What's the British standard of living like in 2008?

Factual Questions
41

[QUOTE=jjimm]
the addition of a really crappy stud wall in the large back room added more than €10,000 to the price, because it added a room.
[/QUOTE]

You mean like a normal American wall. :wink:

I have an apartment in central Europe and while not the UK, it is a similar construction. We have 2 bedrooms, of about 15’x12’ and 12’x11’. There is one large walk-in closet, one bathroom, a WC and a main living/dining/kitchen. The total sq ft is 920 I think. All the floors are hardwood… I have never seen a carpeted floor here.

This is in a central area and is worth perhaps $500K (helped in large part by the weakness of the USD).

The building is about 3 years old and is considered a rather spacious apartment here… and there is no drywall anywhere in the building as it is all solid concrete frame with brick and plaster.

I cringe at how cheaply American homes are built - just wood and drywall… it feels so flimsy.

42

[QUOTE=KRM]
How big would the average sized family of four dwelling be in the UK? I’m not sure what the overall average in the US is but when we had our home built in the suburbs in 1992, it was hard to find a floor plan much under 2000 square feet.
[/QUOTE]

I have 3 bedrooms, a living room. lounge, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, toilets upstairs and down.

I live alone :cool:

Jebus, I really must think about flogging this place

43

[QUOTE=NajaNivea]
I have this idea that line-dried clothing is stiff and scratchy. Plus, doesn’t it get dirt and stuff on it if the wind is blowing?
[/QUOTE]

Wrong idea. Promise. Among other reasons, because in most of Europe people live in townhouses/condos/flats, so you’re not hanging your clothes close enough to the floor to get dirt in it unless you’re on the Northern shore of the Mediterranean and the wind in question is sirocco (which brings in Sahara sand as far as Northern Spain, my mother has brought in sandy linens during sirocco and she’s in a tenth floor near Pamplona).

Unless you’re in a very dry place and have very fine soil with no appropiate vegetation cover, a height of about ten inches from the floor to the bottom of the clothes is enough to ensure there’s no dirt in them.

It’s also one less place to get color transfer between items of clothing, or shrinkage. With a clothesline, the maximum temperature your clothes face is the one you choose for the water in the washer; with a dryer, it’s the temperature of the dryer, which can’t always be chosen as clearly as that of the water.

I always find it cute/funny/rolleyesey when I’m in America and I see an ad for fabric softener that shows clothes on a line.

Desert Nomad, I’ve seen carpeted floors in Germany, but only in hotels. Same as in Spain, they seem to be about the only place where you see carpet. Many Europeans get fits of De Yuck when thinking of trying to keep carpet clean. One of the reasons my Glasgow flat is cheaper than others is that it has carpet in several rooms.

44

Wall to wall carpeting throughout is very common in British homes though Nava. It’s the norm really, although hard flooring has become very fashionable in the last 10 years or so. The idea of your flat being cheaper because it’s carpeted seems slightly odd even so :dubious: .

I’ve lived where I do now for about 12 years and started out with the standard format of carpeting in all bedrooms and everywhere else except the conservatory, bathrooms and the kitchen/utility room. Now I only have carpet in the living room ,1 of the kids bedrooms and the spare bedroom. I like the look of wooden flooring though, it is easier to keep clean and getting rid of the carpet really helped my asthma.

I have a washer/dryer and a retractable clothesline in the garden. In the winter I never hang anything out to dry but in the summer I dry as much as I can outside. It’s nicer and fresher that way.

45

[QUOTE=Some Whelks]
Wall to wall carpeting throughout is very common in British homes though Nava. It’s the norm really, although hard flooring has become very fashionable in the last 10 years or so. The idea of your flat being cheaper because it’s carpeted seems slightly odd even so :dubious: .
[/quote]

It’s a whole different matter in rented accomodation - the carpet is full of previous occupants’ god-knows-what, and was probably cheap and scratchy to start with. Very different to putting your own new carpets in your own home.

46

I confess I hadn’t thought of that one :smack: :smiley:

47

[QUOTE=Some Whelks]
in the summer I dry as much as I can outside. It’s nicer and fresher that way.
[/QUOTE]

Agreed. If you’ve never encountered line-dried clothes, you won’t believe how much nicer and fresher they smell than tumble-dried stuff. (Although I’ll allow that in cold weather you can’t beat a towel still warm from the tumble-dryer.)

Which brings me to a slight hijack: what’s the American equivalent of the phrase “bricks and mortar”, meaning property in general especially when considered a (safe) investment?

48

[QUOTE=Colophon]
Which brings me to a slight hijack: what’s the American equivalent of the phrase “bricks and mortar”, meaning property in general especially when considered a (safe) investment?
[/QUOTE]

I was going to say I’d never heard it used here, but a quick Google shows the Telegraph’ saying 'Bricks and mortar can make a firm investment foundation’, and the Times going with ‘Don’t get back into Bricks and mortar yet’. Which I suppose goes to show that I don’t read the financial pages much, and that there’s not much point in doing so anyway :stuck_out_tongue:

49

[QUOTE=Colophon]
Which brings me to a slight hijack: what’s the American equivalent of the phrase “bricks and mortar”, meaning property in general especially when considered a (safe) investment?
[/QUOTE]

We use the phrase “brick and mortar”, although I haven’t heard it in an investment context. I’m not aware of any term for that sort of investment other than real estate.

50

[QUOTE=ultrafilter]
I’m not aware of any term for that sort of investment other than real estate.
[/QUOTE]

There’s always the simple ‘property’, as in ‘he made his forture in property’.

51

How about in Germany of France? Here in the U.S., watching the Travel Channel, we wince when Samantha Brown tells us her hotel costs 350 EUR per night. Of course it’s worse for us, with our currency weak as it is, but it sounds like it would be prohibitive to most EC citizens as well. Is it? Do Europeans tend to go abroad on vacation where their money buys more, instead of staying in Europe? There’s some evidence that’s still true in America; it’s why Mexico remains a popular vacation destination for us.

52

[QUOTE=Colophon]
Which brings me to a slight hijack: what’s the American equivalent of the phrase “bricks and mortar”, meaning property in general especially when considered a (safe) investment?
[/QUOTE]

“Bricks and mortar” in the USA seems to be more reserved for stores. As in an actual physical store as opposed to on-line store.

A safe investment in the US in property, I don’t know the equivalent term. I only hear it as “investing in real estate”.

This is a fascinating thread. Thank you for starting it astro and a thank you to all the posters.

Jim

53

[QUOTE=Colophon]
Houses are expensive here, particularly in the southeast. The national average house price is now just over £218,000 ($430,000). In the southeast it’s £263,000, and in Greater London as a whole the average price is nearly £360,000 ($710,000).

The average household income (after tax) was about £27,000 per year in 2006, depending on which stats you believe.

My impression is that owning a house is more difficult in the UK than in the US, in that it tneds to be more expensive relative to income, but I could be wrong - judge for yourself from those figures.
[/QUOTE]

Whether it’s cheaper or not is hard to quantify. The high end prices in your first paragraph are considerably less than we see over here in highly desirable metro areas like NYC, SF, and LA. To a lesser extent this is true of Chicago as well, but then the upper midwest has that wonderful “Brutal Climate Discount”, making houses considerably cheaper there.

The average price you quote sounds a little higher than in the U.S., perhaps because you have nothing to compare with areas like Kansas, where the people are few and the houses fairly cheap. Incomes are lower there, too, however, so it sort of balances out.

54

[QUOTE=Colophon]
Which brings me to a slight hijack: what’s the American equivalent of the phrase “bricks and mortar”, meaning property in general especially when considered a (safe) investment?
[/QUOTE]

I’ve only ever heard the phrase “brick and mortar” used to describe a tangible storefront property, as opposed to, say, a service business without a storefront, a home-based business, or online business.

ETA: what What Exit? said :wink:

55

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
There’s always the simple ‘property’, as in ‘he made his forture in property’.
[/QUOTE]

I wouldn’t say that, and it would strike me as pretty odd if someone did.

56

Isn’t timber framing more environmentally friendly than brick or block construction?

The Huf Haus timber frame houses are stunning. And this timber framed house is amazing.

57

[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
Whether it’s cheaper or not is hard to quantify. The high end prices in your first paragraph are considerably less than we see over here in highly desirable metro areas like NYC, SF, and LA.
[/QUOTE]

According to this property prices in London far outstrip anything in the US or elsewhere in the world.

58

[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
How about in Germany of France? Here in the U.S., watching the Travel Channel, we wince when Samantha Brown tells us her hotel costs 350 EUR per night. Of course it’s worse for us, with our currency weak as it is, but it sounds like it would be prohibitive to most EC citizens as well. Is it? Do Europeans tend to go abroad on vacation where their money buys more, instead of staying in Europe? There’s some evidence that’s still true in America; it’s why Mexico remains a popular vacation destination for us.
[/QUOTE]

Germany’s relatively expensive as a travel destination. Perhaps because it isn’t one, not to the extent that some Mediterranean countries are, and so the hotel market is primarily aimed at business use rather than tourism. Here’s figures I could find for the top ten countries for British summer foreign holiday destinations in 2006:

And as that article indicates, the question of how far one’s money will go in a country is certainly a consideration, especially as eastern Europe and northern Africa are only a short flight away.

[QUOTE=ultrafilter]
I wouldn’t say that, and it would strike me as pretty odd if someone did.
[/QUOTE]

Maybe ‘investing in property’ is a better case, because it’s still using it as an abstract term. I certainly would expect to encounter this more in Britain than ‘investing in real estate’.

59

[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
How about in Germany of France? Here in the U.S., watching the Travel Channel, we wince when Samantha Brown tells us her hotel costs 350 EUR per night. Of course it’s worse for us, with our currency weak as it is, but it sounds like it would be prohibitive to most EC citizens as well. Is it? Do Europeans tend to go abroad on vacation where their money buys more, instead of staying in Europe? There’s some evidence that’s still true in America; it’s why Mexico remains a popular vacation destination for us.
[/QUOTE]

It’s funny you should mention Mexico. The Whelks are holidaying there this year for the second time in 3 years precisely because we can travel to Central America, see some fabulous history, exotic wildlife and live it up for two weeks for the same money we’d pay for a comparable holiday in Europe. The only downer is the 10 hour flight. Oh and the food is far far better than anything you’d get in say Greece or Spain.

On the subject of hotels you certainly don’t have to pay 350 Eur for a hotel. Hotel rooms come in all price brackets and there has been a proliferation of super-cheap “cookie-cutter” hotel chains all over Europe in the last few years. A bit soulless, but clean and cheap.

60

[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
Whether it’s cheaper or not is hard to quantify. The high end prices in your first paragraph are considerably less than we see over here in highly desirable metro areas like NYC, SF, and LA. To a lesser extent this is true of Chicago as well, but then the upper midwest has that wonderful “Brutal Climate Discount”, making houses considerably cheaper there.

The average price you quote sounds a little higher than in the U.S., perhaps because you have nothing to compare with areas like Kansas, where the people are few and the houses fairly cheap. Incomes are lower there, too, however, so it sort of balances out.
[/QUOTE]

Just to clarify, the prices I quoted were averages. That is average of all property sold in a given region - from tiny flats (apartments) upwards. You really will get next to nothing for £300,000 in London, certainly in desirable areas.

FWIW, the average price for the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea was £1,185,349 or $2.35 million. The average price for a flat was over £835,000 ($1.65m) and for a terraced house (i.e. a townhouse), nearly £2.8m, or five and a half million portraits of George Washington.

In my town, about 35 miles from London, this is a random example of what £250,000 will buy you. The room sizes are there on the link. My own house (well, my parents’ - I rent from them) is not hugely dissimilar to this. (In size, at least - we have at least made some effort to make it less ugly than this one!)

Go up to £500k ($1 million) and you can get a half-assed mock-Tudor “executive” box like this.