4 ms·
It's hard to convey how bad the housing situation is in London to people that have not lived there. Starting income is much lower than Silicon Valley (a very,
by Fede_V 11y ago
It's hard to convey how bad the housing situation is in London to people that have not lived there. Starting income is much lower than Silicon Valley (a very, very good pay for your first job is around ~40,000 pounds/year), housing costs are insanely high, and public transport is crazy expensive.
It's possible to live there as a young person with multiple room-mates, living far away from the city center, but as you get older and want things like privacy or, god forbid, enough space to live with a family, it becomes completely unaffordable. The city center has gotten so expensive that even bankers and russian millionaires cannot live there - it basically exists now to cater to Middle Eastern billionaires: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-17/russians-quit-london-luxury-homes-as-only-super-rich-stay http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-17/russians-q...
London is an awesome city, I'm glad I lived there during my undergrad, but there's no way I could go back there as a 30 year old. The city will constantly be appealing to the young, who don't mind squeezing with three other people into a small apartment in zone 4, or the extremely rich, but for everyone else, move far, far away and you'll be a lot happier, even with everything (and, it's really a lot) that London has to offer.
- branchless 11y agoThe UK is just getting worse and worse. It's a rear-guard action. They are printing (desperately) via land prices. Without this there is no "growth". Given that the young have no savings, no security (job or home) and no hope, what will the UK be like in 15 years time? My guess is it's going to be worse than now. London really is soul-crushing. I doubled my salary then doubled it again starting out working from 1998 and all the time housing costs stayed ahead of me. The UK is not for workers. You are always working for the landed classes, not for yourself. It's the new serfdom.
- iolothebard 11y agoThe US is going down this same path. It's why every apartment complex in my town sells for 50-100% more than it did 5-7 years ago. We don't tax the wealthy so they're finding ways to park it in real estate. The problem is the poor (working or not) keep voting for this trickle up policy. It's like Americans never learned from the history of the UK.
- 100timesthis 11y agojust to compare, what a salary of a 30yo working in tech would be?
- timje1 11y agoProbably £55 - £80k a year, depending on how 'hot' the stack you're on is and how willing you are to work for hedge funds / banks.
- zimpenfish 11y agoMultiply by ~1.2-1.5 for contracting rates (but then good luck getting a mortgage)
- blatch 11y agoThis is me. £150K p/a, > 3 years of accounts but banks can't understand low salary and high dividends so won't give me a decent mortgage. Plus my credit rating is fucked from moving to a different rental place each year. I'm looking at auctions instead. I've heard a rumour Halifax might give mortgages to contractors based on a pro-rated day rate...
- Nursie 11y agoI've also heard this. There are also specialist contractor brokers, and I got a mortgage approval for a decent amount through one of them last year, they offered me way more than I could afford. HSBC don't understand contractors completely but they have offered me a reasonable amount of lending (I make about half what you do, but then I choose to live elsewhere). HSBC seem to have about the best rates at the moment.
- blatch 11y agoThanks i had thought about a loan but didn't follow up.
- crayola 11y ago
- Nursie 11y ago>> (a very, very good pay for your first job is around ~40,000 pounds/year) In the city maybe! Yeah, in other places I'd be surprised if it's much more than half that... salaries here in the UK are bad...