9 ms·

> As the tech workers land the big salaries, home prices are skyrocketing, and the locals are being squeezed out. Joke is on them, I'm a new tech immigrant to

> As the tech workers land the big salaries, home prices are skyrocketing, and the locals are being squeezed out. Joke is on them, I'm a new tech immigrant to Cambridge and I still can't buy a house here.

samwillis 8y ago
We gave up on trying to buy in Cambridge and moved north to Stamford, its just over an hour on the train (one stop past Peterborough) and about the same by car (if you avoid the worst of the rush hour, will be 45 min with the new road in 2020). Lovely here, much nicer then a villages near Cambridge and about the same time to commute!
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  Three hours of my day is worth way more than what Cambridge employers are willing to pay unfortunately.
- Doctor_Fegg 8y ago
  Good choice - Stamford's delightful. (Grew up in Rutland, still very fond of the area.)
cup-of-tea 8y ago
House prices have been skyrocketing for ages already and it's helped by the fact that Cambridge is within commuting distance of London. There's no way your average senior dev could afford to buy a house in Cambridge at this point.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Yep and it is affecting the Bristol area as well.
- swebs 8y ago
  We have the exact same problem in the other Cambridge (Massachusetts).
- eftpotrm 8y ago
  That's been true over very large parts of the country for most of the last 15 years TBH. House prices in the UK are divorced from reality.
elliotpage 8y ago
As someone who born and raised in Cambridge the possibility of owning anything larger than a shared shoebox has plummeted into impossibility.
- swarnie_ 8y ago
  I can relate.... I'm just a little further away in Buckinghamshire but the local train can get you to zone 1 in under 30 minutes. 4 x my salary would get me a 2 bed flat if i didn't mind living in a ghetto.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    If you had 4x your salary, wouldn't you be spending a lot on keeping up your house, and paying a lot of taxes for local amenities like schools? I don't understand how an area that affluent could be a ghetto.
    - maccard 8y ago
      I think he's saying that if he borrowed 4x his salary for a mortgage (which is the commonly cited figure as the max you can borrow), he could only afford a ghetto.
      - swarnie_ 8y ago
        Pretty much this yes.
    - walshemj 8y ago
      No property taxes are very low in the UK some one in a 10M house in London pays less than an upper middle class person does in some US states
      - laurencerowe 8y ago
        And tenants are anyway liable for paying Council Tax, the property tax equivalent.
JoeSmithson 8y ago
That's more an effect of the fast train to KGX
- Silhouette 8y ago
  There are trains actually running to King's Cross now? ducks But seriously, if you want to know what the housing market in Cambridge is driven by, look at the new things they're building. The "affordable" housing is far beyond anyone doing a "normal" job who just wants to live locally, say a school teacher or a nurse at one of the hospitals. Even those of us lucky enough to work in the relatively well-paid tech sector mostly couldn't afford one of the new luxury flats or town houses that keep springing up near the railway station, some of which have seven-figure asking prices. For those reading this in the US who might be used to SV wages in tech, earning enough over here to get a seven figure place almost certainly means that either you had a very successful exit already or you have an unusually well-paid gig probably down in London. No-one on anything close to normal salary or freelance rates in tech sectors can get that kind of mortgage, so otherwise if you didn't already own a place that you can trade up from, you're totally locked out of that high-end market. And yet people keep building whole estates of properties like that, and then trickling them onto the market over the next year or two to keep the prices high. I find it quite depressing that having been entrepreneurial and even modestly successful by any normal standard, we would probably still have made more money if we'd just invested in buy-to-let property in Cambridge instead of starting our first business and then reinvested in growing the property portfolio since. The UK housing market (and our incentives for taking a risk and starting out on your own in business) are messed up.
kdelok 8y ago
Agreed - I think the key to owning a house in Cambridge is to already own a house in Cambridge. That and work in the City or buy-to-let. On the other hand, buying in conjunction with the local housing associations is more feasible, so it's not all doom and gloom.
- notahacker 8y ago
  There are also several towns and villages commutable into Cambridge with housing which is very affordable by South East UK standards, and certainly for anyone working in tech, even if that means braving horrible traffic on the commute in.
pjc50 8y ago
I moved to Edinburgh for this, which has worked well for me; although there's not a huge depth of job market especially in smaller companies. And the thing squeezing out locals in the city centre is .. AirBnB.
- arethuza 8y ago
  We sold a large flat in the New Town about a year and a half a go and a lot of the people who viewed were "investment" buyers - I must admit I didn't give any thought to what they would actually do with the property once they had bought it. We sold to a family with young kids who wanted to live there - which I preferred.

samwillis 8y ago

We gave up on trying to buy in Cambridge and moved north to Stamford, its just over an hour on the train (one stop past Peterborough) and about the same by car (if you avoid the worst of the rush hour, will be 45 min with the new road in 2020). Lovely here, much nicer then a villages near Cambridge and about the same time to commute!

cup-of-tea 8y ago
Three hours of my day is worth way more than what Cambridge employers are willing to pay unfortunately.
Doctor_Fegg 8y ago
Good choice - Stamford's delightful. (Grew up in Rutland, still very fond of the area.)

cup-of-tea 8y ago

House prices have been skyrocketing for ages already and it's helped by the fact that Cambridge is within commuting distance of London. There's no way your average senior dev could afford to buy a house in Cambridge at this point.

pjmlp 8y ago
Yep and it is affecting the Bristol area as well.
swebs 8y ago
We have the exact same problem in the other Cambridge (Massachusetts).
eftpotrm 8y ago
That's been true over very large parts of the country for most of the last 15 years TBH. House prices in the UK are divorced from reality.

elliotpage 8y ago

As someone who born and raised in Cambridge the possibility of owning anything larger than a shared shoebox has plummeted into impossibility.

swarnie_ 8y ago
I can relate.... I'm just a little further away in Buckinghamshire but the local train can get you to zone 1 in under 30 minutes. 4 x my salary would get me a 2 bed flat if i didn't mind living in a ghetto.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  If you had 4x your salary, wouldn't you be spending a lot on keeping up your house, and paying a lot of taxes for local amenities like schools? I don't understand how an area that affluent could be a ghetto.
  - maccard 8y ago
    I think he's saying that if he borrowed 4x his salary for a mortgage (which is the commonly cited figure as the max you can borrow), he could only afford a ghetto.
    - swarnie_ 8y ago
      Pretty much this yes.
  - walshemj 8y ago
    No property taxes are very low in the UK some one in a 10M house in London pays less than an upper middle class person does in some US states
    - laurencerowe 8y ago
      And tenants are anyway liable for paying Council Tax, the property tax equivalent.

JoeSmithson 8y ago

That's more an effect of the fast train to KGX

Silhouette 8y ago
There are trains actually running to King's Cross now? ducks But seriously, if you want to know what the housing market in Cambridge is driven by, look at the new things they're building. The "affordable" housing is far beyond anyone doing a "normal" job who just wants to live locally, say a school teacher or a nurse at one of the hospitals. Even those of us lucky enough to work in the relatively well-paid tech sector mostly couldn't afford one of the new luxury flats or town houses that keep springing up near the railway station, some of which have seven-figure asking prices. For those reading this in the US who might be used to SV wages in tech, earning enough over here to get a seven figure place almost certainly means that either you had a very successful exit already or you have an unusually well-paid gig probably down in London. No-one on anything close to normal salary or freelance rates in tech sectors can get that kind of mortgage, so otherwise if you didn't already own a place that you can trade up from, you're totally locked out of that high-end market. And yet people keep building whole estates of properties like that, and then trickling them onto the market over the next year or two to keep the prices high. I find it quite depressing that having been entrepreneurial and even modestly successful by any normal standard, we would probably still have made more money if we'd just invested in buy-to-let property in Cambridge instead of starting our first business and then reinvested in growing the property portfolio since. The UK housing market (and our incentives for taking a risk and starting out on your own in business) are messed up.

kdelok 8y ago

Agreed - I think the key to owning a house in Cambridge is to already own a house in Cambridge. That and work in the City or buy-to-let. On the other hand, buying in conjunction with the local housing associations is more feasible, so it's not all doom and gloom.

notahacker 8y ago
There are also several towns and villages commutable into Cambridge with housing which is very affordable by South East UK standards, and certainly for anyone working in tech, even if that means braving horrible traffic on the commute in.

pjc50 8y ago

I moved to Edinburgh for this, which has worked well for me; although there's not a huge depth of job market especially in smaller companies. And the thing squeezing out locals in the city centre is .. AirBnB.

arethuza 8y ago
We sold a large flat in the New Town about a year and a half a go and a lot of the people who viewed were "investment" buyers - I must admit I didn't give any thought to what they would actually do with the property once they had bought it. We sold to a family with young kids who wanted to live there - which I preferred.