Ever since I moved out of shared housing I’ve spent more than 30% of my income on rent. Currently I spend 40%. Being single is expensive. Yes, I could move back to a shared house but in my 30s I feel like I’m done with that kind of living. I’d rather live on my own as long as I can afford to pay the rent and save on other things instead. Moving in with a partner would be the best option financially but I’m not lucky enough to have a partner at the moment.
It’s not just rent.
It’s very easy to point at people like the couple in the article and say they’re overpaying for their rent and should move. However, moving from zone 1 to zone 6 in London – whilst saving rent – could increase commuting costs from nothing (close enough to walk) to £14 a day. If both of them commute four times a week (one day of home working), that’s still a sum of £450.
If you move from the more lenient council tax areas to boroughs with higher taxes, you’ll see a huge increase. Moving from Wandsworth to Lambeth, neighbouring boroughs, will see your council tax payments double for the year.
There’s also the costs of having to move in the first place. If rent rises unsustainably every time your tenancy ends, you’ll have to spend the time and money viewing a new property. This will have travel costs and possibly having to use up holiday allowance to view properties to live in. When you do move, you’ll have to spend money on at the very least petrol to get there and often on hiring a van for the day to get all of your things from your old house to the new one. Most landlords require a professional clean at the end of the tenancy, which is another cost associated with moving.
This is just talking about money. The stress of having to learn new areas to move into, the worry of not being able to find a house to live in, the sense that you’re never really anything more than a transient resident with no permanent home, moving further from friends and family – all of these things are also problems caused by rent spiralling out of control compared to incomes.
Four in ten young people are paying over 30% of their income in rent (the figure that’s traditionally seen as being the threshold where it’s a big problem if you’re paying more than that).
On top of that, average fuel bills are projected to rise to a figure which would be about 15% of the average take-home pay and more like 25% of someone’s take-home pay if they’re on the minimum wage.
This isn’t sustainable. People in full time work can’t afford to exist.
In before all the avocado toast crowd arrive with their “people on low pay (which by January is going to be 60% of us) shouldn’t be allowed any joy in their lives – they should be eating mouldy bread and sleeping in 30 layers of clothes with no heating if they want a chance at owning anything ever” opinions.
Are you guys serious? This is your take?
Every public service is on its knees and crumbling (NHS, courts, police, housing, water, power, welfare, the list goes on), wages have stagnated for our entire lives, property prices go up so fast the *only* way to afford one is to suddenly come into wealth – you literally cannot earn enough – and even if you do, you now owe *every penny of your deposit* to the energy companies.
People are going to be starving and freezing in their homes – pensioners, who lived through the greatest economic abundance the world has ever seen – and they’re going to die from this.
And your take is that people just entering the workforce, who have *never had a chance to accrue any capital* are themselves to blame for the fact that they essentially only actually earn only 2/3rds of their paycheque – with the rest going to pay the mortgage on *someone else’s second or third property*?
Look around. Your opinion is a fiction invented to make you feel better – it has zero relation to reality.
We are so close to serious civil unrest in this country. Change is no longer needed, it is fundamentally necessary. We’re literally living the nightmare the Tories claim everyone else’s policies will bring, under the Tories.
Is it calculated on gross pay or net pay?
I’m paying ~40% of my income on rent for a 1 bedroom flat. And I work 50 fucking hours a week. It’s insanity.
I almost moved into a new flat last month but had to cancel last minute because money would have been far too tight, even working full time. I’d like to get my own place but fat chance of that happening any time soon with rent and energy bills being so high.
I rented until 2019 then bought a house. Had struggled to get a mortgage despite paying £750 a month in rent.
It’s insane and depressing when you think that a lot of the flats and houses rented out have been bought cash. So that’s pure profit
I don’t think this is just limited to under 30s, it is affecting tenants from all age groups really.
This is the natural progression when you have fractional reserve system and the ability of banks to produce credit out of thin-air to prop up house prices.
Do not think for a moment **any** of the governments (tory / labour doesn’t matter) will be able to tackle this problem, as it’s more fundamental than governmental policies.
The collapse of the over leveraged & over inflated housing market will dwarf 2008, as cutting interest rates will not be an option this time. I see 2 possible outcomes with the current trajectory
Scenario 1
====================
The downturn starts, government & BOE decides to hike the interest rates to 10 – 15% levels with no bank bailouts.
Mass foreclosures, bank runs, bank failures, high unemployment – you name it.
There will be massive monetary contraction, but in the end you will still have a money that you can use, as a reliable medium of value – you may end up homeless though.
Scenario 2
====================
The downturn starts, they try apply the same cure of 2008 – a series of bailouts, rate cuts, money (that appears out of thin air) getting injected into whatever industry / company they consider worth keeping afloat.
This would eventually cause the value of the currency to collapse, so our precious houses would keep their values in *notional* terms, but in reality you’d suddenly start paying 3 to 5 times more for your groceries. Same goes for energy bills, petrol etc.
Once this starts happening there would be no return to normal, until people come up with a new monetary system that is based on some kind of commodity this time hopefully.
If they can pay it, how is it unaffordable?
– this government, probably
The future crisis will be no one has any money to retire on as it’s all been chewed up in rent.
Imagine only having to pay 30% of income on rent, mine was more like 50% which is why I’m moving back in with family :((((((
Right, what countries can we easily emigrate to? I’ll go anywhere with accommodation affordable on an average salary, available jobs, and that provides a reasonable, safe, standard of living.
My sister, who is a single mum earning a decent salary, has recently had to leave London as her rent increased by 15% while she got a 2% pay rise. She’s lucky that her job allows her to work remotely and that her son is under school age but what are people that are tied to big cities for various reasons meant to do in these circumstances?
I gave up on owning a house years ago. I’m 32, I make £40,000 a year (in London). Because of the job I do, leaving London makes no sense because the pay elsewhere is almost half as much and the opportunities are far fewer. I save as much money as I can but it’ll never be enough. It’s pretty sad my only hope is waiting for my Mum to die and split her house 3-ways with my siblings…
This sounds like America. Corporations are posting record profits and citizens can’t even afford their roach motel without 5 roommates or some shit
The current situation has many causes – the sell off by Thatcher, not enough housebuilding and a largely unregulated rental market all come into play.
There is also a great deal of NIMBYism when it comes to new housing developments and this has to end. One of the arguments I see time and time again is to do with traffic but if new developments were built with new or existing public transport (that’s worth using) in mind, traffic could be reduced to more manageable levels.
I would argue we need multiple new settlements with everything you could need for daily living as well as decent, inexpensive public transport that’s worth using to get around.
Property ownership should be limited to one per person. Ownership of property should only be considered for residents of the country. no business should own residential housing. Renting should only be allowed if the person owning the property lives in the same property. I think doing this would solve some of the issues. There is no reason any person or business should own more than one home.
It’s hardly just under 30s now is it? Why is all the focus on young people or pensioners? My partner and I in our late 30s struggle as much if not more than a 21 year old
We gave notice on our rental in January as we were moving house. There were at least a dozen viewings in the space of three days and the ladylady had bumped the rent from the £1,550 we were paying to £1,800 – it’s likely she’ll be getting more than that as there will have probably been a bidding war too. It’s insane.
Can everyone please, please register for your right to vote, and then go vote in general and local elections please.
People don’t vote, and so it means just 33% of the voting population control what happens to everyone’s lives.
Unless you vote tory. Then stay at home.
Along with building more housing, all rent should be capped at the same cost of a 100% mortgage on the property. That way landlords couldn’t profit from leveraged BTL and there would be less incentive to be a private landlord.
Why the rent gone up because our rent pays by to let mortgages for fuck wit “property developers”
Okay just going to throw it out there; there is no right and wrong every perspective is valid on this issue.
Me, personally I feel we need to start a pool of skills and labour into a fresh building society where everyone comes together to build and create a community that actually builds its own houses for itself.
I understand the nuances of such a logistical proposal would be a total nightmare… but it’s been done before.
1 caveat though that makes it different; the houses built have to be owned by a offer of mortgage being the payment agreement between the person who’s living in it and the lender/ building society.
The property’s built from such an agreement cannot be owned by any kind of 3rd party and it’s all done for genuine cost price – with a flat administrative charge against each property.
I’m merely spitballing here so any input etc fire away.
Ultimately it’s about trying to build our own market share and not get fleeced paying for someone else’s mortgage + rental profit.
My idea has some glaring holes in it I get that but just thought it’s worth having a good discourse about.
I was earning what would be considered a decent (not brilliant but better than what would be considered average in the line of work I was doing) wage and was on the poverty line for years due to stupid rents, heating bills (shitty old heaters in a draughty old flat) and council tax/water/petrol/food etc used to leave me with 40 quid of my own money a month. I was slogging my arse off in a shit job for bosses that took advantage of me and knew it for basically pocket money at the end of it, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about, it was so fucking depressing and *demoralising*. One bump in the road would ruin me financially for ages. One time I went out to a party and bought cigarettes for a friend’s girlfriend as I was going to the shops and was like “any requests?” And she was drunk and wouldn’t give me the money when I got back. That fucking wrecked me for the rest of the month… one twenty deck from the late night garage fucked me and I was on one can of something on toast a night for food. That’s no way to live!
And they ask us why we aren’t having kids.
£850/month for my studio in Brighton. I earn what I thought was decent money, but it turns out in Sussex nothing is ‘decent’. Almost half of my earnings goes to some agency who check in on the property itself twice a year and wouldn’t lift a finger to fix anything unless I threatened them with court action. Landlords do not work for their income: they hoard property and sell it back to the rest of us for extortionate cost.
This industry is out of control. It needs regulating.
Genuinely in awe of the bloke on R4 this morning who suggested that we needed *more* landlords to get us out of this
Is that why so many people shack up so quickly with their girlfriend or boyfriend?
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Ever since I moved out of shared housing I’ve spent more than 30% of my income on rent. Currently I spend 40%. Being single is expensive. Yes, I could move back to a shared house but in my 30s I feel like I’m done with that kind of living. I’d rather live on my own as long as I can afford to pay the rent and save on other things instead. Moving in with a partner would be the best option financially but I’m not lucky enough to have a partner at the moment.
It’s not just rent.
It’s very easy to point at people like the couple in the article and say they’re overpaying for their rent and should move. However, moving from zone 1 to zone 6 in London – whilst saving rent – could increase commuting costs from nothing (close enough to walk) to £14 a day. If both of them commute four times a week (one day of home working), that’s still a sum of £450.
If you move from the more lenient council tax areas to boroughs with higher taxes, you’ll see a huge increase. Moving from Wandsworth to Lambeth, neighbouring boroughs, will see your council tax payments double for the year.
There’s also the costs of having to move in the first place. If rent rises unsustainably every time your tenancy ends, you’ll have to spend the time and money viewing a new property. This will have travel costs and possibly having to use up holiday allowance to view properties to live in. When you do move, you’ll have to spend money on at the very least petrol to get there and often on hiring a van for the day to get all of your things from your old house to the new one. Most landlords require a professional clean at the end of the tenancy, which is another cost associated with moving.
This is just talking about money. The stress of having to learn new areas to move into, the worry of not being able to find a house to live in, the sense that you’re never really anything more than a transient resident with no permanent home, moving further from friends and family – all of these things are also problems caused by rent spiralling out of control compared to incomes.
Four in ten young people are paying over 30% of their income in rent (the figure that’s traditionally seen as being the threshold where it’s a big problem if you’re paying more than that).
On top of that, average fuel bills are projected to rise to a figure which would be about 15% of the average take-home pay and more like 25% of someone’s take-home pay if they’re on the minimum wage.
This isn’t sustainable. People in full time work can’t afford to exist.
In before all the avocado toast crowd arrive with their “people on low pay (which by January is going to be 60% of us) shouldn’t be allowed any joy in their lives – they should be eating mouldy bread and sleeping in 30 layers of clothes with no heating if they want a chance at owning anything ever” opinions.
Are you guys serious? This is your take?
Every public service is on its knees and crumbling (NHS, courts, police, housing, water, power, welfare, the list goes on), wages have stagnated for our entire lives, property prices go up so fast the *only* way to afford one is to suddenly come into wealth – you literally cannot earn enough – and even if you do, you now owe *every penny of your deposit* to the energy companies.
People are going to be starving and freezing in their homes – pensioners, who lived through the greatest economic abundance the world has ever seen – and they’re going to die from this.
And your take is that people just entering the workforce, who have *never had a chance to accrue any capital* are themselves to blame for the fact that they essentially only actually earn only 2/3rds of their paycheque – with the rest going to pay the mortgage on *someone else’s second or third property*?
Look around. Your opinion is a fiction invented to make you feel better – it has zero relation to reality.
We are so close to serious civil unrest in this country. Change is no longer needed, it is fundamentally necessary. We’re literally living the nightmare the Tories claim everyone else’s policies will bring, under the Tories.
Is it calculated on gross pay or net pay?
I’m paying ~40% of my income on rent for a 1 bedroom flat. And I work 50 fucking hours a week. It’s insanity.
I almost moved into a new flat last month but had to cancel last minute because money would have been far too tight, even working full time. I’d like to get my own place but fat chance of that happening any time soon with rent and energy bills being so high.
I rented until 2019 then bought a house. Had struggled to get a mortgage despite paying £750 a month in rent.
It’s insane and depressing when you think that a lot of the flats and houses rented out have been bought cash. So that’s pure profit
I don’t think this is just limited to under 30s, it is affecting tenants from all age groups really.
This is the natural progression when you have fractional reserve system and the ability of banks to produce credit out of thin-air to prop up house prices.
Do not think for a moment **any** of the governments (tory / labour doesn’t matter) will be able to tackle this problem, as it’s more fundamental than governmental policies.
The collapse of the over leveraged & over inflated housing market will dwarf 2008, as cutting interest rates will not be an option this time. I see 2 possible outcomes with the current trajectory
Scenario 1
====================
The downturn starts, government & BOE decides to hike the interest rates to 10 – 15% levels with no bank bailouts.
Mass foreclosures, bank runs, bank failures, high unemployment – you name it.
There will be massive monetary contraction, but in the end you will still have a money that you can use, as a reliable medium of value – you may end up homeless though.
Scenario 2
====================
The downturn starts, they try apply the same cure of 2008 – a series of bailouts, rate cuts, money (that appears out of thin air) getting injected into whatever industry / company they consider worth keeping afloat.
This would eventually cause the value of the currency to collapse, so our precious houses would keep their values in *notional* terms, but in reality you’d suddenly start paying 3 to 5 times more for your groceries. Same goes for energy bills, petrol etc.
Once this starts happening there would be no return to normal, until people come up with a new monetary system that is based on some kind of commodity this time hopefully.
This is the worse of the 2 outcomes, because **[when money dies](https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Money-Dies-Devaluation-Hyperinflation/dp/1586489941)** the recessions turn into a fight for survival.
If they can pay it, how is it unaffordable?
– this government, probably
The future crisis will be no one has any money to retire on as it’s all been chewed up in rent.
Imagine only having to pay 30% of income on rent, mine was more like 50% which is why I’m moving back in with family :((((((
Right, what countries can we easily emigrate to? I’ll go anywhere with accommodation affordable on an average salary, available jobs, and that provides a reasonable, safe, standard of living.
My sister, who is a single mum earning a decent salary, has recently had to leave London as her rent increased by 15% while she got a 2% pay rise. She’s lucky that her job allows her to work remotely and that her son is under school age but what are people that are tied to big cities for various reasons meant to do in these circumstances?
I gave up on owning a house years ago. I’m 32, I make £40,000 a year (in London). Because of the job I do, leaving London makes no sense because the pay elsewhere is almost half as much and the opportunities are far fewer. I save as much money as I can but it’ll never be enough. It’s pretty sad my only hope is waiting for my Mum to die and split her house 3-ways with my siblings…
This sounds like America. Corporations are posting record profits and citizens can’t even afford their roach motel without 5 roommates or some shit
The current situation has many causes – the sell off by Thatcher, not enough housebuilding and a largely unregulated rental market all come into play.
There is also a great deal of NIMBYism when it comes to new housing developments and this has to end. One of the arguments I see time and time again is to do with traffic but if new developments were built with new or existing public transport (that’s worth using) in mind, traffic could be reduced to more manageable levels.
I would argue we need multiple new settlements with everything you could need for daily living as well as decent, inexpensive public transport that’s worth using to get around.
Property ownership should be limited to one per person. Ownership of property should only be considered for residents of the country. no business should own residential housing. Renting should only be allowed if the person owning the property lives in the same property. I think doing this would solve some of the issues. There is no reason any person or business should own more than one home.
It’s hardly just under 30s now is it? Why is all the focus on young people or pensioners? My partner and I in our late 30s struggle as much if not more than a 21 year old
We gave notice on our rental in January as we were moving house. There were at least a dozen viewings in the space of three days and the ladylady had bumped the rent from the £1,550 we were paying to £1,800 – it’s likely she’ll be getting more than that as there will have probably been a bidding war too. It’s insane.
Can everyone please, please register for your right to vote, and then go vote in general and local elections please.
People don’t vote, and so it means just 33% of the voting population control what happens to everyone’s lives.
Unless you vote tory. Then stay at home.
Along with building more housing, all rent should be capped at the same cost of a 100% mortgage on the property. That way landlords couldn’t profit from leveraged BTL and there would be less incentive to be a private landlord.
Why the rent gone up because our rent pays by to let mortgages for fuck wit “property developers”
Okay just going to throw it out there; there is no right and wrong every perspective is valid on this issue.
Me, personally I feel we need to start a pool of skills and labour into a fresh building society where everyone comes together to build and create a community that actually builds its own houses for itself.
I understand the nuances of such a logistical proposal would be a total nightmare… but it’s been done before.
1 caveat though that makes it different; the houses built have to be owned by a offer of mortgage being the payment agreement between the person who’s living in it and the lender/ building society.
The property’s built from such an agreement cannot be owned by any kind of 3rd party and it’s all done for genuine cost price – with a flat administrative charge against each property.
I’m merely spitballing here so any input etc fire away.
Ultimately it’s about trying to build our own market share and not get fleeced paying for someone else’s mortgage + rental profit.
My idea has some glaring holes in it I get that but just thought it’s worth having a good discourse about.
I was earning what would be considered a decent (not brilliant but better than what would be considered average in the line of work I was doing) wage and was on the poverty line for years due to stupid rents, heating bills (shitty old heaters in a draughty old flat) and council tax/water/petrol/food etc used to leave me with 40 quid of my own money a month. I was slogging my arse off in a shit job for bosses that took advantage of me and knew it for basically pocket money at the end of it, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about, it was so fucking depressing and *demoralising*. One bump in the road would ruin me financially for ages. One time I went out to a party and bought cigarettes for a friend’s girlfriend as I was going to the shops and was like “any requests?” And she was drunk and wouldn’t give me the money when I got back. That fucking wrecked me for the rest of the month… one twenty deck from the late night garage fucked me and I was on one can of something on toast a night for food. That’s no way to live!
And they ask us why we aren’t having kids.
£850/month for my studio in Brighton. I earn what I thought was decent money, but it turns out in Sussex nothing is ‘decent’. Almost half of my earnings goes to some agency who check in on the property itself twice a year and wouldn’t lift a finger to fix anything unless I threatened them with court action. Landlords do not work for their income: they hoard property and sell it back to the rest of us for extortionate cost.
This industry is out of control. It needs regulating.
Genuinely in awe of the bloke on R4 this morning who suggested that we needed *more* landlords to get us out of this
Is that why so many people shack up so quickly with their girlfriend or boyfriend?