Whenever I run into someone who tells me “oh my Gawd, how can you live in (the provinces/a small town)?!”, I explain the advantages I have, things like “well, a flat the size of mine in the provincial capital would have cost 25% more, and in Madrid 10x the price, which would have made it unaffordable.”
They go into a rant about how much better off they are, culturally. There’s so many more museums, you see. And theaters, and movie theaters in the original language, you see.
Then I ask when was the last time they went to a museum, to the theater and to watch a movie in the original.
And you know what, in every single case I’ve done it more recently!
Seen many other “villagers” and “provincials” employ similar tactics. Them cityfolk fall for it every dang time.
The BBC is moving a lot of its operations (including 1,800 staff) out of London to Manchester in a couple of years time. This may persuade other media types to move there as well.
There’s a ludicrous situation in Cambridgeshire where the Govt are planning 60,000 new homes along the already-congested Cambridge–>Stanstead corridor, yet the north of the County (Wisbech etc) are desparate for investment and new homes.
Alas, there’s a reason people don’t want to live out in the Fens, but it’s very much chicken and egg - jobs make communities, but firms only locate where there are people to do the work.
Only that the mortgage required would be out of even their price range (for the area they want to live in).
There’s nothing stopping them moving to another (cheaper) part of London, or buying a small property in Hampstead, which is why I said I had limited sympathy.
I don’t understand what you mean by “Mortgage-Free,” but my first impression is that means they have the house paid off right?
If not, just ignore the rest of the post, and please explain what that is (rent?).
If so, they have basically 800 thousand dollars or more if they sell their house, but they can’t use that as a HUGE down payment on their next mortgage? Even saying that the house is half again that much, 2/3 of the cost of a house on a down payment is quite a saver. Could they not have a house that is twice as expensive, and use their money they get from selling the house as a down payment and half their monthly paymen?
What really wrankles with Londoners is when I meet them at a concert there, and it turns out that my drive home will get me in the front door no later than their saunter out to the far end of the District Line.
6 months ago my husband received an ‘invitation’ from his company to relocate to London for two years to work in their offices there. The are hugely under-staffed, and people with my husband’s qualification and training (and time in the company) are hard to find.
There was, of course, a catch, and a reason why nobody wanted the job. He’d get his normal salary but after 2 months at a hotel paid by the company while they found an apartment for us he’d only receive a modest increase in income to compensate for the price of rent.
This would have meant that we would have gone from a 300 sq mt apt, with terrace, in the center of the city where we live to heaven’s know what shoebox we could afford in London. And we would have only one income as I’d not be allowed to work sans work permit. Just out of curiosity my husband asked his cousing who lived in London at the time what she thought. Her words: ‘no wonder nobody wants the job’.
Although we live in a 3rd world country, and however much we would have loved the experience of living in London, the cost of living there (we did some research) seemed insane to us.
True, but the real problem with the UK is that the transport infrastructure is beyond excremental. Businesses and their employees huddle together because if they are a decent distance apart, there’s very little chance of doing anything reliably. Add that together with the network effects of being in london, and having the entire continent within easy striking distance of the south-east, and you end up with the nutty situation of something like 25% of the population and half the economy crammed into the bottom right-hand corner and along the motorways leading to it.
Apologies for resurrecting this, but I thought this story gave some relevant insight into London property prices. How does $400,000m for an 11 foot by 7 foot room sound:
Heh. I live in the largest city in my state, with a population of somewhere around 40,000 (the whole state has less than 800,000).
I can’t begin to count the number of people I know who’ve complained that there’s “nothing to do” here, and then move to New York City and sit on their butts and drink and play video games, just like they did here.