Not even if I won the lottery several times would I buy something like this

[karohemd]

Most expensive flat sold in Cambridge for record £1.5m
I like what you'd get in Yorkshire or in France for the same money.
The funny thing is the flash advert for that development on the same page...

Comments

[briggsy.livejournal.com]

That's insane.

I need to find one of those suckerspotential purchasers and sell them my house in sunny Bar Hill, with its easy access to Cambridge, the Midlands and London. Yeah, £1.5m should do it...

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Hehehe. Good luck!

[rirekon.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's about right, cambridge council are idiots.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

In what way? Allowing for such atrocities to be built?

[briggsy.livejournal.com]

I think it was tatty wasteland before.

It wasn't pretty wasteland, or meadow. I think it was ex-industrial use land.

They've developed a lot alongside the railway line in Cambridge in the past few years. Overall it is an improvement, but only if there is affordable housing for the people who keep everything running as well. You can't offload that housing to a remote location ...

[rirekon.livejournal.com]

No, for being stupid enough to let them buy out of their contract to provide affordable housing... which Cambridge has zero of.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

*nods*
Allegedly, the developers had to pay 2m that will be used for "affordable housing" elsewhere but I believe it when I see it.
How does the government define "affordable", anyway?

[briggsy.livejournal.com]

Probably not in the same way that I would. I'd think affordable, in this day and age, would be at most what it takes to get a mortgage from a lender:

Typically that is: "Two people's combined wages multiplied by three"* for joint-ownership. So let's make that 2*average wage*3 = 6*average wage. The average wage in Cambridge is probably around £18,000 (? I have no idea), so that really should be a residence large enough for two people (+ child) that costs around £110,000 or less, £120k at a push if they save up for the deposit.

That would get you a one bedroom terraced house in Bar Hill...

* as I vaguely recall. Some stretch further though, maybe 4xWage for a single person, but that probably increases as the wage gets higher or the skills get higher...

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I doubt I'd find anything, not even a studio flat, for 80,000...

[briggsy.livejournal.com]

Cambridge, and indeed most other cities, would probably be much better off if they had a lot of ~350ft^2 *nice* studio flats for purchase (letting not allowed, and if it were it'd still be more affordable than renting your own small property in Cambridge).

I imagine that is what most graduates would like to have a year or two after graduation, when their wages have crept up a little on the graduate payscale accelerator. Instead we have Cambridge, with 25-30 year olds earning reasonable wages sharing a small house with 3 other people still!

And it'd give them some capital early on, and they could sell later on when they wanted to move up. There will always be young single people looking for affordable housing or trying to get away from undesirable housemates!

Of course, the whole idea would be subverted immediately with older people having 'town flats' for the week before retiring to their country retreats... Grr!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Those places in York and France would cost a fortune in maintenance though.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Sure, it's just an extreme example.
You could also say "You could get a really nice modern detached house with several bedrooms, study, lounge, kitchen, dining room, several bathrooms and a good garden for less than a third of the price elsewhere in the country".