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Cheaper to rent in Barcelona and commute to London
- JamesSouthworth 13y agoHow exactly does one qualify x as cheaper than y when the comparison requires y to omit a massive economic component: the opportunity cost or value of one's time? Additionally, why propose such an intrinsically inefficient model? What about using a hostel on M, Tu, W, and only fly in M AM and out Th PM? Monthly commute ~28 hours, quality of living benefits, and probably save even more $. Can someone from the EU comment on the potential tax benefits of an international live/work arrangement?
- CWIZO 13y agoThat's a roughly 4 hour commute in each direction: 1h flight, 1h train ride from airport to liverpool street + commute to the airport and waiting. And this are, in my experience, conservative numbers. So you spend 128 hours per month commuting, to save 387€. Not what I would call a bargain. Oh, what about double taxation? I'm pretty sure you'd be hit by that and that would most likely put you well in the negative.
- mrud 13y agoMost European countries have a double taxation agreement between each other. It seems like UK and Spain have one as well (at least according to the example on http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/international/dta-intro.htm http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/international/dta-intro.htm ).
- gsnedders 13y agoIt's part of the base EEA (i.e., EU + Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway) agreement; you pay income tax where domiciled.
- busterarm 13y agoI know an assload of people who work in the NYC area that have commutes that long or nearly that long. 3hour+ commutes aren't uncommon at all.
- EGreg 13y agoWell then I would confidently say that's stupid, unless they are using their commute time to work on something or catch up on their favorite shows. Your most limited resource is time. Money is a distant second. And if those people arent monetizing their commute or taking care of their entertainment, they are wasting time to save some money. It's nearly as stupid as fracking - wasting water to get oil, only to later have a water shortage and a raped environment. And half as stupid as wasting your health for money, then trying to get it back with money.
- throwaway9848 13y agoIt's not stupid. High salaried people in NYC often locate their families in the suburbs in CT and NJ, which are safer and more livable. The commute is just a function of where they determine the salary/lifestyle tradeoff is even. Some people just place a higher utility on their family's lifestyle than their own time.
- Crake 13y agoI don't know that I'd call CT or NJ safer or more liveable. Especially not to the point where it would justify such a long commute.
- miloshadzic 13y agoIf you're a developer and doing that, you're probably doing it wrong. That's 3 hours of your life you could've spent doing whatever. Even looking at cats is better than sitting(if you're lucky to get a seat) in a train for 3 hours.
- nly 13y ago3 hour commutes aren't uncommon...in the States. Pretty rare in the UK.
- ksrm 13y agoIt was fairly obvious to me that this is not a serious suggestion, more an indication of how expensive it is to rent in London.
- antr 13y agoThe argument in the post is flawed because of the commuting time issue you mention, add to that the fact the Ryanair is extremely unreliable as an airline... PS: there is no double taxation between UK/Spain
- drcross 13y agoRyanair is not unreliable. Horrible and uncomfortable yes, but no one can say they are unreliable.
- antr 13y agoI am saying it. Ryanair is very unreliable. Twice I've had emergency landings with them, and it's not fun.
- mmariani 13y agoJust take a look at this [1] and then we can talk about Ryanair's incredibile reliability. [1] http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SIu295DWj94 http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SIu295DWj94
- berntb 13y agoConsidering the Barcelona winter weather I'd be tempted, if I got a job in London. And I hate commuting. (A reason I'm not that hot on getting a London job anyway, despite loving the city.)
- CWIZO 13y agoI've moved 7 months ago, and the weather has been truly lovely. I'll see how to fall/winter will be. But really, coming from Slovenia where we have hot summers, I didn't miss a thing :)
- lttlrck 13y agoOk, but why would anybody get a job in London because they love the city, but then not live there even though they hate commuting?
- berntb 13y agoAmbivalence? Oh yes. (Love to visit the place, but is it really good to live there?)
- swalsh 13y agoI'm just going to throw this out there, but no matter how shitty the seating is. I am at my peak productivity on planes. I don't quite understand it, but it seems to be true for me. So that said, this would probably increase my own personal productivity.
- byoung2 13y agoI'm still convinced that we're just a few years away from a time when people don't have to commute to an office just to sit at a computer. That company in London could save some money and so could the employee in Barcelona if telecommuting were an option.
- gaius 13y agoI think a lot of geeks have a vision of a perfect world when a detailed, unambiguous spec arrives in their email, they write the code and upload it, then the money is transferred to their accounts. There is a fundamental flaw with this concept, which is writing a spec that good is more work that just writing the code yourself. And the guy who writes that spec will need to collaborate with others enough that having everyone in the one place to do that makes sense. Videoconferencing works if you want to discuss something with which you are both familiar with someone you already know, and this admittedly is a large part of many people's jobs. But for everything else, you really do need to be there.
- nawitus 13y agoI think videoconferencing sucks because the tech is so primitive. In 10 years we'll have proper videoconferences which are using augmented reality and have sufficient quality to replace physical meetings 90% of the time. Of course, even conference calls suffer from the use of low-quality software and hardware. For some reason companies tend to use $1 microphone and $5 speakers for conference calls.
- gaius 13y agoAt one job, we had a full, no-expense-spared, telepresence suite. For formal meetings or presentations it was acceptable, but you still had to think about it a bit (e.g. pay special attention to whose turn it was to speak next, compensate for the body language or lack thereof, etc). For just hanging out, which is how most collaborative thinking work actually happens, it was useless, even with the best shared whiteboards money could buy. If you had 10 hours to work on a problem, you'd get far more done if you spent half of them traveling and actually stood in a room with everyone around a real whiteboard.
- j2d3 13y agoCheaper, but fairly ridiculous. Stay in Barcelona and telecommute. Similarly, it would be cheaper for me to rent in Mexico City and commute to my job in Los Angeles. Yes, some global metropolises have lower rents than others.
- bnegreve 13y ago> it would be cheaper for me to rent in Mexico City and commute to my job in Los Angeles. Is this serious? Because that's the whole point of this blog post: flying everyday between London and Barcelona it's actually doable, for real. As in: some people might end up doing it.
- wattson12 13y agohow many people would look at this commute (at least 3-4 hours each way) and think its doable?
- postitnotecode 13y agoI don't find 2-3 hour commutes all that unusual, though just an anecdote, in PA I knew families which would commute via car to NYC 3 hours in traffic. On the commute if there's room to work, 3-4 hours could represent a decent chunk of thinking/coding/email time.
- Ogre 13y agoI work in Orange County, not far from the airport (and even closer a few years ago) I did the napkin math on commuting from Arizona every day at one point, and it definitely worked out. I would've saved money doing that. Of course that presumes that my sanity has no value, but I'm not certain how much worse it would have been than some people's driving commutes.
- WildUtah 13y agoBCN-London can be had for E$34 round trip. LA-MEX goes for US$400 cheapest average seat. That makes all the difference. Maybe try Tijuana, though.
- cstross 13y agoThe point of this piece is not that living in Barcelona and commuting to London is sensible -- it's that the North London property market has gone totally batshit insane. No, seriously: renting a 2 bedroom flat in a not brilliant suburb of London costs around £25,000 a year, or US $40,000. Then you can add council tax (another £2000), water, electricity, and gas bills, and travel. Upshot: the fixed costs of living in London are on the order of US $50,000 per year (two beds) or around $40,000 per year (one bed). Note that I focus on the two bed option because that's the practical minimum for a family unit, or for someone who telecommutes from home. Note also that the average gross income in London is a little under £28,000 per year (before tax). Upshot: normal people and normal families can't afford to rent in London any more. The only thing propping up these insane prices is the scarcity induced by the current bubble in the foreign investment housing market. The crash, when it comes, is going to be epic.
- gaius 13y agoNot the only thing. The other major factor is housing benefit, in which a landlord can charge well over the odds, and the govt just pays it. They are trying to cap it, to howls of outrage but from whom? Not the tenants, they never see the money. But from well-heeled buy-to-let landlords whose cash-cow is about to be slaughtered. That's why papers like the Graun oppose it - that's their readers!
- cstross 13y agoI think you're making a correlation/causation error here. Housing benefit has crept up over the years because the property market was inflating steadily and no government dared bring it back down (middle-class home owners vote to punish governments who hit them in the wallet). Housing benefit rises stuck a plaster on the chest wound by allowing low-income workers (bus drivers, shop assistants, nurses) to live in places where they were needed but could no longer afford to rent or buy.
- ronaldx 13y agoHere's a causation argument: Considering that housing benefit was set for a long time at the median market rate, this surely drove rental prices upward. If landlords know they are guaranteed the median by way of housing benefit, they set their rents at the median (given a housing shortage, they can guarantee to rent out any old dump at the housing benefit rate with no disadvantage: and this is evidenced pretty well by distribution of rent prices), which has driven the median upward - a vicious circle of rent increases.
- outside1234 13y agoAbout 5 years ago I did this. I flew from the south of Spain (flying from Jerez on RyanAir) to London once a week for 2 days a week (couch surfing with a friend). Its a hard lifestyle - by about the 10th of these flights you will be sick of the security hassles (and RyanAir) - but it was way better than living in London full time (no offense). I did it for 18 months before finally burning out on it and moving to a full time remote position (which paid less but I decided that that was worth the upgrade in lifestyle).
- Al-Khwarizmi 13y agoOnce a week for 2 days a week?
- desas 13y agoEvery week he flew in, spent 2 days in London and then flew back.
- Continuous 13y agoIt's a 4 hour commute! Why would you live in Central London? You can commute for an hour into Liverpool St and get much cheaper rents.
- smikhanov 13y agoThere isn't a single house or flat (for any price whatsoever) within 4 hour by train radius from Liverpool St that compares to a three bedroom in Barcelona.
- archangel_one 13y agoNot that you'll have any time to enjoy your presumably lovely 3 bedroom flat in Barcelona with two 4 hour commutes each day.
- lucaspiller 13y agoHow far can you get on the Eurostar in four hours?
- notahacker 13y agoWell sure, the selection of tapas in England is rather limited, it's colder and rains more, the local football teams aren't as good and you have to speak English all the time because Catalan and Spanish aren't very widely understood. But if you can't beat Barcelona for living, you'd probably want to work there too. You can definitely get similar space for your money to the Barcelona flat highlighted in the blog post in a perfectly adequate dormitory town a short commute from Liverpool Street, if Southeast England is more your thing.
- judk 13y agoIt is well established that prices RyanAir advertises are not prices passengers pay. Given the option of the hassle and commute, people would prefer to just live in London. Which is the whole point- real estate pricing is efficient in this case.
- radio4fan 13y ago> It is well established that prices RyanAir advertises are not prices passengers pay. The prices on the website are exactly what you pay, as long as you pay by debit card and don't check luggage. Source: I live in Barcelona, and travel monthly to London.
- lucaspiller 13y agoPeople sure seem to hate a lot about Ryanair. I also flew with them regularly back to the UK when I was living in Ireland. I tried a few other airlines (FlyBe, Air France, BA and Aer Lingus) but found Ryanair to be the easiest and most reliable.
- jn 13y ago> It is well established that prices RyanAir advertises are not prices passengers pay. Not true. An EU regulation in force since 2008 makes that illegal [1]. Ryanair, for all its other faults, abides by the law. [1] Article 23, Regulation No 1008/2008. PDF: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2008:293:0003:0020:en:PDF http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2... "The final price to be paid shall at all times be indicated and shall include the applicable air fare or air rate as well as all applicable taxes, and charges, surcharges and fees which are unavoidable and foreseeable at the time of publication."
- lsb 13y agoThis is silly. Just go southwest a few miles. There is, for instance, a flat steps from the London Overground in South Norwood (http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/30891717 http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/30891717) that is going for £400/month (€470/month). (It's unclear why you'd want such a long commute, versus living in far-away green suburbs by the train.)
- tuananh 13y agoIt's just away of saying rent in London is ridiculous. No one in their right mind would do as author said.
- DanBC 13y agoBut Barcelona is nice. Bow? Not so much.
- xxpor 13y agoFrom the description: "Men Only / No Females" What the hell? How is that legal?
- meerita 13y agoHere a fellow hacker from Barcelona. I rented a loft for 6620€/year. It's mint condition and it's in the outskirts of Barcelona. I'm 12 min in subway to the plaza Catalonia and in 7 min using the train or 20 mins in bus. To be honest, I would never never again will rent in the centre of the city. It's expensive and all buildings are antique, without the proper commodities. If you want to come Barcelona, check the outskirts, get a scooter or enjoy the Barcelona transportation system. It's wonderful. I want to add some more info about living in Barcelona. The weather is magnifique. It barely rains all the year. You can go mountains withing 2h car travel if you want to enjoy the snow in winter. Eating can be really cheap IF you go to the supermarket, buy all the meals and cook yourself like I do, I saved 300€/month doing this instead eating outside. If you can compile rails, you can be a chef, :). I do buy the meals and stuff for around 90€/month. That includes the 40lts of water i buy. Then daily i try to buy meat, fish or vegetables for the week and it cost me no more than 220€ month. I pay 90 euros electricity, 30 gas and 40 water every 2 months. 60 euros for 100mbit fiber connection + phone and mobile and that's all.
- mattdeboard 13y agoSounds a lot like San Francisco (though I guess "wonderful" isn't the word some people would use to describe mass transit, but I think it's pretty great compared to the one I have now in the American midwest)
- pcrh 13y agoIndeed, in terms of environment, Barcelona is like San Francisco, except without the fog or Asian food. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite have the same employment opportunities either.
- meerita 13y agoIt is not like SFO at all. The weather, the food, the culture, the beaches (you can swim without freezing it), the mountains and the history makes Barcelona a really different city. No offense to SFOers.
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- keithpeter 13y agoUK renting is just idiotic at present all over, although especially bonkers in our capital city. Remember that 1 bed flats are especially in demand at present as a result of the (in)famous bedroom tax[1]. A single person or a couple are only allowed 1 bedroom if they need to claim housing benefit (unemployed or low-wage, and remember that in London 'low waged' is a pretty high threshold, e.g. teachers, social workers, retail staff, bus drivers &c). Bear in mind that building 1 bedroom flats has (hitherto) been regarded as a waste of money for housing associations or councils, so that really only commercial lets are available (at usually twice or three times the rent of a HA/council flat with 2 beds), so, ironically, the tax payer will be paying more to move couples out of 2 bed high rise flats in rough areas which are hard to let into expensive private let 1 bed flats. There will be no takers for the high rise flats (unsuitable for children) so they will be mothballed then expensively demolished. Yes, bonkers, but the UK is run by the Daily Fail and other populist idiots. [1] http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/housing_benefit_and_local_housing_allowance/changes_to_local_housing_allowance/bedroom_tax_from_april_2013 http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/housing_benefit_and... Edit: OK anonymous downvoter, state your reasons
- lucaspiller 13y agoNot the downvoter, but I think s/UK/London/. I agree with everything on what you say about London, but outside of London the rest of the UK isn't really that bad. You can rent a 3 bedroom house for £300/month in Yorkshire. Even if you are the only earner in a household, on minimum wage, you'll still have over £500/month left after rent (probably more if you have kids due to benefits). Bonus: It's a three hour commute to London [1]. [0] http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/20671512?search_identifier=9fd9a5bfe1e532e8ea1a096bfa063a11 http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/20671512?search_iden... [1] http://traintimes.org.uk/Gainsborough/London/06:30/monday/18:30/monday http://traintimes.org.uk/Gainsborough/London/06:30/monday/18...
- keithpeter 13y ago"You can rent a 3 bedroom house for £300/month in Yorkshire." Leeds? York? I suspect not. Bear in mind that single bedroom flats are mainly built in areas where land is expensive, because it is only then that the small space saving over a 2 bed flat outweighs the similar building cost. Birmingham: 3 bed house commercial, way outside city, is £750 pcm. That will increase when H2S happens (if it does).
- daemon13 13y agoTo Barcelona hackers - which districts are the best to rent a nice modern-built loft/apartment: - from quality angle? - from price angle? Edit: formatting
- soci 13y agoquality: sarria-sant gervasi, eixample. price (without being bad areas): nou barris, sants.
- merraksh 13y agoOr you could live in Birmingham, in a £650/month one-bedroom apartment 10 minutes away from New Street station, where you can take a 70 minute train to London Euston. Sure, Birmingham is not Barcelona or London, but I'm not sure how you'd enjoy them by living most of your off-work time in a Ryanair flight.
- switch007 13y agoA yearly season ticket from Birmingham to London incl the tube is £7,252 (or £5,240 without the travelcard). A peak return ticket is £158 (this Tuesday, trains arriving before 9am)
- krmmalik 13y agoI just moved to North-West London Two weeks ago and can confirm these numbers. It's an interesting write-up and I can see that it's been written for the mathematical demonstration rather than the practicality but it does give food for thought.
- gcb0 13y agoHad a friend on UCSD that rented at Tijuana and crossed the border everyday to San Diego.
- marban 13y agoIt might at least get you a HON circle membership if you take Star Alliance flights but daily use of Ryan Air can't be beneficial for your mental stability.
- officemonkey 13y agoSo he can live in Barcelona and get home at 10 PM and leave for the airport at 5 AM. Who cares if you live in Barcelona if you're asleep all the time?
- twic 13y agoHey, in Barcelona, that means he's getting home just in time to go out for dinner.
- zobzu 13y agoso 1500 GBP is about 2420 USD 1 bedroom in the good part of SF, USA cost about 2500/month. Sure, there's no council tax and utilities are cheaper. Still, its pretty close. I bet Paris ain't so far from that either, and let's not talk about NYC. Basically, all of the large tech cities prices are "batshit insane". The only hope I see, barred 1h30/2H by plane travel time, as the author suggests.. is remote work whenever possible. You can then live 3-4h away from big cities (so you can still get together if needed), and prices are slashed by 10.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoI'm not convinced that house prices area actually a big deal, except as an indicator that more housing should be permitted (by zoning laws). There are two arguments that are typically given. Firstly, you want to encourage people of different incomes to live together. I don't believe that this is a worthy goal. It's not clear that the benefit to people on low incomes outweighs the loss to their high income neighbors. And the richest 1% always find ways to isolate themselves anyway. The second argument is that welfare should taken into account the cost of living. I also believe this within reason, but the welfare system already does this in many ways. In fact, London's "one bedroom rule" is a clunky way to do precisely this: it lets people live where they like, but prevents people from purchasing an excessive "quantity" of housing.
- valdiorn 13y agoI just moved to London, less than a month ago. I decided that I was willing to pay a premium for my <25 minute commute to work (close to Tottenham Court Road). And as long as other people think the same, rent will go up. Pretty standard supply and demand. Everyone works in the center, and nobody likes to waste 2 hours of their day hopping trains and buses. So this is what you get, take it or leave it, I guess...
- osks 13y agoWhere do you live (and what did you get, and what does it cost), if I may ask?
- qwerta 13y agoMy friend works for one the City. He is permanently renting hotel room nearby. He says it is actually cheaper compared to normal rent.
- alexchamberlain 13y agoEast London is where it's at! It is cheaper to buy than rent though!
- yeureka 13y agoI left Barcelona in 2007 to come to London and although the cost of living is higher here ( I live in West Hampstead ), salaries and opportunities are also much better. Granted, I spend more money per month in fixed costs than my entire salary in Barcelona, but I still save more than I spend. Also, from this article it seems that rents have actually fallen, because in 2007 I could not find that kind of accomodation for that price and I was strugling to save any money compared to now. I guess the housing market collapse in Spain has actually impacted the crazy Barcelona prices of mid 2007.
- collyw 13y agoI moved in 2008, and the rents have gradually been going down. Usually involves a bit of negotiation with the landlord, as legally they are allowed to raise it in line with inflation each year. Or moving out, which is a hassle, and ends up costing. So fine if you are moving anyway, but otherwise it depends.
- meerita 13y agoThis post is also a great idea to start a HN Barcelona meeting :).
- farresito 13y agoJust wanted to add that the apartment that the article refers to is located in a really nice place of Barcelona. Definitely not the center, but relatively close to FC Barcelona stadium, and close to the rich part of the city.
- sprizzle 13y agoI like this article as a thought experiment, but I think in practicality, it would probably be miserable to fly to-and-fro 4 days a week. The main cost that was ommitted that would give us an idea whether the commute is worth it is the opportunity cost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost). While it'd be difficult to estimate how much the author's time is worth, if we assume that he/she gets paid an hourly wage of W, and it takes H hours to commute to and from London, then the opportunity cost would be something like W x H. If that opportunity cost is greater than the 387€ in savings, then it would not be cheaper to commute from an economist's perspective.
- tluyben2 13y agoIt's not the point of the article, but 4 hours wouldn't be that bad per se. I would hate to be on an airport every day and being with ryan air every day (I rather pay a lot more than fly ryan air personally; I am almost 2 meters in length and quite bulky in width due to food and daily gym; ryan air is cruel punishment, no matter the cost), but when I still worked in an office in the Netherlands (granted, that's over 10 years ago), I would spend 2.5-3 hours at least in traffic jams. At least in a plane you can read a book or do some work. Sitting in a car, usually in the rain/cold, foot on the break ready to move yet another 30 cm I might even consider worse than ryan air...
- lnanek2 13y agoNow how much does he earn per hour? How much time does he waste on a long commute each of those four days a week?
- RafiqM 13y agoFunnily enough, I came to the exact same conclusion last week while visiting London, from Dublin. €30 return flights and it's faster than Barcelona, 1hr flights (and you can show up 45 mins before flight leaves for IE->UK). Even using Hotel Tonight while I was in London, accommodation was €200+ on a Tuesday night.
- avty 13y agoTime to move to Texas!
- mikhailfranco 13y agoRyanair lies about flying to 'Barcelona' - it actually flies to Gerona, about 95km away (1hr by ground transportation): http://gospain.about.com/od/ryanair/qt/ryan_barcelona.htm http://gospain.about.com/od/ryanair/qt/ryan_barcelona.htm Although, Gerona is itself a beautiful city and would be a nice place to live.
- pedramg 13y agoActually, your link says: "However, Ryanair have recently decided to start flying to Barcelona from around Spain and a few other airports in Europe."