
London, it’s over, and it’s not me, it’s you - SandB0x
https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/london-its-over-and-its-not-me-its-you
======
swombat
Good god, what a bitchy article - and quite sad to see that most of the
response here is equally whiny.

London is one of the world's top cities. That presents some substantial
upsides, in terms of things like night-life, art, business activity,
employment, diversity of the population, and, least tangible but most
important, the general vibe of frenetic activity and constant renewal and
change that a place like this has.

It also presents substantial downsides, in terms of things like cost of
living, noise, pollution, transport congestion, and of course, the general
vibe of frenetic activity and constant stress and change.

If you choose to move away from London, fine, go forth and be happy in New
Whatevershire in the county of Who Cares... but don't write epic rants about
how London's no longer to your taste and therefore it's somehow London's
fault.

This irks me even more than anti-gentrification obsessives, who seem to
believe that because a family has lived somewhere for a couple generations
they should be somehow insulated from the consequences of rapid change and
economic growth impacting a whole country.

Life is change. Change impacts everything, including your environment. If a
place changes in such a way that you don't like it anymore, you're free to
move somewhere else. Do so, and even write a blog post explaining why you
moved, if you feel so inclined, but please bottle up the "my viewpoint is the
only important viewpoint, and all change I don't like is bad" crap and keep it
to yourself.

~~~
doc_holliday
Yes places change and become world cities. However the problem is the people
that made it interesting gave the culture, night-life and art can no longer
live there or have a reasonable existance.

You kind of at that point end up with really coorporate art and culture as
everything has to be high value and you notice the quality really starts to
suffer.

Also the people who attend these things find they cannot live there either and
it all dies.

~~~
amelius
Exactly.

Also, when it is cheaper to rent in Barcelona and commute to London, you know
something is wrong [1]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617319](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617319)

~~~
ac29
At the time, it was extremely cheap to fly between the two cities (~40USD
roundtrip). I just checked the same airline, same airports and the cheapest,
midweek flights are about 200USD roundtrip.

------
batou
Apt timing. I'm in the process of bailing out of London and heading about 200
miles west.

Honestly I earn a shit ton of cash but I can't actually find anywhere that I
can actually face putting the cash down on. I looked at a new development 3
bedroom flat last week for £419k that was made of the cheapest possible
construction and you could hear your neighbours farting through the walls. The
view was another new development block, some office buildings, the M4 flyover
and a ton of haze in the atmosphere.

So I'm bailing out west a long way. Half the salary but there is less
disparity in quality of life and property prices.

~~~
JPKab
Yep.

Particularly notable for me in the article:

" Because of this, London is becoming like Washington DC in the USA, where I
used to live. DC is dived with poverty at one end serving the wealth at the
other, and the wealth doesn't hang around. DC is a place where people go to
further their careers before moving on to settle down because it's too
expensive to stay."

I bailed out of Washington, DC 11 months ago. Got so sick of trying to grind
out a basic quality of life.

I ended up moving to "flyover country", and I love it. Trees, fresh air, good
jobs, and a house in a great neighborhood. The people are nice, and I have
this crazy thing that some people refer to as liquid assets, others call it
disposable income. It's nice.

My brother, who remained behind in DC with his family, has a house that is
less than half the square footage of my modestly sized country house. It's
cramped, even by urban standards, and majorly in need of repairs. It is also a
duplex, and the neighbors sharing the structure are rather snooty and
unfriendly. He paid over $500K US for it. Did I mention the schools are so bad
he'll have to send his son to private school?

Yeah, I'll take the affordable cities any day over that crap. Unlike my
brother, my house isn't making decisions for me, like "can one of us stay home
with the new baby instead of putting her in daycare?" (His mortgage had a firm
answer of no to their bank account.)

~~~
tvanantwerp
I'm living and working in DC now, and this is so true. If I worked here for
the next three decades, I could barely afford a one bedroom condo. A family
and a house are out of the question. I love the work I do here, but I could
easily learn to love other work in a cheaper state.

------
Fede_V
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-q...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-17/russians-
quit-london-luxury-homes-as-only-super-rich-stay)

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.

~~~
100timesthis
just to compare, what a salary of a 30yo working in tech would be?

~~~
timje1
Probably £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
Multiply by ~1.2-1.5 for contracting rates (but then good luck getting a
mortgage)

~~~
blatch
This 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
I'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
Thanks i had thought about a loan but didn't follow up.

------
branchless
I've left London. I went to Canada, Quebec. If I come back I'll go up North.

I'll never work in a "world city" again. It's a waste of time. Over time I
grew to hate London and I have zero regrets about leaving. My biggest fear is
having to go back.

~~~
ido
It's not as much of a world city as London or New York but we quite like
Berlin (moved there from cities smaller, more expensive and with worse career
prospect).

It's not for everyone but if you're in tech or media it can be quite
attractive.

~~~
branchless
Germany is different because of the way they make land available for people to
build. The UK is all about only letting big builders put up housing and taking
a huge cut. This keeps prices nice and high so people have to borrow their
lifetime income. This way the maximum economic rent is extracted from workers.

The UK is totally anti-worker. It's a rentier paradise run for the benefit of
The City.

Click on Germany and the UK on this and see:

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-
hou...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-house-prices)

Ask yourself with 3/4 of new money created via domestic mortgage lending where
would UK "growth" be without pulling forward "earnings" through debt?

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Wow. This looks a lot like a political issue, why do people put up with this?

~~~
adaml_623
It might be the same reason that explains why poor Americans oppose taxing the
rich. The population in general don't have a good idea about the big picture
trends that affect them. They accept higher house prices and think that they
need to get into the game asap rather than try to change the rules of the
game.

------
s_dev
Average Monthly Rent in Europe
[http://i.imgur.com/RKfucgp.gif](http://i.imgur.com/RKfucgp.gif)

Average % Income Spent on Rent in Europe
[http://i.imgur.com/himm8Ur.gif](http://i.imgur.com/himm8Ur.gif)

The reason the UK is so high is because London literally drags the whole
country up to the top of the ranking (not necessarily good) - Ireland would
have vaguely similar rents to the UK discounting London and these two images
help show that London is a bit rent mad.

~~~
doc_holliday
Whilst London is quite apart from the rest of the UK. It isn't the only place
in the UK with disproprtionately high rents. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh,
Aberdeen, anywhere with a bouyant jobs market you pay over the odds for
compared to Europe.

Granted not as high as London, but as a % of income not dissimilar at the end
of the month.

~~~
rmk2
If you compare _local_ earnings to house prices, London is, in fact is only
#2, behind Oxford.[1] The problem with Oxford and Cambridge (as well as a
place like Reading) is that they are still within commutable distance from
London (Oxford and Reading slightly more so than Cambridge), which means you
get people who earn well even for London standards who live in those cities
and commute, in turn making those places more expensive. Some of the other
cities, like Edinburgh, Manchester (in parts) and Aberdeen (oil) are certainly
pricey as well, but they are not nearly as expensive as the South of England.

[1]: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-
prices/114...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-
prices/11436459/Welcome-to-Britains-most-unaffordable-spot-its-not-
London.html)

~~~
gvurrdon
Oxford is indeed pretty bad. I have to live ~20 miles from the centre, and
even then it's not cheap.

------
lordnacho
He's got some good points. I lived in London for a long time, but never bought
because it just seemed so insane.

When you're young it just about works, though: you want to have friends
around, so why not share a house with them? That way it's still expensive, but
you have someone to hang out with. And your expenses as a single guy are not
exactly high. You don't need a car as it's just you and your bag on the tube.
You're drinking anyway, so it's either tube or cab. What you care about is
seeing loads of other young people, and London is great for that.

When you get a family, everything turns against living there. You can barely
stand on most tube trains, so good luck getting the pram on board (and god
help you if you need a wheelchair). You want to take the kid out of town?
There's a traffic jam in every direction. Want to find a school for the kids?
Good luck getting in the catchment. Some of them are actually less than a
literal stone's throw. Private school? Sure, but school's have to pay rent
too. It's not the teachers taking home all those fees.

IMO the best compromise is one of the commuter towns. Some of them have fast
trains. They are still expensive, and the train itself isn't cheap either. But
you get a little more space, a decent selection of things parents want, and
the schools are not bad. Even better, live in a commuter town but work
remotely. Then you can network, see people now and again, but not have to get
in the sardine can each morning.

~~~
dreamfactory2
You've clearly never experienced the traffic in Mumbai, Bangkok, or Moscow.
London isn't exceptional.

~~~
lordnacho
Totally irrelevant. London traffic is bad. Who cares that it may be worse
elsewhere?

~~~
dreamfactory2
Point being that it is a normal expectation for a large populous city anywhere
and says nothing whatsoever about London (other than London may actually be
doing quite well as far as traffic goes).

------
vermooten
It's why I left too, pretty much.

On the + side, London and its surroundings has a zillion jobs, some of them
interesting. Out in the provinces, the job market for devs tends to be for
plodders.

~~~
Nursie
I was going to be very sarcastic here but decided to improve my tone.

While a lot of the non-London jobs are of the plodding type, there are many
that aren't, and there are areas of concentrated, cutting edge tech work
outside of London. Cambridge, for example.

~~~
geden
Property in Cambridge is also very expensive.

------
Nursie
This is what happened with me a few years back. Was there nearly ten years.
Five years in I would have laughed in your face at the idea of leaving, but
the expense, the cramped conditions and crowded feel, the bad air... all
eventually got to me.

I now live an hour and a half away by train. It's nice here. And I can still
come to visit some of my friends in London quicker than they can visit each
other.

~~~
xamuel
This would be great, except if the rent doesn't get you, the train fare will.
Coming from the U.S., I had to pick my jaw off the floor when I saw what they
charge, it's obscene. Say what you will about U.S. public transportation, at
least it's cheap. Here in the UK if you so much as glance sideways at a city
bus, it'll be five-pounds-change.

~~~
Tenoke
Eh, all bus journeys in London cost exactly 1.50

~~~
pcrh
The underground is £4.80 for a single fare in zones 1-3, £2.30 if you use the
oyster; double for return ticket.

~~~
vilmosi
Yes, but rarely anyone pays that. Mostly because there's a daily cap of less
than £10 (depending on which zones you traveled during the day).

------
k-mcgrady
Where to start?

>> "as someone whose salary is only five figured"

That's a pretty huge range from very poor to quite well off, without being
more specific it's hard to judge any of the claims the author makes.

>> "I don't think I'm asking for much, I only want a secure family home with a
garden, enough money saved for a good pension, access to fresh air, and some
peace and quiet."

That's actually asking quite a lot from a city especially a huge capital city.
Pretty hard to find peace and quiet in capital city - there's usually a lot
going on. But to be fair in London you actually can find it in one of the many
parks. Also, there aren't enough apartments/houses (hence high rents) yet you
think asking for one with a garden isn't asking a lot.

>> "zone 4 paying out a minimum of £1200 pcm for a 1 bed flat"

Doesn't sound accurate to me. I've been looking at 1 bed flats recently in
zone 2 and there are decent places going for £1300 so I'd expect zone 4 to be
a lot less expensive.

~~~
Nursie
>> That's a pretty huge range from very poor to quite well off, without being
more specific it's hard to judge any of the claims the author makes.

Not really, unless you're _very_ high earning then getting what he wanted, a
three+ bed house with a garden, and not so far away as to make life difficult
for commuting, is very very expensive.

>> That's actually asking quite a lot from a city especially a huge capital
city. Pretty hard to find peace and quiet in capital city - there's usually a
lot going on. But to be fair in London you actually can find it in one of the
many parks. Also, there aren't enough apartments/houses (hence high rents) yet
you think asking for one with a garden isn't asking a lot.

That's exactly the point, in most of the country and most of the world it's
not asking that much.

He's reached a state where the benefits of 'city' do not outweigh the
compromises one has to make to live there.

If that balance is not something that's tipped for you (yet?) then cool. For
many, many of us it has.

~~~
swombat
Yeah, but in one of the world's top cities, asking for a 3-bed house with
garden and fresh air - wtf, why not ask for a hunting forest while you're at
it?

Do you ask for a 3-bed house with garden in Manhattan? Do you think a 3-bed
house with garden in downtown Tokyo is just a reasonable expectation for the
average person? I'd love my 3-bed house with garden just off the Champs
Elysés, too, why not. Perhaps one on the space station too.

London is one of the world's top cities. If you don't want to live there, fine
- but don't bitch about how unfair it is that you can't get some kind of dream
property in one of the most desirable places in the world, where tens if not
hundreds of millions of people want to live in a space that only supports a
fraction of that...

~~~
alkonaut
You have to be reasonable about commute times of course. What's reasonable is
dependent on the city size, but a 1hr commute in either end of the work day is
probably reasonable in big cities, in the biggest ones such as London, Paris
or Tokyo you probably have to accept 2h (And if that isn't reasonable to you,
you have to move. I could never do a 1.5 or 2h commute).

I can only assume that what he meant was that it wasn't reasonable to find a
3bedroom house with a small guarden _within reasonable commute distance_ and
_reasonable budget_.

When moving in stockholm I looked for just this, (sub 1h commute, 3bedrooms)
and had to make a heatmap for public transit times in order to find the good
spots. Needed to be in the orange (40minute travel) to have <1h door-to-door
with a 10minute walk to/from public transport.
[http://commutemap.azurewebsites.net/](http://commutemap.azurewebsites.net/)

------
therealidiot
Spent 3 days in London a while back and at one point I felt as though I was
inhaling airborne bits of glass.

~~~
DanBC
Air pollution in some parts of London is severe. Life-limiting -- people die
because of it.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
london-20664807](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20664807)

> The paper, Air Pollution in London, produced by the Assembly's Health and
> Environment Committee, reports 8.3% of deaths in Westminster are
> attributable to man-made airborne particles.

> In Kensington and Chelsea it is 8.3% and in Tower Hamlets 8.1%.

> Bromley and Havering have the lowest proportion of pollution-related deaths
> in London, both 6.3%, but are still above the England average of 5.6%.

------
yeureka
I'm from Portugal and have lived as a working adult in Lisbon, Barcelona and
London. Even though I was earning more than the average salary in both Lisbon
and Barcelona it would impossible to be able to buy decent property in the
nice parts of these cities as they are as out of reach as the nice areas of
London for normal people. I just bought a garden flat with a garage in zone 4
and my commute is so relaxed I can even code on the train. And, I don't need
to worry about the lack of interesting and well paid jobs as I used to in
Portugal and Spain. Personally I have done well by moving to London, and I
know a lot of others with similar stories coming from countries with "low
rent".

------
tempodox
What on earth is “pcm”? Do you apply pulse code modulation to money in the UK?

~~~
njs12345
'per calendar month' \- in the UK there's a bit of a tradition of quoting
rental prices (and footballers' wages) per week, so it's best to specify which
you mean.

------
doc_holliday
I can see London begining to hollow out at some point like it has before.
Slums will begin to rise again (if some areas aren't already close to being
that already).

Vast wealth will be left in pockets and as all the mid earners leave to try
have a better life in the countryside and elsewhere the reason London was
successful in the first place, the culture and those that create it will be in
deficit. Then the rich will see they've paid over the top for property and
they too will leave.

Then London will begin again. Like it has multiple times.

~~~
branchless
Are you sure? Looks like the last stage of failure post-empire to me. I guess
China did come back, but it took a while...

------
suttree
I got bored of London, worked in SF for a while and enjoyed it there, but had
no chance getting a visa.

I got back to London (could never really afford to live in the city centre)
and then moved to Berlin and loved it. But, you can get too comfortable in
some places, so I'm back in London again, but I miss Berlin.

Never go back though, if I had the chance I'd move on to somewhere new in
Europe for sure. London's great though, more diversity than many, many places,
and that's a huge reason to stay.

------
vilmosi
As someone who lives in London, this is fake.

>> small flat in zone 4 paying out a minimum of £1200 pcm for a 1 bed flat,

Mate, I pay 1600 for a two bedroom big flat with an awesome view (zone 2).
Prices didn't get that ridiculous yet.

>>> I was recently charged nine quid for two pints of ale and I took offence.

Fuck you, that's bullshit. If you actually paid that, you've been robbed.

>>>It is effectively out of service on weekends and bank holidays

Yeah, they need to do maintenance regularly, idiot. There's more than one way
to get somewhere, you know? It's not like they close the city down.

TLDR this guy may have valid reasons to leave London and the article is well
written, but a lot of "facts" are just plain made up or exaggerated.

EDIT

I misread as 9 quid for one pint. 9 for two pints is most definitely correct.

~~~
r0bbbo
I don't agree with his negative attitude, but I don't think he's far off in
terms of his facts:

\- I think nine pounds for two pints of ale is about right anywhere in London.
Go somewhere a bit cool and it's easily over ten

\- I pay £1400 for a two bed in zone 2 which is cheap, I think the average is
around £1600. I recently started looking at one beds in the same area and they
are around £1200

~~~
vilmosi
\- nine pounds a pint is excessive. Even at Hawksmoor it's half that.
Wetherspoons a third that. Simply not true.

\- yes, zone 2. He talks about zone 4.

~~~
timje1
He says 9 pounds for two pints. £4.50 a pint sounds about right for London.

~~~
vilmosi
Oh ouch, that was my incredibly dumb mistake. Thanks for pointing that out.

------
justinhj
I went to University in London and lived there for 10 years. I loved the city
to death. Back then in the mid-90s we thought property was over valued, but in
truth a 2 bedroom flat at around 80k in zone 2/3 was affordable on a modest
income. I liked the culture, the people and walking around the city which was
always so alive.

Despite all that when I decided to get married and have a family I looked
elsewhere. Perhaps ironically I settled in Vancouver which is suffering a lot
of the same issues as London as so many others had the same idea.

Good article but it's really just a fact of life that if you live somewhere
that many people want to live, you must compete with them for rental and real
estate.

------
icu
Completely echo this article except I'm working on moving from 5 figure to 6
figures in order to get the life I want. I doubt the article writer can get 6
figures in Cupar.

~~~
yeureka
That is what I and other people I know did - work up to a better salary.

If you don't mind living in an area without the Tube you can find some really
nice leafy places with a great lifestyle.

Where I live now it doesn't even feel like a big city and I am 20 minutes by
train to the center.

~~~
icu
Yep, I couldn't agree more... I used to be slightly out of the M25 in a nice
area but my partner wanted to move closer to her work and so (sadly) we in
zone 6.

------
ninjaroar
And San Francisco is even more expensive...

This is just supply and demand - there are a lot of people who want to live in
world cities like London, but a limited supply of housing.

~~~
branchless
Do you really know about this or is this just middle-school economics? Do you
know about the London mkt?

Lots of the more expensive parts of London are empty at night. London is open
season for money laundering through housing. Also do you know how money is
created? How is it that people can suddenly pay $600k on a modest salary?

------
gadders
I think this is the housing bubble correcting itself. Good.

~~~
branchless
Nope the UK establishment will double down on it again as the UK is using land
to print money. Without this reality catches up with UK living standards.

It will crash but they won't just let it happen.

~~~
junto
They can't let it happen. They are propping up the house of cards with more
cards.

If the bubble pops, then Thatcher's children and children's children will be
proper screwed.

------
coldcode
I recently visited London from the US and stayed at my aunt and uncles house
on the south coast. Their old little house in is worth £600,000 which is
insane (12X what they paid for it), simply because it's a hour or so by train
to London! The price inflation of real estate anywhere near London is worse
than SF. Compared to that in D/FW area my modern 2000sf house is $180,000.

~~~
JPKab
The Brits won't know what you mean by D/FW.

(Dallas/Fort Worth metro area in Texas)

To be fair, Texas real-estate is super cheap because there's tons of land that
doesn't have many trees on it. It makes building new housing stock super
quick, easy, and cheap. But to your point, D/FW is an awesome part of the
country. Plenty of culture, plenty to do, plenty of jobs. (I'd be lying if I
said I like it better than Austin though)

------
neotrinity
omg... i am close to making this decision myself ! just sick and tired of the
soaring house prices in london.

~~~
zimpenfish
I'm not bothered about the house prices but the incessant apartmentisation of
every bit of land (e.g. Thames Path, east of Greenwich) and general shitness
of the city (e.g. Greenwich, weekend) has brought me to the same decision.

Depending on job and other situations, I'm hoping to be out of London this
time next year - probably somewhere like Milton Keynes.

~~~
neotrinity
tbh the prices in Milton Keynes have gone up as well. (P.S i am looking for
houses there too !)

~~~
zimpenfish
Yeah but I can get a one bed flat there for less or the same as I'm paying for
a studio now. Plus the environment is just a lot nicer (I was there last
weekend walking down the canal and it was LOVELY.)

~~~
neotrinity
True... you get a lot for the price of a studio in London really. lol. I was
there too ! although it was rainy in MK when i reached there. I liked the
place too. Its not rich in heritage so to speak. But for a decent middle class
living with family and kids I think its a nice place.

Also not to mention you could commute to Birmingham should you get a good
offer from there.

~~~
zimpenfish
I enjoyed* the Saturday afternoon rain as I walked back from the centre to
Caldecotte Lake. Took my shoes a day to dry out. Most damp. (But still a lot
nicer than London canal walks.)

------
rwmj
Strange article. I moved out of London to a house with a garden that would be
affordable to a couple on the average salary [edit: to a couple both earning
the average UK salary]. I am 20 miles as the crow flies from the centre of
London.

~~~
onion2k
As a matter of interest, what do you think an average salary is? It's a year
old now, but the Guardian had an article detailing average UK salaries[1] and
the median average household income for a couple in the UK is £44,200. That's
not each, that's their total income. Do you _really_ think a couple earning
that much can afford a house 20 miles from the center of London? That's barely
outside of the M25.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/25/uk-incomes-
how-...](http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/25/uk-incomes-how-salary-
compare)

~~~
rwmj
Average UK salary is £26K according to Google, so I just doubled that. So OK,
I meant a couple who between them earn in total around £52K p.a. and can bring
along a deposit of £50K (reduce the deposit by £3.50 for every £1 extra that
they earn above £50K). That'll bring you to near enough £240K which is what I
paid for a 2 bed house with a large garden.

Note the article is claiming you need to be on a six figure salary to live
anywhere near London, which is a load of tosh.

~~~
onion2k
_Average UK salary is £26K according to Google_

That's the mean average though, and it assumes a standard Bell curve
distribution - it's completely wrong and obfuscates the truth horribly. There
are _a lot_ more low income earners than high income earners. If you look at
the Guardian article I linked to you'll see that ~70% of people in the UK earn
less than £25k or less (all the adults in the seventh decile and below).

 _Note the article is claiming you need to be on a six figure salary to live
anywhere near London, which is a load of tosh._

If you're not in a relationship where you can buy a house together I'd say you
certainly need to be in at least the top 10% of earners (>£60,500). Sure,
that's not a six-figure salary, but it indicates that the over-whelming
majority of people _have_ been priced out of London, which is the spirit of
the article.

~~~
MagnumOpus
No, it is not the mean average, it is the median. You are quoting the wrong
statistics - you are including part-timers, but he is talking of the median
full-time earnings, which are actually 27.2k on average nationwide according
to the ASHE. The median full-time salary in Greater London is 32.8k, and still
29.9k in the outer South East.

Of course your broader point still stands - in London you can only own a house
if you earn in the top deciles, or if you inherit a house or get gifted a
deposit by parents/grandparents who got lucky in the house price boom. The
latter is the default way.

