please empty your brain below

Under 200k sounds good.
I never read the Homes and Property section - it's far too depressing to see the homes I'll never be able to afford.
Surely the people looking to buy £2million+ homes are chauffeured around and don't read the Evening Standard?
I'm out after the first one - but I've just taken the plunge and am now in the process of buying a Share-to-Buy flat, where I buy a quarter and pay rent on the rest. It's an amazing flat in an amazing location, absolutely not something I'd be able to get anywhere near otherwise, and I couldn't be more excited.

I am one of the weird few in London that doesn't view houses as an investment. I view it as somewhere for me to live, where I've got security of tenure and can decorate to my tastes, and being childless I don't need to worry about leaving any kind of profit or inheritance. So this is perfect for me - and I'm going to make sure I don't buy any more than a quarter, so that when it's time to move on (if ever) the next person to buy it will also only need a relatively small income and mortgage.

Because as you've just shown, buying in London now for single people / people on modest incomes is just becoming impossible.
"It's an amazing flat in an amazing location, absolutely not something I'd be able to get anywhere near otherwise"

yes, but what is the service charge/ground rent each month and how long is the lease for?
Has no one even thought about considering where people like nurses et al are going to live. Cos they'll need to be near the hospitals, which no longer have nurses homes.
Good blog,DG. These prices are impossible for new buyers and I know from having a recent pricing done on my home that I could not afford to move. This area is too expensive.
"I [won't] buy any more than a quarter, so...the next person to buy it will also only need a relatively small income and mortgage"

I don't think that's how these things work, is it?

No expert though, as I've always viewed the shared ownership thing as a scam to keep prices artificially inflated. But if it works for you.
I'm always wary of shared ownership, it always looks to me like you get the pitfalls of home ownership with the restrictions of home rental. The only real advantage to shared ownership that I can see is that you have security of tenure; the landlord can't kick you out so long as you pay the rent on time.

As for where my partner and I (both relatively well paid professionals) can afford to buy: keep drawing a line and keep going until you get to Bletchley.
"reflects the lives of everyday Londoners" really? Feel many will disagree.

dg writes: photos

"mansion tax kicks in here"...surely that "[proposed] mansion tax kicks in here"...not that I think anyone reading this is *worried* about buying a £2million+ property.
like Mightymouse I'm looking to buy something for myself. Unfortunately publications like this are giving the wrong impressions to lot of Landlords that think anything in London will sell. The Flat I'm living in has been on the market for 6 month, one on the other side of the street for longer because no one is (righly) willing to pay the asking price. What most Landlords don't understand is that the property market is already on the way down and with oil being halved and the current inflation the next dip is not that far away. I wouldn't care if I "lose" some money but I'm not willing to pay 300+k for a dump...
As you, I think, know. Why spend money on the ES when a small local card will sell in a week ?

But then I live outside Z6.
Dave - the service charge and rent are both really reasonable, as the housing association seems to charge less than a lot of others. Rent is 1.6% of the 75% I don't own, and currently the service charge is less than £100 a month. Yes, there'll be inflationary rises, but that goes for renting too a lot of the time (if you're lucky it's inflation!). The lease is for 123 years, as the flat is a couple of years old now.

Simon - well, when I sell it the new buyers will need to buy my quarter, just as I'm buying the quarter of the people who are moving on. So yes, if the price rises that will be more than I paid, just as I'm paying more than the current residents - my point is more that if I saved up and took a bigger mortgage and bought 50% at some point in the future, the people who bought after me would need to buy that half, which limits it to people with a certain level of salary/deposit. Sticking at a quarter reduces that salary level demand - and with it the deposit. Which is what is the sticking point for an awful lot of ftbs these days, who are paying so much in rent that the possibility of saving up for the deposit, even to match a mortgage they can qualify for, is just impossible.

And yes, I've read of plenty of issues with share to buy - I've done my research - but a lot of them seem to be people getting stuck when they need to move up (i.e. when they have families) or want to move on. There are limitations: you can't sublet, or let it out, and even if you buy 100% you can't let it out for a certain number of years. You also need to sell them through the housing association, so that they can have first dibs at getting someone who matches their criteria in there. It's to keep the flats for people who need them, isn't it, rather than a cheap way into landlordism, and I'm fine with that. In my situation in life, it feels like the right thing to do - I'll be getting a flat I really want to live in, no-one can chuck me out, I can paint the walls as many shades of lime green as I want to, and I can live happily with all the restrictions. It's not like renting doesn't have restrictions too...
I would have to sell my Ohio suburban house (3 bdrm/full basement ranch on a .9 acre lot) TWICE, to pay for the cheapest house on that list! SMH
@Bronchitkat, there is no shortage of nurses in London so from an economic point of view, it doesn't matter.

However, there could very well be a shortage of good nurses or a shortage of good places for nurses to live.
I think that the third one down in the £200,000-£299,999 bracket is also the subject of this article 'No social housing' boasts luxury London flat advert for foreign investors about flats that will be marketed first to buyers from Hong Kong. The article contains a link to a government spreadsheet that shows that there are more than 11,000 families on the waiting list for social housing in LB of Greenwich.
Crazy I can live 12 miles from Manchester and 5 min walk from The Peak District boundary in a 3 bedroom house for half the price of the cheapest flat mentioned there.
Well actually half of the £200000 not £160000 but still a great price for the location and near the station.
@ mightymouse

Think what you say makes sense. I too like the idea that property is passed on to someone in the same situation. Those of us on "modest" or low incomes deserve somewhere afforable and nice to live in too...regardless of if buy, part buy or rent.
Mightymouse, E: I think the point being made was that demand is so constrained (not enough houses being built) and everyone is so prepared to stretch to paying a maximum proportion of their income on housing, that if we all had 25% ownership schemes then house prices would just quadruple so that we all end up paying the same amount as before. If they didn't then someone else would be prepared to pay a bit more for that 25% share etc. Not sure whether that's how it happens in practice, but that's the theory.
Thanks to the ripple effect, it's nearly as bad in Cambridge. I've been depressing myself today by viewing houses that are either tiny or need large amounts of work to make them livable, that cost more than five times my yearly income (and I earn nearly three times as much as the local median income) and yet aren't even in the catchment area for my kids' school, which is the whole point of trying to stay reasonably central. The buy-to-let market is seriously distorting house prices here. I can afford to rent a pleasant house near the city centre, because the rent tracks the payments on interest-only mortgages. I don't have a hope in hell of buying anywhere equivalent.










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