The problem is that house prices in this country are so damn high, I personally have to think more about maximising money income than about doing a job I’d enjoy
I can literally buy a castle in France for what my 3 bedroom house in London costs. Not a huge one, sure, but an actual, real castle. OK, so France has ridiculous numbers of them, but anyway.
Sure, it's expensive everywhere, and there are plenty of places in France too where the prices are UK level (I'd like to retire to the South of France, and e.g. Nice is near or even above London levels for some areas, and buying a house there also costs castle money if you want something central) and same for elsewhere in Europe, but UK house price growth has been something else.
Sorry but that's relatively useless cherry picking. Wages and work opportunities in remote parts of France (and other such parts of southern Europe) are also much lower than in the expensive parts London, at least in tech, not counting minimum wage jobs.
There's a reason London is popular for skilled immigration and why that makes it so expensive, and it's not all speculation and wealthy petro/oligarch money. Same reason why Google, Meta, DeepMind, NovoNordisk, etc have offices there instead of in a nice castle in France.
Try looking at housing prices in Nice or Cannes and you'll see London prices with Southern-Europe wages. Same in nice parts of Austria near the Alps. At least in UK you can earn well in tech to actually buy a house close to the capital.
UK can also be cheap if you go up north around Scotland or above, but there's probably a reason why you chose to live in London and not in the north of Scotland and that's probably pay and opportunities, hence your higher house prices.
> Sorry but that's relatively useless cherry picking.
It was picked a bit tongue in cheek because I happen to know the price levels, and because the difference is so ridiculous.
Yes, I can get a bigger property elsewhere in the UK too but nowhere near the size difference. I've looked. 3x my current property is "easy" within the UK at similar prices in places - even "in the middle of nowhere" - that I'd be willing to consider. In France moving to the same level of "middle of nowhere" can get you anywhere from 5x-10x the size, and tens of thousands of square meters of land for the same price.
It'd be weird if there wasn't a price differential given the lower population density, and as you've pointed out salary differences. The price pressure is far lower.
> Wages and work opportunities in remote parts of France (and other such parts of southern Europe) are also much lower than in the expensive parts London, at least in tech, not counting minimum wage jobs.
And the same is true for the rest of the UK too - remember that before Brexit the UK had several of the poorer regions of the EU, large net recipients of EU development funds. Cornwall for example faced a massive income shortfall due to the loss of EU funds. Someone once suggested that the UK consists of a wealthy city-state surrounded by one of Europes poorer countries. France has a large differences too, but my impression at least is that it is not nearly as pronounced - I may be wrong (I am aware that France certainly has plenty lower income cities too).
And overall, France's PPP adjusted income averages compare as favorably as it does with the UK in part because housing costs in France have grown far slower than in the UK over a period of decades.
> Try looking at housing prices in Nice or Cannes
I literally named Nice and pointed this out. I keep a close tab on Nice as I plan on retiring somewhere in the region. Incidentally my "castle" quip is because I somewhat jokingly decided to look up what I could get as a "getaway" a bit more remote if I downgraded my demands for Nice a bit, and the answer is I can likely afford a well-renovated castle (fairly far away, certainly - there are not many castles in Provence in my price range). Doesn't mean I'll buy one, but I found it funny.
There is nowhere in the UK where I'd be able to afford something similar (even discounting the horrific weather) even as my sole property - job market entirely aside.
But while prices in Nice and Cannes are London level, these are also tiny little villages - I've walked across the town of Nice in "every" direction, because I like walking - it's only about twice the size of my single London borough. The time it takes me to get to the centre of London is about the same time it'd take you to get to, say, Cannes or Ventimiglia from Nice, or deep into the smaller surrounding villages. And I know plenty of villages within similar travel distance that are great at 1/3 of the cost of similar properties where I live.
To get similar prices in the UK I'd need to move somewhere far more remote, and nowhere I'd want to consider living.
> There's a reason London is popular for skilled immigration and why that makes it so expensive, and it's not all speculation and wealthy petro/oligarch money. Same reason why Google, Meta, DeepMind, NovoNordisk, etc have offices there instead of in a nice castle in France.
That's true. That does not change the fact the prices are massively different. It explains why prices in London are the way they are. I'm not arguing the reasons. I'm not even arguing it's all that much cheaper for locals, though the PPP adjusted disposable income for France does suggest it would be.
> UK can also be cheap if you go up north around Scotland or above, but there's probably a reason why you chose to live in London
Yes, family commitments. I wouldn't live here otherwise. London is great when you're young, and/or like doing lots of stuff. I was over "doing London" ~15 years ago. I have no need to live in London to earn what I do in the job I do.
