7 ms·

My advice to "millenials" (well I think technically I'm one, so let's say younger ones) is to stay the hell away from London. I read these articles on the housi

My advice to "millenials" (well I think technically I'm one, so let's say younger ones) is to stay the hell away from London. I read these articles on the housing crisis and staggering rent amounts and wonder am I even living in the same country as these people.

xcklo 7y ago
Many places outside of big cities are depopulating, have few decent jobs and services, and are still pretty expensive. If you are from the areas, have a family or an already decent career it might work, but for the majority it isn't a solution. And if people would actually would start moving somewhere else instead the same things would happens there.
- ck425 7y ago
  There are still a lot of places in the UK outside of London that have plenty of jobs and are far more affordable.
  - mike-cardwell 7y ago
    I live in Nottingham. There are tonnes of tech jobs here in the Midlands, and housing is quite affordable.
    - davman 7y ago
      And yet the tech scene in Leicester is awful in comparison :(
- dev_north_east 7y ago
  > if people would actually would start moving somewhere else instead the same things would happens there. Not really. Unless everyone moves to the same place. We need to diversify from London. Having everything centred there is madness.
  - xcklo 7y ago
    It would probably in many places though. The reason cities like London are more "successful" these days despite being completely unsuitable for modern industries at face value is because they can handle the growth. Adding a couple a thousand people is a rounding error in big cities, but would be the entire liquid housing market in smaller ones. Maybe you are right, maybe people just aren't aware. But it doesn't seem like the most obvious explanation. People, including Britons, have been moving to Berlin for decades now in search of more affordable living. Edit: I am being rate limited so I will respond here instead. > Except for the lack of affordable housing? Sort of. Affordable housing is more a problem of uneven distribution of opportunities than costs as such. If you are part of those who do get to take part in those opportunities this is less of a problem since you are effectively in the same situation as living in a richer country. Of course you also miss out on opportunities that would be enabled by affordable housing, and a lower cost of living. But since most more affordable location can't take advantage of that as their own cost of housing is usually relative to their local opportunities it becomes a game of who is the biggest which large companies in large cities win.
    - humanrebar 7y ago
      > ...because they can handle the growth. Except for the lack of affordable housing?
  - pizzazzaro 7y ago
    On the US side, I've learned that the infrastucture for each industry is clustered in specific cities. If you want to participate in that industry, you need to live in one of those cities or have the luxury caveat of remote workability. Want to work in tech? Good luck buying a house for cheap - anywhere that property values are languishing will not have useable broadband internet providers. Got a chemistry degree? There's a short list of cities to move to, where you specialize in either medicine or petrochemical plastics. The option to do either rarely exists in a single city.
wastedhours 7y ago
> stay the hell away from London Will somewhat agree living in London, but I'd also throw Oxford into the mix as somewhere to avoid. I found the relative cost of living noticeably worse in Oxford (salary vs living costs) than compared to London. Essentially the main point being: really evaluate the cost of living, salary, lifestyle matrix before committing. Lots of other places in the UK offering much better options right now.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  Oxford is different because of geography. In most places where housing is too expensive the core problem is politics. That's not easy to solve, but it's universal. But in Oxford the biggest obstacle is that the obvious place to put more houses is in fact a swamp. For students it works out OK (so long as numbers don't grow too much) because the very wealthy people who paid for Oxford's university to exist built somewhere for students to live right inside the university too, in effect their housing costs are subsidised - until they graduate. Then though, either they need to move far away ASAP or they're going to be spending most of their income on rent.
  - wastedhours 7y ago
    > Oxford's university to exist built somewhere for students to live right inside the university too For those it's true, but also forgetting there's more than one university in Oxford. There are plenty of places on the East and North sides of the city where denser housing could have been placed, but it comes down more to politics around NIMBYism and preservation, more than geography.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      Serious question: How many other real universities (not places with one office above a coffee shop offering correspondence courses to the gullible) are there in Oxford? I spent some of my teens playing pinball in the student bar at one of the Oxford Brookes halls (Harcourt Hill maybe?) -- and already by the point you're counting Brookes you're stretching the point, it wouldn't be named that if Oxford wasn't famous. It's not quite "London" Stansted Airport, but it's barely in Oxford.
foldr 7y ago
This basically amounts to advising them not to live in a city (which is fine). But some people do like living in cities, and London is really the only option in the UK if you want to do that. No other city in the UK is anywhere close to London in terms of culture and economic opportunity. Yes, rents in Manchester and Birmingham are lower. But you're going to get paid less, you have to live in a second tier city, and in the long run you have fewer career opportunities.
- dev_north_east 7y ago
  > This basically amounts to advising them not to live in a city (which is fine). But some people do like living in cities, and London is really the only option in the UK if you want to do that. I'm gonna call bollocks on that :) I agree with the rest to an extent. You're going to be paid higher (well not everybody, but most HN readers would be) and have all the other advantages of London. Fine. But you need to take the downsides with that and stop moaning. When I was emigrating to the UK I considered everywhere. London was one of the first places I crossed off my list.
  - foldr 7y ago
    >But you need to take the downsides with that and stop moaning. This is the whole problem with the UK. Many of the current problems with London are fixable. People need to keep moaning about them in order to get them fixed.
    - dev_north_east 7y ago
      Tbh I think the "easiest" single thing which would improve the UK immensely would be to ditch FPTP and bring in some type of PR voting.
      - foldr 7y ago
        That or turn London into a city state :)
throwaway857384 7y ago
I don't live in London, but I live in my country's biggest city. All the jobs are here, so I can either live in the city or outside the city, with a 2-hour commute. It kind of sucks either way, but that extra hour a day, I spend with my daughter and that makes me happy.
Tsiklon 7y ago
Unfortunately the UK economy is very London centric. And the deck is very much stacked in London's favour due to the sheer numbers who live in London compared to the rest of the UK - (greater than 1/8th of all people in the UK live in London). I moved to London from a UK regional capital, and personally I've had the opportunity to improve my earnings much further than would be achievable at home for my particular branch of Tech. All my peers are well aware that the rent is breathtaking - however most of us with home ownership aspirations are not intent on living in London indefinitely, owning or renting in the commuter towns in the south east are far more achievable on a good IT salary.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  You've increased your earnings, but if you run the numbers it's very unlikely you're actually better off unless you have a property appreciating at London speed. Over my career (I did contract in London around y2k) I have more in my pocket each month - after expenses - by staying outside the SE. Rent or mortgage, commuting costs, the price of everything else - food, beer, tickets. Sure, I could earn £x extra and have to spend all of it and more on rent and getting to work. The capital accumulation on the house would have turned it into making economic sense, and only that. Which only becomes real once you move out of the area.
  - xcklo 7y ago
    Not sure I really follow the "cost of beer" thing. One of the merits of high income high expenses is that "luxury" spending is relatively affordable in the long run, because your discretionary income is a larger absolute number. On the other hand your time becomes more expensive. But since most medium income medium expenses locations means less opportunities to do other things with other people that isn't always a good trade-off. Unless those other people are your family, in which case it tends to make sense.
    - barry0079 7y ago
      As an anecdotal example the cost of a pint of beer in London can be 3 to 4 times as expensive as what I'm used to in the South West. For other basic necessities I agree with you however.
rb808 7y ago
I'd disagree if you have a job where you will earn most by far in London. You can live really cheap if you share a flat and you dont need a car, so you'll save much more in London than other places. When you have a family things are very different.

xcklo 7y ago

Many places outside of big cities are depopulating, have few decent jobs and services, and are still pretty expensive. If you are from the areas, have a family or an already decent career it might work, but for the majority it isn't a solution. And if people would actually would start moving somewhere else instead the same things would happens there.

ck425 7y ago
There are still a lot of places in the UK outside of London that have plenty of jobs and are far more affordable.
- mike-cardwell 7y ago
  I live in Nottingham. There are tonnes of tech jobs here in the Midlands, and housing is quite affordable.
  - davman 7y ago
    And yet the tech scene in Leicester is awful in comparison :(
dev_north_east 7y ago
> if people would actually would start moving somewhere else instead the same things would happens there. Not really. Unless everyone moves to the same place. We need to diversify from London. Having everything centred there is madness.
- xcklo 7y ago
  It would probably in many places though. The reason cities like London are more "successful" these days despite being completely unsuitable for modern industries at face value is because they can handle the growth. Adding a couple a thousand people is a rounding error in big cities, but would be the entire liquid housing market in smaller ones. Maybe you are right, maybe people just aren't aware. But it doesn't seem like the most obvious explanation. People, including Britons, have been moving to Berlin for decades now in search of more affordable living. Edit: I am being rate limited so I will respond here instead. > Except for the lack of affordable housing? Sort of. Affordable housing is more a problem of uneven distribution of opportunities than costs as such. If you are part of those who do get to take part in those opportunities this is less of a problem since you are effectively in the same situation as living in a richer country. Of course you also miss out on opportunities that would be enabled by affordable housing, and a lower cost of living. But since most more affordable location can't take advantage of that as their own cost of housing is usually relative to their local opportunities it becomes a game of who is the biggest which large companies in large cities win.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    > ...because they can handle the growth. Except for the lack of affordable housing?
- pizzazzaro 7y ago
  On the US side, I've learned that the infrastucture for each industry is clustered in specific cities. If you want to participate in that industry, you need to live in one of those cities or have the luxury caveat of remote workability. Want to work in tech? Good luck buying a house for cheap - anywhere that property values are languishing will not have useable broadband internet providers. Got a chemistry degree? There's a short list of cities to move to, where you specialize in either medicine or petrochemical plastics. The option to do either rarely exists in a single city.

wastedhours 7y ago

> stay the hell away from London Will somewhat agree living in London, but I'd also throw Oxford into the mix as somewhere to avoid. I found the relative cost of living noticeably worse in Oxford (salary vs living costs) than compared to London. Essentially the main point being: really evaluate the cost of living, salary, lifestyle matrix before committing. Lots of other places in the UK offering much better options right now.

tialaramex 7y ago
Oxford is different because of geography. In most places where housing is too expensive the core problem is politics. That's not easy to solve, but it's universal. But in Oxford the biggest obstacle is that the obvious place to put more houses is in fact a swamp. For students it works out OK (so long as numbers don't grow too much) because the very wealthy people who paid for Oxford's university to exist built somewhere for students to live right inside the university too, in effect their housing costs are subsidised - until they graduate. Then though, either they need to move far away ASAP or they're going to be spending most of their income on rent.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  > Oxford's university to exist built somewhere for students to live right inside the university too For those it's true, but also forgetting there's more than one university in Oxford. There are plenty of places on the East and North sides of the city where denser housing could have been placed, but it comes down more to politics around NIMBYism and preservation, more than geography.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    Serious question: How many other real universities (not places with one office above a coffee shop offering correspondence courses to the gullible) are there in Oxford? I spent some of my teens playing pinball in the student bar at one of the Oxford Brookes halls (Harcourt Hill maybe?) -- and already by the point you're counting Brookes you're stretching the point, it wouldn't be named that if Oxford wasn't famous. It's not quite "London" Stansted Airport, but it's barely in Oxford.

foldr 7y ago

This basically amounts to advising them not to live in a city (which is fine). But some people do like living in cities, and London is really the only option in the UK if you want to do that. No other city in the UK is anywhere close to London in terms of culture and economic opportunity. Yes, rents in Manchester and Birmingham are lower. But you're going to get paid less, you have to live in a second tier city, and in the long run you have fewer career opportunities.

dev_north_east 7y ago
> This basically amounts to advising them not to live in a city (which is fine). But some people do like living in cities, and London is really the only option in the UK if you want to do that. I'm gonna call bollocks on that :) I agree with the rest to an extent. You're going to be paid higher (well not everybody, but most HN readers would be) and have all the other advantages of London. Fine. But you need to take the downsides with that and stop moaning. When I was emigrating to the UK I considered everywhere. London was one of the first places I crossed off my list.
- foldr 7y ago
  >But you need to take the downsides with that and stop moaning. This is the whole problem with the UK. Many of the current problems with London are fixable. People need to keep moaning about them in order to get them fixed.
  - dev_north_east 7y ago
    Tbh I think the "easiest" single thing which would improve the UK immensely would be to ditch FPTP and bring in some type of PR voting.
    - foldr 7y ago
      That or turn London into a city state :)

throwaway857384 7y ago

I don't live in London, but I live in my country's biggest city. All the jobs are here, so I can either live in the city or outside the city, with a 2-hour commute. It kind of sucks either way, but that extra hour a day, I spend with my daughter and that makes me happy.

Tsiklon 7y ago

Unfortunately the UK economy is very London centric. And the deck is very much stacked in London's favour due to the sheer numbers who live in London compared to the rest of the UK - (greater than 1/8th of all people in the UK live in London). I moved to London from a UK regional capital, and personally I've had the opportunity to improve my earnings much further than would be achievable at home for my particular branch of Tech. All my peers are well aware that the rent is breathtaking - however most of us with home ownership aspirations are not intent on living in London indefinitely, owning or renting in the commuter towns in the south east are far more achievable on a good IT salary.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
You've increased your earnings, but if you run the numbers it's very unlikely you're actually better off unless you have a property appreciating at London speed. Over my career (I did contract in London around y2k) I have more in my pocket each month - after expenses - by staying outside the SE. Rent or mortgage, commuting costs, the price of everything else - food, beer, tickets. Sure, I could earn £x extra and have to spend all of it and more on rent and getting to work. The capital accumulation on the house would have turned it into making economic sense, and only that. Which only becomes real once you move out of the area.
- xcklo 7y ago
  Not sure I really follow the "cost of beer" thing. One of the merits of high income high expenses is that "luxury" spending is relatively affordable in the long run, because your discretionary income is a larger absolute number. On the other hand your time becomes more expensive. But since most medium income medium expenses locations means less opportunities to do other things with other people that isn't always a good trade-off. Unless those other people are your family, in which case it tends to make sense.
  - barry0079 7y ago
    As an anecdotal example the cost of a pint of beer in London can be 3 to 4 times as expensive as what I'm used to in the South West. For other basic necessities I agree with you however.

rb808 7y ago

I'd disagree if you have a job where you will earn most by far in London. You can live really cheap if you share a flat and you dont need a car, so you'll save much more in London than other places. When you have a family things are very different.