The upper-middle class poverty line
Apr. 30th, 2007 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dennyhttp://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article1719509.ece
The author borders on insufferably self-involved, but the core point is worth discussing... I know plenty of fairly 'well paid' professionals, mostly geeks, who are living in grotty shared housing and/or still sliding into debt. Why? Because housing is so stupidly expensive that just 'well paid' isn't enough any more... if you want to live 'comfortably' in London, you either have to be paid in the sort of brackets the financial sector waves around, or you simply don't make the grade.
I'm bemused by the article's conclusion that this is all due to 'globalisation'. I'd have pinned the blame squarely on a combination of city bonuses driving the housing prices in London up at a stupid rate, and buy-to-fucking-rent doing the same thing across the whole country (albeit somewhat more slowly).
If you can't afford to rent or buy somewhere halfway nice to live, everything else you can do about your quality of life is pretty much window-dressing.
Discuss?
The author borders on insufferably self-involved, but the core point is worth discussing... I know plenty of fairly 'well paid' professionals, mostly geeks, who are living in grotty shared housing and/or still sliding into debt. Why? Because housing is so stupidly expensive that just 'well paid' isn't enough any more... if you want to live 'comfortably' in London, you either have to be paid in the sort of brackets the financial sector waves around, or you simply don't make the grade.
I'm bemused by the article's conclusion that this is all due to 'globalisation'. I'd have pinned the blame squarely on a combination of city bonuses driving the housing prices in London up at a stupid rate, and buy-to-fucking-rent doing the same thing across the whole country (albeit somewhat more slowly).
If you can't afford to rent or buy somewhere halfway nice to live, everything else you can do about your quality of life is pretty much window-dressing.
Discuss?
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Agreed
Date: 2007-04-30 07:16 pm (UTC)Buy to let is really only attractive with large capital gains: The rental yield is pretty rubbish and is probably only just enough to cover the mortgage repayments, but when combined with 10-15% growth a year in the housing market every year, it is a spectacular investment - especially if you have the minimum amount of capital possible actually tied up in the property. If you meet the mortgage interest from the rent, you then trouser 15% growth on about 80% of the value of the property you've borrowed.
Doesn't work nearly so well without house-price inflation though. Not unless you sit it out for the long term.
Needless to say, I suspect that a lot of city bonuses go into buy-to-let property.