Places in London to live... where do you recommend?

[23 Daves]

Firstly, I apologise for the completely London-centric nature of this entry as well as the use of Cookd and Bombd as an agony aunt column yet again.  I'm just interested to hear people's opinions.

Among my many New Years Resolutions this year is to move house. The present place has never felt like home, and that's not been aided by the cheap pseudo-modern appearance of the place – a pale Barrett imitation in chipboard, to all intents and purposes – or the fact that the landlord only actually completed large parts of the communal hallway and stairway a few months ago, leaving rubble to crumble and fester on bare and loose floorboards before that. Oh, and the small fact of course that we had to share the accommodation with several hundred cockroaches until quite recently... and the "street drinkers" outside... or the fact we live next to a derelict warehouse which is regularly used at night for various purposes it was not intended for...

Anyway, for many reasons I'm keen to move on from Walthamstow.  In total, I've lived here for nearly four years on and off, which is long enough for any place with so little to offer apart from its affordability.

Our shortlist of places we think might be affordable and possibly a bit better to live in (so far) is:

• Crouch End
• Haringey
• Kilburn
• East Finchley
• Muswell Hill
• Upper Walthamstow (It's the "New Crouch End"!!! I actually had a really pleasant year and a half subletting here at the turn of the century, until my flatmate did a runner with my money, that is...)
• Wanstead

Does anyone have any positive or negative stories to relay about any of the above? With the exception of Haringey and Upper Walthamstow, they're mostly uncharted territory for us, so I'd love to know what the advantages or drawbacks to living there are.

Also, any other recommendations would be welcome. Affordability and access to public transport for the city are the two primary concerns for us, though if somewhere is a reasonable 15-20 minutes walk to a good station (which is what I do every morning at present) then that's fine.

As a rough guide to affordability, I'm doing crappy temp work for about #8 an hour at the moment, but the wife is earning #25k per annum... not brilliant, I know, but it should offer us a tiny bit of flexibility if we budget well enough (I hope).

[El Unicornio, mang]

This old thread has a few suggestions:
http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=8332&highlight=london

[Pinball]

Sorry to be negative, but....

GET THE FUCK OUT OF LONDON!

It's nice for a day out, but "living" there ain't pretty. Can you not afford a flat there? Nuff said. Personally, I'd rather not live in QE2's snatch just 'cos it's affordable.

And before anyone flames me, I lived in Sarrrrfffffff London for 8 years. Amazingly, I was neither mugged nor burgled, but only 'cos I'm paranoid ;-)

[mook]

Hang on. So if you work 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year, add that to your wife's salary you have less than £42,000 a year before tax. What the fuck are you doing attempting to live in London on that?

[Pinball]

Indeed. Why make life hard? Or 'ard?

[23 Daves]

Sorry to be negative, but....

GET THE FUCK OUT OF LONDON!

Hmmm... well, the terrible trouble is my wife has a really good job here with opportunities for training and pretty serious progression, and I can't see her wanting to move on just yet.  And commuting from a nearby south-eastern town wouldn't really make life any cheaper or easier.

It's London or nothing, I reckon.  And in any case, I can't think of any other towns or cities that offer equivalent opportunities in my sphere - I don't like the situation, but there's not much I can do to change it either.  It's the UK's fault for being so completely dependant on just one city - at least in Australia there was a choice between Sydney or Melbourne...

[falafel]

Sis lives on Kilburn High Road. Great for the tube, not too far from the centre, and quite a lively community. Good grocers and all that. Her house is shit, though. Mice everywhere. It's about £100 a week, I think. The area as a whole does have a very 'lived in' feel about it (a cruel person might call it shabby). There's a lovely Italian restaurant on the High Road too, though I can't remember the name.

You could do a lot worse.

[Peking O]

Hang on. So if you work 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year, add that to your wife's salary you have less than £42,000 a year before tax. What the fuck are you doing attempting to live in London on that?

Eh? You can easily live in London on less than that.

[23 Daves]

Hang on. So if you work 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year, add that to your wife's salary you have less than £42,000 a year before tax. What the fuck are you doing attempting to live in London on that?

Eh? You can easily live in London on less than that.

Yes, I've no idea where a lot of this melodrama comes from.  If you budget yourself, and you know how to handle money, you can actually live in London on a lot less than that.  True, you won't be living like a Prince, but you'll still have cash for the odd night out.  And if you know where to buy food (ie the Halal butchers rather than the supermarket) and how to cut out inessentials you can easily make shitloads of savings all over the place.  It's just a question of sitting down and working it all out.  And not wasting money on DVDs you only watch once and other such shit.

Being unemployed in London on the other hand - now that's more or less impossible without losing your sanity.

[mook]

Well, there's a world of difference between living and scraping by in my book. And a couple living in london on £42,000 less tax is scraping by, no two ways about it. On that sort of money (and I'm not having a dig at their wages) you are going to be stuck in rent hell forever.

[butnut]

I lived in Kilburn for a year about 7/8 years ago. It was pretty much as falafel described it really. I've been back a few times since then, and it seems to have smartened itself up a bit since I lived there. More trendy bars now, and less of the really dodgy pubs (which were great - but a little scary). My memories of the area are largely positive, and there's loads of transport. I'm sure it's nowhere near as cheap as when I was there though - ah the happy days of £60 a week rent.

[El Unicornio, mang]

3500GBP a month is more than enough to live on in London, you can get a decent 2-bed in somewhere like Finchley for about 1200, which leaves you with 2300 for bills/booze/food. 2 thirds of your wages left to pay for stuff other than rent is comparable to anywhere, and it's not like food and stuff like that is any more expensive

[slim]

I think food, booze and other common items are more expensive in general in London. Brighton too. In fact, most major cities seem to be a good 10-15% more than a medium sized town, and about 20% more than a small town, in my experience.

Obviously I don't mean everything, just stuff like booze, eating out, ticket prices, fags, things like that.


Edit:

GBP

I love this. I started using this because Notepad does £ signs as funny little umlaut Us for some reason. It looks so much better than £.

[mook]

3500GBP a month is more than enough to live on in London, you can get a decent 2-bed in somewhere like Finchley for about 1200, which leaves you with 2300 for bills/booze/food. 2 thirds of your wages left to pay for stuff other than rent is comparable to anywhere, and it's not like food and stuff like that is any more expensive

That's assuming Daves works 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year. Does he?

[El Unicornio, mang]

I have to do GBP because this damn yankee keyboard doesn't have the pound sign (oh sorry, # is what's known as 'pound sign' here)
They could at least have the Euro symbol....

[mayer]

There's living and being fine renting, and there's saving enough for a deposit, if you want to buy. And in London, the latter is very difficult for a first timer, of course. It's difficult everywhere obviously, but in London especially.

[El Unicornio, mang]

3500GBP a month is more than enough to live on in London, you can get a decent 2-bed in somewhere like Finchley for about 1200, which leaves you with 2300 for bills/booze/food. 2 thirds of your wages left to pay for stuff other than rent is comparable to anywhere, and it's not like food and stuff like that is any more expensive

That's assuming Daves works 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year. Does he?

I don't know, but you said it wasn't possible to live in London on that wage

[mayer]

I thought mook was getting at the saving/deposit/buying problem I mentioned, rather than the getting by/living one, hence

be stuck in rent hell forever.

[High Roller]

3500GBP a month is more than enough to live on in London, you can get a decent 2-bed in somewhere like Finchley for about 1200, which leaves you with 2300 for bills/booze/food. 2 thirds of your wages left to pay for stuff other than rent is comparable to anywhere, and it's not like food and stuff like that is any more expensive

Have you taken tax into that equation?

With that sort of money you could look at Shoreditch, Balham or Tooting. All with great localities and not too bad into central London.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

Having lived in London a few months now (it's not London, it's Lewisham) well, it's not worth it IMO. One ends up spending any extra one might be earning in an attempt to mask the hell of living here (I'm talking 'in town' now as opposed to delightful Lewisham). Worse than that, many folks appear to actually relish being overcharged for crap food etc with shite service, as if to say 'we know it's crap and overpriced but isn't it great that we can afford it'.

Last week we walked on a deserted north Lincolnshire beach and along an empty footpath by woods in heavenly Notts - what price space, peace and sanity?

Wow, seven million people and they all want to live together...

This said, Lewisham is the only place on earth I've been where it's 'normal' to see two middle aged white women greet each other with a 'yo' and high fives outside Dixons. Roooots an' kul-char.

[23 Daves]

I think we both know that we don't have enough money to put a deposit down on a mortgage - however, in the whole South East of England I can count on one hand the amount of my friends who can.  It's a crisis, but it's not one I'm going to be able to resolve myself - and quite honestly, with the skill set I have, I'm not going to be in the earning bracket that's going to mean a mortgage is possible at any point in the next few years.  As I've said, I have thought about re-training for another career, but even that is going to involve going back to college or university and accumulating another debt.

Talk to Tony Blairs about it, not me.

And I'll keep saying it - if the UK had another careers centre that was a viable option besides London, I'd strongly consider moving there.  In fact, I'd probably try to move wherever the work was, wife willing of course.

[LadyDay]

And I'll keep saying it - if the UK had another careers centre that was a viable option besides London, I'd strongly consider moving there.  In fact, I'd probably try to move wherever the work was, wife willing of course.

What sort of career only allows you to work in London?

[terminallyrelaxed]

A lot of people move to London with this idea that they're going to move to a certain area and make it their own and build a life around it.

Your best bet is to find out where you will be working, and then find a a halfway clean area within reasonable commuting distance. It really, really doesnt matter how funky Shoreditch is if you work in Wimbledon. The cost or tube travel and the certainty of being late 40% of the time will soon bring this home to you. Kilburn is alright if its close to where you work, otherwise it has nothing to reccomend it apart from being another place to live in London. Jubilee line is nice though. Most places in London are like that, theres no real difference between a north London estate and a south London one, and its exactly the same for suburban neighborhoods.

[Jemble Fred]

Sometimes London really is the only place you can pursue some careers. Comedy, for instance – it's London, or at a stretch, Manchester. It's possible that I've given up on comedy now though, so perhaps this year I'll finally learn to be happy living somewhere parochial. Perhaps I could meet a female who would put me under her thumb and I could live a meek and quiet life. Unlikely, but it'd be nice.

[LordSnooty]

What sort of career only allows you to work in London?

Beefeater? Man with hairy hat? MP in the House of Commons?

[LadyDay]

Sometimes London really is the only place you can pursue some careers. Comedy, for instance – it's London, or at a stretch, Manchester. It's possible that I've given up on comedy now though, so perhaps this year I'll finally learn to be happy living somewhere parochial. Perhaps I could meet a female who would put me under her thumb and I could live a meek and quiet life. Unlikely, but it'd be nice.

Can't imagine there are that many jobs you can only do in London. Personally I wouldn't live there for all the tea in China.

[terminallyrelaxed]

Oh I'm sure there are plenty jobs you can do outside London, but the fact is that most business is there. There are plenty of IT jobs outside of London but they pay at least half what a London job does.
Yes a lot for that goes on the cost of living in London, but the fact remains that after 8 or 9 years in IT, if I'd stayed outside London I would still be earning less than 20k (I'm not very ambitious). I don't know about relatively big places like Birmingham, but in somewhere like Brighton or Exeter there aren't that many big employers that need more than a handful of IT blokes, so if you leave one it can be a long while before another comes along that has any need for your skills, and there are a lot of people with these skills, so they can afford to employ the person who will work for the least money, which let me tell is not the way forward. In my experience, salaries outside of London bear no relation to any kind of market rate.

[Partridge's Love Child]

Our shortlist of places we think might be affordable and possibly a bit better to live in (so far) is:

• Crouch End
• Haringey
• Kilburn
• East Finchley
• Muswell Hill
• Upper Walthamstow [...]
• Wanstead

Your first choice there should be your first choice.  I like Crouch End a lot, despite the fact that it's full of monied types who lunch together in trendy cafes.  I've seen Andy Kershaw two weeks running on Crouch Hill, plus you'll probably see me at least once a week going to the bike shop.

Haringey should be avoided like the plague.

Dunno about Kilburn.

East Finchley's alright.

I love Muswell Hill, but it's got a bit of a rat problem even in some of the nicer houses.

Upper Walthamstow - dunno.

Wanstead - green and pleasant, but it feels too out on a limb to me.  And I don't think there's much there.

Alternatively, you could join the Palmers Green Massive (or some other dated "crew" type drivel).

I want to live in Hampstead, but then I also want to have endless nights of passion with lithe and suggestible 20-something ladies, but it's not going to happen.

[Leonard Hatred]

I live in Wanstead and I love it there. We have two tube stations, and Leytonstone and Walthamstow stations are also nearby. It's very pretty and quite peaceful, though it does have some pretentious bars unfortunately, and its quite an expensive area.
I know Crouch End a bit - it's nice too, but extremely poncey, and full of pretentious wannabe famous types!

[LadyDay]

Oh I'm sure there are plenty jobs you can do outside London, but the fact is that most business is there. There are plenty of IT jobs outside of London but they pay at least half what a London job does.
Yes a lot for that goes on the cost of living in London, but the fact remains that after 8 or 9 years in IT, if I'd stayed outside London I would still be earning less than 20k (I'm not very ambitious). I don't know about relatively big places like Birmingham, but in somewhere like Brighton or Exeter there aren't that many big employers that need more than a handful of IT blokes, so if you leave one it can be a long while before another comes along that has any need for your skills, and there are a lot of people with these skills, so they can afford to employ the person who will work for the least money, which let me tell is not the way forward. In my experience, salaries outside of London bear no relation to any kind of market rate.

You seem to have a very skewed idea of the UK. Most business is in London? Where did you get that idea? I'm getting the impression you've not ventured north of Watford. :-)
I know lots of IT folk and they make a pretty healthy living out of it.