Housing

[Really_here]

I bought a house just before the crash in 2008, I lost £35k on it when I sold 10 years later, I found out the builder had got someone to overvalue them for a brown envelope years later, maybe some sort of price control in areas can be done somehow, a house in oldham is not worth £250k no one but rich landlords is affording that, a reasonable price although still expensive is £150k, that’s still 5 times the average wage.

"a house in oldham is not worth 250k" is a bit of a sweeping statement don't you think? I'm sure some aren't worth that and I'm also sure some are worth a lot more.

 

[MCFC Wirral]

You was fortunate enough to buy a house with your mum for 90 bags in London and sold for like 4x that, it can be done lmao it is a massive help.

We had to retire her due to ill health and my rent towards the home she owned with me and my sister equally over ten years helped clear the mortgage.

My flat here was less than £50,000.

 

[Blue Maverick]

"a house in oldham is not worth 250k" is a bit of a sweeping statement don't you think? I'm sure some aren't worth that and I'm also sure some are worth a lot more.

Ok the shitholes that some are £250k are not worth it and a three bedroom terrace on a main road is not worth £325k even if it’s in a slightly better part.

 

[Kompany Car]

I've said it before but I think the advent of working from home should be seen as a huge opportunity for improved regionalisation of white collar jobs which can bring wealth to more areas of the country. There really is no reason these days for a lot of people to be in London 7 days a week. It is already happening naturally but in a smaller way, more senior folks I work with these days live quite a long way out of the city and come in a few days per week.

The more time people spend outside of London, the more of their money is also spent outside of London, which brings more commerce to other areas of the country.

I think this could potentially be harnessed and promoted further. The people in professional services who still live near to the centre of London are the younger folks, many of which have been brain drained from other parts of the country. They don't have the position or means to commute down from Yorkshire once a week, so they moved here. I did this myself 6 years ago. These are people who often go on to be high earners. If we can find a way to stop these young people from having to move permanently in the first place, I think it could do a lot of good.

I spent years commuting from the northern wastelands to the big smoke, 5 days a week. Purely to further my career. I did used to enjoy listening to everyone whitter on about how to solve a problem to then use my opening line of “I may be a thick northerner with a flat cap and a whippet but have you thought about doing X like this… “

I could pretty much guarantee however that without doing that for 5yrs, I wouldn’t have made the connections or been offer the opportunities I’ve had given to me since. This is why I’m an advocate of fast and affordable transport into major cities, to ensure it opens up similar opportunities for others. Once those connections are made, as you say, working remotely then becomes a viable option even for very senior roles.

 

[WestGorton]

Everybody's house was once a field. If you get a flight you see fucking loads more than houses.

 

[Kompany Car]

Ok the shitholes that some are £250k are not worth it and a three bedroom terrace on a main road is not worth £325k even if it’s in a slightly better part.

How much a property is worth is purely down to what the local market can support. Considering it’s costing me 120k to build a 2 storey extension 7m x 7m on my house and that’s mates rates, is 250k, considering UK building land prices, really that unreasonable ?

The median cost per m2 for building is £2000 according to the institute for architects (that’s a bog stand level of finish), a 3 bed house is around 88m2 so that’s 176k without kitchens, bathrooms and the land price.

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

I spent years commuting from the northern wastelands to the big smoke, 5 days a week. Purely to further my career. I did used to enjoy listening to everyone whitter on about how to solve a problem to then use my opening line of “I may be a thick northerner with a flat cap and a whippet but have you thought about doing X like this… “

I could pretty much guarantee however that without doing that for 5yrs, I wouldn’t have made the connections or been offer the opportunities I’ve had given to me since. This is why I’m an advocate of fast and affordable transport into major cities, to ensure it opens up similar opportunities for others. Once those connections are made, as you say, working remotely then becomes a viable option even for very senior roles.

I think I might have stolen your act!

I agree, I was actually going to suggest transport is the key to a lot of this. It currently costs me £50 for every day that I want to be in London and I'm only in Essex! My role requires that I try to get in a couple of times a week on average so that's about £5,000 a year in rail fares to travel 40 miles. And the options for bulk buying/season tickets for those commuting a few times a week are woeful, you save practically nothing from using them so why bother?

When I first moved south, back before working from home was really a thing, I looked at commuting from further out but it was even worse. £10-15k per year in some cases, and I wasn't earning nearly enough to afford that even with the cheaper rent. In other European countries it is between a third and half of the comparable cost.

This goes to the heart of the issue. We make it eye-wateringly expensive and inconvenient to move around and then wonder why everybody under 30 decides to relocate across the country so they're 10 minutes walk from the office.

 

[Blue Maverick]

How much a property is worth is purely down to what the local market can support. Considering it’s costing me 120k to build a 2 storey extension 7m x 7m on my house and that’s mates rates, is 250k, considering UK building land prices, really that unreasonable ?

The median cost per m2 for building is £2000 according to the institute for architects (that’s a bog stand level of finish), a 3 bed house is around 88m2 so that’s 176k without kitchens, bathrooms and the land price.

Then if that continues at that rate unless great swathes of land become available where does it stop price wise. Paying nearly £8/9k for a bathroom just boggles my mind, I can’t see where they get these numbers from. It will get to the pint like it is in the USA where huge conglomerates will just buy up everything buy outbidding your average person.

 

[Kompany Car]

Then if that continues at that rate unless great swathes of land become available where does it stop price wise. Paying nearly £8/9k for a bathroom just boggles my mind, I can’t see where they get these numbers from. It will get to the pint like it is in the USA where huge conglomerates will just buy up everything buy outbidding your average person.

A couple of lads 200-250 each per day, a couple of weeks to do a decent sized bathroom. A semi decent shower costs over a grand, tiles are expensive because of energy costs, a spark to do any electrics and sign it off…It soon adds up.

England is small with a relatively large population (around 277 people per sq km).
Compare that with other countries in Europe with similar population densities, nearest ones are Netherlands where the average house is €460k, Belgium where it’s €322k and Germany €320k. For reference €320k is about £270k. This figure aligns pretty well with the land registry house price index value for the average house being £285k.
Is it acceptable compared to wages, no. But it at least puts some perspective on it.

 

[Uncle Wally One Ball]

"a house in oldham is not worth 250k" is a bit of a sweeping statement don't you think? I'm sure some aren't worth that and I'm also sure some are worth a lot more.

I was brought up in Failsworth and Oldham and houses there are of course worth that, like they are anywhere else. Bricks, mortar and land and worth what is costs the buyer.