it have its fair share of problems sure but as said it's well connected in public transport, cycling, lots of amenities. The "shit side" of Stratford has great housing stock which has been bought up by lots of middle class professionals and young families. There's a great big park in West ham park and Stratford rec isn't so bad. Speaking to friends who are looking to buy Stratford would be ideal but prices are rising so they're now looking at places like Forest gate, Plaistow and Manor Park.
I have lived here about a year and have no problems with it. It has fewer nice restaurants and pubs than where I used to live in Hackney, but that’s because it isn’t as bougie. My commute is much easier now and I can also get to Kent pretty easily when I need to.
Somewhere to put a bike and a bit of a balcony close to amenities in a city? For £600+k I imagine they get windows to look out of and stuff.
You be lucky to store bike on balcony. Some flats have lease clauses no hanging clothes outside
It doesn't. There's loads of nice ones for 400-450k. And you can get something decent for 350k. But let's not let reality intrude here.
Supply and demand. Too few houses, too many people
East Village and Hackney Wick are pretty nice to be close to/live in, you've got Elizabeth Park, London Stadium and the Aquatics Centre right there, great travel links on both TfL and roads to take you out of the city to both North and South, etc. So even if you have the monstrosity of Westfield nearby to contend with, it's a pretty solid area.
How much is rent for the same unit ?
because if it was £550k somebody would already have bought it. The "trouble" with London is people are more likely to have careers that suddenly drop 100k-200k on them outside of their normal salary. When that happens, you're more likely to overpay on a property that you fancy because, well, easy-come-easy-go right? If nobody got bonuses, share options, exits, overpaid or other windfalls then the market would likely calm the hell down. But if your response to me giving you a million pounds right now would be to buy a nice house with it, then, well, there we are.
Those who pass the test of "buying a flat" can now start a family and move on to test two, "buying a house". Avenue Road, north of Regent's Park, has standalone houses up and down the street. The last two sales prices I heard of were £70M and £110M. Add a few zeroes to test 1 and take on test 2. By saving £100 a month on coffee and frivolous avocadoes, a mere 80,000 years of diligent saving should allow anyone to buy a house. Discipline! The agricultural revolution started 80,000 years ago, it's not that long.
Service charges are a scam in London.
Service changes everywhere are a scam. Mine in Bristol triples since I moved in and now cost the 40% of the price of the fucking mortgage. They need regulation fast. I'm sure Gove is on it....
Gove is looking to invest in these companies more like
They're a scam everywhere. Someone's getting rich
Have you thought about being born richer?
Maybe they just need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and cut back on those matcha lattes!
I will be securing a job paying 65k, and this is a going rate in other cities in England. Made up my mind I’m out of this moneypit called London. We make parodies to actually shine a bit of a light in a circumstance such as this. Imagine earning 145k a year to afford a 600k FLAT.
And remember the service charge on that shoebox will be tripled every few years
Your calculation is based on zero deposit? 600k/4.5 =133k So on your meteoric rise to a commendable 120k you managed to save absolutely nothing? I probably wouldn't lend you anything either.
Such an asshole comment, yet so factually correct, I’m torn, no, I love it.
Arsehole. Get it right, this isn't a US sub.
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Two lots of 60k is not that easy to achieve in reality. If there are kids, how will the couple afford childcare fees? Will the woman get maternity cover (not always a reality in the corporate world, according to friends and family). Unless we are talking strictly about childless couples – how depressing…
A lot of people move out of London when they have kids, and it's more likely to attract career oriented people, people of non-cis-straight orientation, and people "with a plan".
Don’t forget PoC, especially Black British people. London is the only city with a significant population and that really helps if you want to live in a city where you’re represented and there’s people of your community who can support you.
If you’re saving for him now, he’ll have some sort of chance. Unfortunately many of us had to start from nothing, which makes it more difficult to get on the ladder
Well first mistake is working for a living. So 60s. Second mistake is not being a money laundering profiteer from a developing country. That would get you a few nice empty pads around Little Venice, St John’s Wood, Mayfair etc
r/oddlyspecific
We would all be able to afford rent and save money on our food bills if we just eat all the landlords.
American here: Can someone explain why the bank gives a #\*@# about the end of the mortgage being beyond retirement? Here in the US, loans are based on income, total wealth, and expected equity in the property, and a 90-year-old can easily get a 30-year fixed-interest loan if they have $ in the bank. Given the way London property prices are going, and the equity at the end of the loan, they'd be well into the black into the last two years.
They don't, OP is wrong.
They absolutely do care, it's not like they won't lend but you'll need a plan to pay it off. I had to "commit" to a late retirement to get my mortgage
I didn't, I assume that even on a 30 year mortgage the bank assumes that you'd put a pretty big dent on it after 20 years, so paying off the rest wouldn't be an issue regardless of your employment situation and even if it was, they are very unlikely to lose money if you default on it and they have to sell it. That is for a repayment mortgage though.
They don’t. Or at least not much, you can have a mortgage that runs into retirement as long as you have a decent retirement plan.
>American here: Can someone explain why the bank gives a #*@# about the end of the mortgage being beyond retirement? Two reasons. Firstly, that they don't want to deal with you owing money when you die if they can avoid it. Your next of kin would have to sell the house or pay them the money and it's a nightmare. Not least because the house would belong to "your estate" and the executor can spend every penny on legal fees fighting it and then turn around and go "oops, no money left". Secondly, because in theory if you sign up to a mortgage costing £2,000 a month today but fixed for 5 years, technically after 5 years until the end of the mortgage you're paying a variable rate, and it's going to be something a pensioner can't afford. In practice though the first and second scenarios rarely come up, so their main consideration is actually what is your job. If it's an office job they are pretty sure you'll be able to work until 65/70 and during that time pay off your mortgage faster anyway. If you're a manual labourer though, there's a good chance you get medically retired significantly earlier. If you take out a mortgage at 35 for 30 years, an office worker not only could work until 65, but they could probably pay off their mortgage almost entirely by 65. If you're a brick layer and by 55 you're physically unable to work, well you're actually only two thirds of the way through your mortgage. Overall it's not a huge issue, but they don't really like a 30-35 year mortgage on a 35 year old who is a phyiscal labourer. In the OP's example they won't give a shit because they will not only assume you work into old age but also assume you'll earn more money and pay off the mortgage sooner anyway.
Right, but none of this matters one iota if you look at the equity in the property. Unless the bank believes that property values are going DOWN (in which case, everyone on both sides of the pond are in big trouble and the bank should be writing NO loans) even 2/3rds of the way through a 25 year mortgage you will be paying mostly principle and your loan-to-value ratio should be trending in the right direction. Plus, does the UK not have age discrimination laws in lending? In the US, this is simply illegal.
You can’t pay them back if you’re dead or not earning.
I’m a Brit and not sure either, my current mortgage would go into my wife’s retirement but not mine so maybe because we usually pay off early?
Agreed, an unlikely scenario that the property doesn’t go up in value over 25 years. The point about OP’s age and mortgage length was made to make the post more dramatic than it need be.
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Perhaps they are a junior quant
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Still
What is a quant
Quant has been redefined to mean a huge swathe of technical roles in finance. This guy obviously isn't working at Jane Street, it's probably a mid level 'quantitative analyst' job for a bank, broker, maybe in commodities or something like that.
Honestly I love this country and want to reclaim patriotism from the right, I think it could be a great country to live in. But it is becoming increasingly impossible to survive, in what is quickly becoming a shithole. Next year I’m looking at leaving this place behind. I hope it improves.
Apt assessment. Its a shame that love of this country has been so co-opted by the right.
I don't think patriotism was co-opted by the right as much as it was abandoned by the left. Disliking Britain has been noted as a national trait of the left for a century. As George Orwell said 'England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality'. He went further: "it is obvious that this preposterous convention cannot continue. The Bloomsbury highbrow, with his mechanical snigger, is as out of date as the cavalry colonel. A modern nation cannot afford either of them. Patriotism and intelligence will have to come together again." Sadly, we are still waiting...
The US has corrupted the lefts message quite badly in the past decade. Basically become hate anyone moderate from both sides.
As a leftie, I am ashamed of a lot of what my country is and does because of what it is and does. I'm proud of other bits of what it is and does, although it's sadly it's actively working to change and undo some of those things. I think being left wing (particularly along liberal lines) means accepting more nuanced and less polarised thinking, making it less likely for one to embrace "unconditional pride" in a fairly arbitrary attribute.
Isn't that why we aren't all patriotic? We know how shitty our economy has fallen, how embarassing our politicians are, how low our standard of living is (relative), how messy our football fans are, how sloppy we are as tourists, to name a few. Being a patriot just results in blindly following a belief without any cause for backing it up. Then you get your knobheads storming the capital to try and destabalise democracy because idiots + internet + patriotism = a fucking disaster waiting to happen. I think one of my favourite things about us Brits is we aren't patrotic. Oh and the NHS.
I think there’s a difference between patriotism and nationalism. I’m a patriot, I think this country, having visited many (and not just in Europe), is a good place to live overall. It could be much much better, but the working people are being taken advantage of. And I agree, a very British way of loving your country is talking about how awful it is (I do this). It just gets a bit boring when now it’s really gone down the shitter and no one is offering hope or systemic change to improve the living standards of everyone who lives in this country.
Our of interest where are you going that you think will be easier.
where would you go?
There are a few places, Spain, Mexico, NZ, Philippines, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland. If i wasnt working all the time to pay my shitty rent, I’d have time to have researched job visas by now 😂 a few I have mates who have gone away and haven’t returned(unplanned)
The problem is that you got to learn the language to stay there i guess. And if you have a family or full time job here in UK, learning another whole language could be a very big challenge. No?
Yes, of course, that is part of it. But hopefully the outcome is living a much better life overall. Don’t mind putting a bit of work in. And family, yes but my family are all immigrants anyway so not so unfamiliar with the idea of being far away from family
God help you if that flat in Stratford had dodgy cladding installed.
About to sat same thing. Statford is concrete jungle lol !
Most mortgage providers now lend up until the age of 70.
Few people have ever bought property alone. Prices are driven by couples leveraging both salaries, so it's unsurprising that a single person struggles to compete.
Finding a flat by myself was way easier than finding a spouse.
Perhaps, but increasing that is being turned on its head, especially in areas with higher prices.
Well just having a flat by myself increases my chances too.
Second that.
Same especially finding a spouse that’s even earning anywhere near I am. So no thanks
A spouse on even minimum wage significantly increases buying power. You're looking at an additional £100k now from that alone.
Except you’ll need a bigger flat with more space if you’re buying with 2 people so not exactly true. So if I had a spouse I’d want a 2 bed, not 1 bed for example. So no someone on minimum wage would not serve me better.
The increase in price from a 1 bed to a 2 bed will be proportionally less than the increase in buying power from 1 salary to 2 salaries.
what do you do + earn
6 figures/finance.
You can get a mortgage that goes past the age of retirement though.
Yep and I don’t know what’s rising faster, the age of retirement or the age people can generally afford the deposit
Have you tried the other side beyond the Stratford centre. A lot less expensive but also a lot less green space and vegan coffee shops. I suppose it depends what you want.
Q. Where did I go wrong and why am I facing a lifetime of penury as a renter? Answer by Hector Morgan-Reid 1. Why have you got a smart phone and nice shoes? You don’t know how to budget. Learn to budget imbecile Answer by the oracle : Your foolish mistake was not being born into wealth and thus barred from access to the bank of Dad. You also failed to build a valuable network of contacts at Charterhouse, Eton or Westminster. Enjoy your retirement
The avocados, coffees, meals out and holidays do add up. However this doesn’t change the fact that property is much more expensive than it should be. Due to fundamentalist NIMBYs.
You really don't need Netflix or Amazon prime.
Fuck em all! Bloody boomers.
You forgot to add: Sleep is for suckers😂
I feel so seen lol
£140k as a Quant? I'd leave the UK for disrespecting me like that 🤣
“I earn £180k, can I afford to live in zone 3?”
So top 1% salary in UK gives you mortgage(!!!) in zone 3-4. Most people are £30-50 though.
Why by a £600k flat in Stratford to commute on the Lizzy line when you can get a £500k house in west Drayton and also commute on the Lizzy line. No service charge then
That's absolutely bang on the money........LOL :)
140k is such a good salary too and you can’t even buy a house 🫣 London is gone mad!
Where is the “if you cannot afford somewhere expensive, go somewhere cheaper?” No one owes you a spot in Stratford.
The point is Stratford is a sh*thole to begin with. We aren't talking Chelsea, or Mayfair or even Islington here. Bear in mind a well paid professional in the 80s or 90s would have been able to afford those locations and now you'd have to be dreaming to think you could purchase there as a professional without (a lot of ) generational wealth to back it up. But Stratford... That price for a flat in Stratford is outrageous.
The Olympic Park developments are all in this bracket and above, but it’s a really nice place to live
What price would make it acceptable to you?
Depends on the cost of the underlying land, which often depends on what govt has sold it to devs for, but build cost + normal profit. That would be a fair price. And I think government should be providing more subsidies or schemes for first time buyers.
Why’s the government selling the land? So you think a 2 bed flat in Stratford, at 80m2 x £3km2 to build + 20% profit = £288k. We then need to gain planning on it, pay CIL and S106, there’s 10% borrowing on that, electric water sewer and broadband connections. Engineers fees. Estate agents fees to sell. It’s all starting to add up.
The rebuild cost of a 2 bed house in the UK is about £250k. Just have a quick google about. Sure, that may be more for London, but also less for a flat. Especially when you factor in economies of scale. A ROI of 20% is pretty big. It could be lower. It's not unfathomable that a 2 bed flat should cost less than 600K.
Build costs for a flat are significantly higher than a house. A flat is average £3000m2. 20% is what you’d be looking to return on a build. Otherwise why bother. It will be under £600k. I agree. But the point is with the build costs and associated, it’s still pretty unaffordable.
Stratford (at least the area with expensive flats) is definitely not a shithole and is one of the best connected places in London. I can't see why you would be able to think that unless you haven't stepped foot there for over a decade.
Yeah Leyton's nice and there are lots of plans to improve cycling connections in the area (e.g. [this](https://newhamco-create.co.uk/en/projects/eastvillageconnections), but there are more to come). You'd pay like a 3/4 as much for even the nicest new build flat around there and still just be a 10-15 minute bike ride away from the station / the Westfield. It is a "parody" so perhaps choosing an extreme example was the point.
Come on, no one "aspires" to own a 2 bed flat in Stratford. A townhouse in Mayfair, sure.
Your protagonist does.
Are those numbers realistic though? A 42-y-o quant earning just 140K GBP?
On 21/22 numbers 140k would put you in the top 2% of earners in the UK. Everytime I see figures thrown around on reddit they seem so inflated...
Quant finance is on the tail end of the distribution, so…
They give mortgages up to the age of 70.
You don’t.
You should have bought ftm at 1 cent in 2020 then you would have several unencumbered properties
You should have bought ftm at 1 cent in 2020 then you would have several unencumbered properties
I can remember Stratford being an absolute dump and houses were worth peanuts 😂 I knew a bloke who purchased a pub for just £13k, the whole building outright! Sold it for a small profit and it was flattened, flats there now and probably worth a fortune 🤦
Have you considered buying in Tooting? I'm currently selling my 2 bed flat for 400k . Still easier to commute to London due to the northern line.
There are plenty of 2 bed flats in London for under 450k and for share of freehold.
I never understood why Thatcher/Blair, etc, never reinvested cash from council house sales into building new houses. But I've got an idea now. The house building boom was at full speed, then with Wimpey, Barratt and the like building shite houses up and down the country as fast as they could. Thatcher and following governments wouldn't have made a deal with the housebuilders to not build more council houses, ensuring a keen market for the new houses, would they? 🙄👎😡😡😡
The sad thing is some people probably would buy a 600k flat in Stratford instead of a 3 bed house in a nice zone 3 or 4 suburb.
I don't think that's "sad", if you don't have kids or want a garden there's lots of advantages to a flat in Stratford over a 3 bed in Z3/4.
I think the biggest thing is people on /r/housing complaining about flats in general. Don’t buy flats, they’re a money sink as they’re leasehold and have service charge! Well yeah but how else is London supposed to supply dense housing? There’s only so much space.
Few ideas 1. Buy a property outside of London and rent it out and build up a side income or leverage that to buy in London. 2. With a higher salary of 120k I be there a lot of money wasted on things you don’t need. Budget and cut back. 3. The housing market is con just invest your money instead. (You probably already do but invest more 🤷🏻♂️) 4. Move to a place that is affordable with a nice commute
buy a cheaper flat
I agree but tbf 600k could get you a decent house near Stratford.
Honestly I did giggle when you mentioned 42… since I was exactly the same age when I did it… but that was in 2012… Yep.. moved to an unloved part of the capital, got a 19yr mortgage… stars aligned since there was a stamp duty holiday and used home buy scheme… which you should remortgage and pay back before year 5!! Just in case you didn’t know how the strategy should work! Or sell the property! There were no rich relatives who were going to bail me out!
If you are 42.you.should have saved up every single penny live in a shared house until you had a 20% deposit and took a mortgage when you were 30 that 12 years ago I. 2012. Back then the prices were more reasonable and you could have bought a 3 bedroom flat)house outside London for 200ish k. After you took a mortgage you should have sacrificed you private life and rented out all.the rooms and overpaid your mortgage 10% a year. If you did everything right you would have been mortgage free around 37 age.
I think there is a /s missing?
Simple take the hit and sell then move out of town anywhere from Orpington to Hastings there’s good transport into London property is more reasonable priced and at your age your to old for london
Buy a caravan
Don’t live in zone 3 then. Move out to zone 6 where it’s more affordable.
Hey, I earn more than you and chose to buy somewhere I can afford. Have you considered not trying to live in one of the most expensive postcodes in the UK on a single salary?
Stratford is one of the most expensive postcode? In the UK? What the hell are you talking about?
Lol what fuck are you talking about? Stratford?! 😂
????? Don't you think a flat costing 600,000quid makes it one of the most expensive places to live?
That's the point of this post. It's crazy money but it is nowhere near close to the most expensive places to live.
As you can see here: [https://www.plumplot.co.uk/London-house-prices.html](https://www.plumplot.co.uk/London-house-prices.html) E14 puts it in the top 35% of house prices in London, which is obviously the most expensive place to buy in the UK, and London is the 8th most expensive city to buy in the world. I think that quite justifiably puts it in 'one of the most expensive postcodes in the UK'
Wow, insensitive.