Wednesday 27 October 2010

£400 pw in London gets you..plenty

This nice semi in desirable Camberwell.

Or this under £400 gets you this lovely townhouse in Denmark Hill.

Or How about Battersea - a nice 4 bed there for £390 a week.

You can even have a 5 bed near seven sisters for £400 per week.

I really am confused by this nonsense I am seeing on the BBC News at Ten about how tens of thousands of people are to be made homeless in London. I am 35, have 3 kids and a good job, I have never paid £1600 a month to rent or on a mortgage; even in good locations in London, never mind ex-council housing there are plenty of places.

OK, maybe if you have 9 kids a four bedroom won't do, but then why should taxpayers house 9 children families in swanky London addresses. I really can't see how Labour are think they are onto a winner here....

21 comments:

Old BE said...

Glad the rest of the blogosphere is in agreement with me for a change!

Laban said...

Maybe lots of Housing Benefit millionaires have been created among London landlords, though. Especially among those landlords with a relationship with the relevant borough department. Or am I being too cynical?

Daedalus said...

I just fired up the Windows calculator and divided £21,000 by 12 months, I got a number of £1750. You would have to earn getting on for £30,000 before tax just to pay the rent, let alone pay for anything else. How the hell has this even happened? What sort of toss pot thought even 10 years ago that the state should have been paying out even a 1/3rd of this as rent for anyone, employed or not. Why has the coalition not reduced it to £8K a year; at at the most? Beggars belief. Bloody really cross about it now I've worked the figures about it.
Daedalus.

Budgie said...

Er, a woman I know pays £1400 per month (her own money) for a two bed flat (oops, 'apartment') in Greenwich. So the £1600 doesn't seem over the top to me for a family house, not living in London.

I am just talking of realistic property prices here, not whether the taxpayer should be housing the idle wherever they want.

What areas are safe(r) for single women traveling on public transport to and from central London?

Marchamont said...

My Son's in a 4 bed shared student house in the Potteries. And it's not a palace, but it's nice enough and would make a good spacious family home. I would have been content raising my family there.

Rent is 2,000 x 4 students, which = 8k pa or £150 per week.

Now that is a cheap area compared to London, but I think it's typical of what's available in most other big cities.

Like CU I've never paid close to 1600 per month for accommodation, and I've lived in some plush locarions in one of our great Northern cities.

So 400 per month, yes, short-term for someone who's fallen on hard times. But after that reality has to take over.

Steven_L said...

I've never even earned £1,600 a month after tax!

I'm moving to the south east this weekend and will be renting, so I'm liking this 30% instead of 50% for HB claimants a lot.

They just drive up the costs of my rent under the old system and then they give all that drink duty I pay to BTL landlords.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Agreed. We pay less than £400 for a perfectly nice 4-bed, very Outer London.

Bill Quango MP said...

Not sure Cu. £250k mortgage on 5% is £1750.

That's only a modest three bed in Surreysex.

I remember paying that £1700 in 2008.

Anonymous said...

25 years ago I paid £600 a month for a studio in pimlicoand a few years later £800 odd for the mortage on a 2 bed in sw10. At the same time my employer paid 3k a month for a Queensgate flat for a US trader.

CityUnslicker said...

don't take my word for ti, go to rightmove and see what you get for £400 a week, it is pretty good.

BQ - 5% on a mortgage in the last two years...not a very good deal!

Budgie - again, all the nes I highlighted were in plush parts of London and 3 or 4 bed houses not flats.

It is a disgrace; Daedalus has the best point, £1600 a month is a £30k a year job before other benefits. Even in London the average wage is only £33k - i.e. people on benefits are potentially doing better than people on average wages in London. BIG FLASHING RED LIGHTS!

roym said...

CU, i agree with the flashing red lights, and also cannot bear this nonsense about highland clearances etc.

however, i think we need to bear in mind that these might be the sort of properties that stipulate "no DSS"?

what about those folk living in crapholes owned by thieving landlords?

Anonymous said...

The scary implication from Daedalus post is that the state is potentially subsidising the demand for higher rents, distorting the housing market. Some of that distortion is now being removed.

Imaging that rents/prices in an area have been higher than they would 'naturally' be, due to state rent subsidies from your taxes.

Iain said...

I don't know how these organisations work but the Peabody Trust and the Guinness Trust still have large blocks of affordable housing in Central London, so I cannot see that only rich people will be able to live there. In any event, is there a massive demand from private tenants at the same rent, which will fill the gap from all the housing benefit tenants who move out? No doubt we will find out.

I cannot see why the Labour Party is taking this apocalyptic view, rather than discuss it sensibly, except that it draws away from their own abysmal housing policies over 13 years in not allowing any public housing to be built.

Laban said...

"what about those folk living in crapholes owned by thieving landlords?"

i.e. Housing Benefit millionaires.

Bill Quango MP said...

Iain is right. the tone of programming yesterday was Armageddon. Its as if demand and supply had never been heard of. 80,000 properties coming onto the market almost overnight. Would not many of them lower prices to the new cap level?

Old BE said...

I earn a good fraction more than the average salary and I pay MUCH LESS than the proposed cap for my flat in central London. What planet are these twats on?

John Thomas said...

Don't forget the rates (council tax as it is now called) that can add a heftry wallop to the rent, absorbing say £200+ of the housing benefit

Old BE said...

No, they have council tax benefit for that.

roym said...

"the tone of programming yesterday was Armageddon"

thats the case EVERY day regardless of whether it's unseasonal weather, england getting knocked out of the world cup or welfare reform.
some days i cannot bear to follow the msm

Anonymous said...

£1100 a month for a 2 bed in a good location in plush Hampstead. Rents have been static for 10 years.

Net family income is around £5k per month.

rwendland said...

Ummmmm. Maybe I don't fully understand this, but here goes:

The example under £400 properties you give are not in Central London, so will be subject to a lower limit: i.e. the 30th-centile limit coming in October 2011 will be less that £400.

Take your Camberwell, SE5 4 bed example at £393 per week. SE5 is in the "Inner South East London" LHA district, with a 50th centile 4-bed HB limit of £402.74. When 30th-centile HB comes in it will no longer cover the £393/week - it rather looks like it will be about £345/week. Some folks may be able to cover the £48/week shortfall, but many won't.