Where to live
If the salaries on offer in London are the good news, the downside is the cost of property to rent or buy in the capital. The traditional Aussie crashpad, Earl's Court, has gone upmarket and is no longer the bargain it once was. If being around other Aussies and Kiwis is important to you, then the main destinations are Ealing in West London; Putney and Fulham to the south-west and Kilburn/West Hampstead to the north. Otherwise, the range of options is enormous, but none of them is especially cheap.
In East London, the Docklands area has become very popular thanks to its growing number of offices at Canary Wharf and its accessibility to the City. The same goes for nearby Greenwich, Blackheath and Lewisham on the other side of the river since the extension of the underground there. The cheaper areas are mostly found to the east and south-east of the capital and/or in the outer suburbs.
As a guide, renting a 2 bed flat in West Hampstead will cost from £275 per week, £260 in Docklands and £175 in suburban Bromley, although you can pay a lot more in each of these areas. Unsurprisingly, house-sharing is popular, and will cost from £70-£100 per week, while inner London studio flats start at around £125 per week.
London's districts vary enormously, so it's usually best to visit them yourself before committing to a place long-term. However, for a general overview www.upmystreet.com provides profiles of districts using socio-economic data while another good way of prospecting an area is by checking the transport links, which you can do at www.tfl.gov.uk and www.nationalrail.co.uk.
It is not unusual to find travel times from a well-connected suburb are shorter than inner city districts without nearby rail or tube links.
Space comes at a premium in the UK - London has twice the population, but occupies 20% less room than Sydney, so the size of apartments and houses is somewhat smaller than in Australia or New Zealand. Most lettings are on either 6 month or 12 month leases and a deposit is usually required, typically one month's rent. Many apartments (also called flats in the UK) and houses are let through agents (see www.rightmove.co.uk or www.propertyfinder.co.uk for details of property to rent), who will often charge a finder's fee. Otherwise, the main marketplaces for lettings and houseshares are the classifed ads paper Loot (www.loot.co.uk), the Evening Standard (www.thisislondon.co.uk) and for Aussie/Kiwi flatshares www.tntmagazine.com. You may also find www.gumtree.com useful.
Buying property in London can be eye-wateringly expensive. If there's one topic that has supplanted the weather as the main topic of conversation in Britain, it's property prices and they’ve almost doubled in the past decade. The boom has petered out for the time being, but a 2 bedroom apartment in a reasonable part of inner London will still set you back at least £250,000, while the same in a modern development at least £350,000. Houses are similarly expensive – bank on at least £350,000-£500,000 in inner London for a 3 bed house in a reasonable area. Flats and houses in the outer suburbs are considerably cheaper on average, with the former starting at around £150,000 and the latter available from £250,000.
|
