How Much Does It Cost To Rent Outside London?

I guess you have to add to the costs of rental outside of London with things like train and travel but that is usually tempered by larger properties and quality of life. I used to live in Lower Woodford near Salisbury. I would get up very early, cycle to Salisbury Station, get the 5.01 am and be in London for 7.30 am the onto The Drain to be at work for 8. am. And then repeat on the return.

I slept on the train coming into London although the commute back was sometimes iffy. I did this as I paid £250 a month rent (shared house), had some great mates and it is a stunning place to live.

It is not for all though. My BiL used to live near Bourne in Lincolnshire and travel in every day, it nearly killed him.

I know a few people who live outside London but stay in cheap accommodation/spare rooms Mon through Thursday. Gets best of both worlds.

Its nice to have a choice though, and not have it driven by economics. Quality of life is great, but what quality of life is it if you’re forced to spend a good part of your day commuting rather then with your family. I once had a friend who had to live in Southend, and come into Central London by bus. And that was when John Major was still PM.

Quite surprised about the relative cheapness of Surrey.

We do tend to get blinkered in London, prices outside of the capital are very good. Obviously moving to Norfolk like us cuts out daily commuting but we swapped our two bed flat for a four bed house with a large garden for half the price of our flat. It was a no brainer really.

Stop it or you’ll have a new neighbour.

Nah, you would hate it. Big garden, two garages one of which has room for 4 cars AND an inspection pit. Plus veg patch and greenhouse, two woodburners and I plan to install both solar heating and air source heat pumps to try and get as off grid as possible (stick it to The Man, yeah!).

Oh and chickens, I am getting chickens!

That’s because they are comparing London AVERAGE with ‘Cheapest rents in counties around London’. The graphic is completely misleading.

Looking at Zoopla I have no problem finding a flat for £1000 pcm in Taymount Grange. £500 pcm in Catford!
That’s 10 minutes from Forest Hill and 40% less than the cheapest in Surrey.

[quote=“Londondrz, post:7, topic:3692”]
Big garden, two garages…
[/quote]Sounds awful - I really don’t know how you’ll cope.
Chickens are fun - sort of (I have two). The eggs are great but they poo like champions and will mindlessly destroy your garden.

Ah - thanks…

I think they meant average. For instance the average rent for a one bed in Sevenoaks is £955 pcm. In Maidstone it is £672 pcm.

Source.

The figures they provide in he article for average rent for kent is over £1,200 pcm. That’s a 20% saving on the average in London from their figures.

20% or £300pcm is a good saving but a season ticket is £600pcm so you are better off living in London and cycling to work if you want to save money. In fact the saving is exactly the opposite - rather than saving £300 by living in Kent, you save it by living in London!

Don’t rely on Zoopla for guidance I have complained several times as they have listed 2 bed property I rent and 4 bed property recently purchased significantly below actual prices.
I actually invited the directors to find me a 2 bed flat in FH for £700/mth and pointed out that a property requiring refurbishment once completed would not be 200k cheaper than its neighbour.

Good luck in finding a 2 bed in FH in a decent liveable state for £700 per month. And before anyone says my standards must be to high can I point out when I worked as a Field and Forestry worker I lived in a shed for a year.

The prices outside of London, especially if you go a bit north, are ridiculously low compared to London.

I’m in advanced talks to move north and keeping the current wage, in reality I’ll get about 20k increase just from cutting the rent (whilst living in the same type of house I’d rent in London, if I did not move) and transport costs.

This thread makes me realize how lucky I am.
I bought in FH 19 years ago and paid my mortgage off a couple of years back and added a loft extension. Also I have zero travel costs - well almost zero but the cost of inner tubes isn’t that great.
However my work colleagues who are all younger than me live miles away as they cant afford to rent in London - buying is completely out of the question - so we have people coming in from Chatham, SittingBourne and Croydon. We used to have someone commuting from Hastings… Their day is at least two hours longer than mine when you take in the journey time…

It does make you wonder why we do it, or did in my case.