Today I got a job offer that involves commuting to that London, Hounslow to be precise. It's a job so I can't turn it down but I've personally never had much to do with the city so I'm left horribly confused and would greatly appreciate some insider knowledge if you lads can spare any.
The thing is:
1. Where I'm living now I would get to work in 2.45hrs every morning. Is that good by London commuter standards? I'm thinking that can't be right but looking online I've seen people selling it as 'ideally situated'.
2. I don't have much keeping me where I live now so I could move closer but websites like commutefrom don't make any goddamn sense. Do you have any recommendations for spots I could look at renting somewhere? I've happily done long commutes before using public transport and I'm a big boring lad so the only real consideration I need is somewhere that is not an utter shithole that will depress me.
I've gone through the catalogue and found nothing that exactly deals with this issue but I'm certain I read one years back.
If you are working in Hounslow then you should try to find a place to live in Hounslow.
If you think Hounslow is that London, then I have shocking news for you, it isn't it. It is suburbs. If you can't afford to live in or around there for what they are offering then you probably can't afford to take the job.
If you're planning on using public transport, then you really need to study and understand the network. Find the stations within walking distance of your office, trace out their lines and look at potential connections. London has a kind of weird non-Euclidean geography where distance is meaningless. There's a complex tradeoff between rent, travel costs and journey time, so you really need to do your homework.
It's Zone 4, not Outer Mongolia. It might be cheap by London standards, but you're still looking at the thick end of £250k for a fairly grotty two-bed flat.
As opposed to what? I don't think you know what that term means. All navigation is non-Euclidean we live on a sphereoid.
>There's a complex tradeoff between rent, travel costs and journey time, so you really need to do your homework.
You seem to be under the delusion that hounslow is priced as the area people want to go to. It is the area you live in to commute from to the other areas you can't afford to live. If you can't afford rent there then you can't afford London.
>it's Zone 4, not Outer Mongolia. It might be cheap by London standards, but you're still looking at the thick end of £250k for a fairly grotty two-bed flat.
Zone 4, so it is suburbs, not central London. And everything around it is going to be about the same price to live it doesn't drop dramatically as soon as you leave London. So if you can't afford to live in hounslow you probably couldn't afford to take the job.
I assume what you do is use a system where someone else spent their time calculating for you so things like parts of tunnels matched up rather than just colliding with the earth. And map where someone else did the hard work of working out the most representative projection.
>>3400 >If you are working in Hounslow then you should try to find a place to live in Hounslow.
You may have missed the part where I wrote that I don't much fancy living in a total shithole. Is Hounslow a shithole? Well I dunno but the internet seems to suggest so and the proximity to Heathrow would, I imagine, at least be vexing.
Now, the reason I bring up shithole avoidance is that I've lived in one before and following that experience would happily get up an hour earlier or pay a few bob more in rent to not deal with a locations 'rough' post-industrial charm and the broken men who populate it. This is not so much a worry born from crime or (obviously) economic opportunity but we can all remember a place we've been to where the air itself is polluted with a crushing sense of decay and despair that after a time insidiously pulls you into the trap. That is what I want to avoid while still budgeting for a just under 30k job.
>If you think Hounslow is that London, then I have shocking news for you, it isn't it. It is suburbs.
I care little for London elitism about being close to the centre, in my book it is in Greater London Area and therefore London. The issue I'm having is it is in West London while the places generally listed as pleasant are either on the wrong end or happen to be ruinously expensive.
The more you talk about what you expect and the more you talk about what you think it is like the less I think you have any concept of London at all. Hounslow isn't a Welsh mining town there isn't a post industrial landscape to speak of, the land is far too valuable for that. It is highly developed it just doesn't have much personally. You also aren't going to find your little enchanted grotto of low rent and decent housing anywhere accessible in London it has been bought and sold 30 times over since that point.
You also have some belief hounslow is some small single culture spot. There are quarter of a million people living there. It is much more diverse then that. There are all levels of economic classes living there.
And a serious word of warning, less than 30k might seem reasonable outside of London. But in London that money amounts to fuck and all. Expect to spend 12k+ a year on rent of a shoe box flat and another 2-4k on travel if you aren't careful. Move near your work save your money. You'll need it.
> And a serious word of warning, less than 30k might seem reasonable outside of London. But in London that money amounts to fuck and all.
Also pay attention to this lad, £30k in London was barely enough for a single bloke to get by without a flatshare even fifteen years ago. These days you'll be lucky to live in a shed at the bottom of the garden of someone who votes UKIP and have to piss in a Hedge. And that's just Hounslow.
Lads, I've hit a wall on something and could use your advice. Mostly it relates to London and how the cities property market works so I stuck it in this thread.
I was about to rent a place in central London for a job starting in a couple weeks. Everything was going great until I gave the details of my parents as guarantors to the credit referencing agency. Now in the space of 2 days they've managed to piss both my parents off and also their employment referees. Those referees being people my parents work with who have ended up getting arsey calls demanding to know their work's head office address.
I've never seen anything like this before and for all the hassle they’re giving my parents I’m going to tell them to fuck off. It’s certainly never been the done thing outside of London. The thing is I don’t really know where to go from here. Is it worth going back to the letting agent and explaining the situation? Is a Rentshield check standard for all London rental properties and I'm just stuck with this stuff?
I think it's just a London thing. I haven't rented long term or recently enough to have heard of Rentshield, but it's a true sellers market and they're free to fuck you about as there's a line of people waiting to take your place if you back out.
For London I recommend a property guardianship. I'm not sure why more people don't do it.
I was a property guardian in B'ham, the first months were fine, then I ended up with some shitty flatmates and some horrible mold and dampness problems. The company did not give a fuck, the building was due to be sold some months later (it was). I also had a lot of problems in getting the council to take away the trash, I had trash rotting in front of the building for weeks. Cheap, but rather shitty living conditions.
I've had good experiences with Global Guardians, they seem to be better at maintenance than some normal rental companies I've been with. The advantage with your typical guardianship is you can fuck off with 30 days notice if it's shit, though I appreciate that's not an ideal solution.
Admittedly even if you do get a good place, it's not for everyone, it's never going to really feel like a home. I'm quite into living in odd spaces, so it suited me fine, but there's plenty of people who think I'm mental when I tell them my ideal living space would be a warehouse or former mechanic's garage.
Well, lucky you. The company that arranged my property guardianship was a real pain in the arse, they skimped on everything, they ignored issues with antisocial behavior and drug use by the guardians, and I had to fight to get my deposit back. I guess that working for them would be a nightmare since they had a very high turnover rate. I never spoke with the same person twice.
>>3449 >The advantage with your typical guardianship is you can fuck off with 30 days notice if it's shit
As with any periodic tenancy, then. In my experience landlords/letting agents are happy to let a fixed term tenancy lapse into a periodic tenancy after one or two terms. In fact I think I've just ignored the renewal letters so they get the message I won't be paying their pointless fee.
Sure, but try getting a periodic tenancy right off the bat in London today in a traditional rental agreement, which is what the bloke in question would need.
>>3452 >In my experience landlords/letting agents are happy to let a fixed term tenancy lapse into a periodic tenancy after one or two terms. In fact I think I've just ignored the renewal letters so they get the message I won't be paying their pointless fee.
Either your experience is horribly out of date or you're one of those dogs who think people on the internet can't figure out that they're dogs. I've been in my current flat for 8 years, and the only time it went periodic they immediately filed a s.21 claim.
