Tag Archives: house prices

Work in London, but can’t afford to actually live there? Work out exactly which commuter town is best for you

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Work in London, but can’t afford to actually live there? Frost loves TotallyMoney.com’s brilliant new property ladder calculation tool. It lets you work out exactly in which commuter town you could own your first home…

London property, property outside London, affordable housing, where to buy, property, homes, owning

Many of us have had our dreams of actually owning a property in London firmly shattered; lack of affordable housing in the capital coupled with pay freezes and mortgage company demands for increasingly large deposits means that most people in their 20s and 30s have accepted it might never happen. In fact, recent figures show that the number of families on a modest income owning their own home there has more than halved over the last decade, falling to just 13 per cent.But London is still where most of the work is – so what’s the answer?

 

If you don’t fancy paying cripplingly huge amounts of rent to unscrupulous landlords, many people look to buy or rent just outside of the big smoke, in a town with a reasonable commute. But where do you actually start? There’s bound to be a lot of research to be done into finding out what average house prices are elsewhere, how long a particular commute would be, which towns are even desirable (and have at least one local pub) – the list is endless, and in the meantime, house prices are only going to be ticking steadily upwards…

 

Well, panic not, for help is at hand. Money comparison site TotallyMoney.com has just launched its new online tool for people who want to get onto the property ladder, and work in London, but can’t afford to buy there. In one simple process, you can set parameters to reflect the maximum time you’d be happy to spend on a commute, how much you can afford to spend on train travel, the value of the property you could afford to buy, and the amount of your disposable income. Then you’ll be presented with a selection of towns which match your criteria – meaning you can start searching for a new home in earnest.

 

TotallyMoney.com has even put together a list of the top ten best commuter towns, and High Wycombe – with a London commute time of only 30 minutes, travel costs of around £4,180, and suitable for those with a disposable income of around £23,341 – is in first place. If you’re keen to keep train time to a minimum, however, Esher, in Surrey (ranked 8th), is a mere 27 minutes away from London, with annual travel costs coming in at about £2,124. If you’re looking for a bargain in terms of property, Erith, in the London borough of Bexley is ranked at number 7, with the cheapest average property price at £238,459, and an annual travel cost of only £1,912 (although it would take a little longer, at 44 minutes).

 

# Town County House Price Season Ticket Time Average Disposable Income Per Head. Per Year
1 High Wycombe Buckinghamshire £346,197.00 £4,180.00 30 £23,341.00
2 Woking Surrey £433,235.00 £3,080.00 27 £21,437.00
3 Staines Middlesex £349,604.00 £2,484.00 35 £21,539.00
4 Amersham Buckinghamshire £542,856.00 £3,368.00 34 £23,341.00
5 Gerrards Cross Buckinghamshire £792,177.00 £3,328 28 £23,341.00
6 Walton-on-thames Surrey £524,145 £2,412 33 £21,437.00
7 Erith Outer London North & West £238,459 £1,912 44 £21,539.00
8 Esher Surrey £878,831 £2,124 27 £21,437.00
9 Redhill Surrey £338,593 £2,696 38 £21,437.00
10 Horley Surrey £340,407 £3,208 35 £21,437.00

 

 

 

Demanding Travel As Pleasure

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House prices in London are stupid, and so, too, are rent prices. The average wage in London is approximately £24k per annum, but to afford somewhere half decent in most places, you’re looking at paying at the very least a quarter of your monthly income on rent alone (nearer half depending on how below average you earn), excluding bills, internet, cider from a Samuel Smith bar on a Friday and the countless amount of birthday pots you have to fill in the office – not to mention your round of “Friday treats”.

For many, the option to live in London is just not there, and commuting to the capital to work is the only option available. Yet anybody watching BBC lunchtime news on Monday the 15th of August will have learnt – possibly for the first time – that they are rich anyway and so it is justified that train fares will be hiked up by on average 8% by January 2012.

Already the daily commute to work is, as Le Corbusier put it, a surplus labour, reducing one’s free time, but with rises, it gets worse than just being extra work. It should count as an increasing loss of earnings.

One commenter on the BBC website put it: “These ticket prices are already making me wonder whether I can afford to make all of my journeys without making sacrifices somewhere else.”

Guy Debord, the Situationist thinker and pissed map reader, said in his thesis on traffic: “We must replace travel as an adjunct to work with travel as a pleasure.” At the moment, the best we can ask for – and I myself commute a fair bit to my place of work – is half a sticky seat with an elbow in your ear and a laptop in your mouth. For travel as pleasure to be even close to being a tenable goal we need the following things as standard:

  • Air con
  • Leg room
  • A seat, or a partial refund if no seat is available
  • One sanitation booth per carriage
  • A request for all carriages to be “quiet”
  • An end to weird, screechy noises to tell you the doors can be opened

For train travel to be pure pleasure, and a joy to pay through the nose for, the following needs to be met (note to Philip Hammond, see this as your benchmark):

  • Luxury leather seats
  • A cap on the amount of people who can board, and a person available to write notes to employers explaining why you are so late
  • A string band
  • A mini-bar subsidised by way of an extra stealth tax on motorists – £1 on every time a motorist is a “dick” (criteria for this to be published at a later date)
  • Second-class travel to be outlawed
  • A button to exterminate mobile phone users or people with loud music

Until these demands are met, I for one will be joining the Campaign for Better Transport’s Fair Fares Now initiative. Join me!