London Housing Affordability

Take housing costs into account in London and many places are better:http://i.imgur.com/mNsk5oD.jpg

When I lived in London roughly 40% of my salary went to rent. London was actually more expensive, at least for a 1BR with roughly the same distance to the city center, as NYC.

Choose a cheaper place on the commuter belt and your income will go a longer way. For instance Woking is 30 mins to London by train, but is a lot cheaper than London. You can get a flat for around about £700 pcm bills and council tax included and without sharing with someone else. This will leave you with a grand to play with, which is not bad.

You can get a perfectly decent furnished flat in a normal inner-suburb area of London on little more than half the suggested £1600, and if you plan your flights in advance the cost on a low cost carrier is negligible. £40k per annum isn't going to offer you the same kind of luxury in London you might get in other cities, but it's a perfectly adequate salary to enjoy the city on.

As a recent transplant to London I was surprised at how 'cheap' it is. Obviously it's more expensive that other places but not prohibitively. I'm living in a decent flat share in Zone 2 and with rent, food, and travel to/from work each day it's costing about £1000 per month. Working from home working on a startup I could shave about £250 from that. And my living conditions are much, much better than some of the people I've read about on HN trying to get a start

As a Brit living in Silicon Valley, I look at these numbers and think that perhaps I should move back to London. I'd certainly save a lot of money on rent. (But, of course, the income scales are very different!)

Alot of people here are saying you can get cheap rent in London if you're willing to travel in from the suburbs. Yes this is true. But it is also true that transport can be very expensive. You can easily spend £20-£30 for a return train ticket which would cost you £400 to £600 per month in travel costs. So be careful about choosing where you live. At that rate it may be better to live at walking distance to office.My advice is to live South of the Thames (generally cheaper) and then commute i

London skews all comparisons though, literally move to any other city in the UK and you'll see rents drop by 50% if not 75% for not a lot less pay in salaries. Try Manchester or Edinburgh, you'll get decent pay and rent a nice place for affordable money.

I recently relocated from Oslo to London. My living costs in London are higher than previously, mainly I think because housing standards are significantly lower in the UK. Certain things are cheaper in the UK, such as food, drink, and eating out. But housing prices are quite extreme.

If you exclude mortgage payments or rent then living in London is probably cheaper than living in most places in the US. We don’t have significant real estate taxes, my annual expenses on housing exc rent or mortgage payments (energy, service charge, internet, water, council taxes) is around 7-8k$. If you want health insurance it’s another 200-300$ a month but we have the nhs (albeit it is terrible for anything non-life threatening).