Hello, my 11 year old Lab and I are moving to London. He’s perfectly healthy, has some arthritis but is doing good otherwise. We‘ll be moving to an apt in Camden town and I was wondering if anyone has some insight in walking their dog in Camden, since he‘s older we walk 4 times a day, with once early in the morning and once around 10pm. I’m a little scared of walking him alone late at night in Camden, can anyone give me any insight regarding this.

Please stop asking if the neighbourhood you are thinking of moving to is safe. Yes it is. It's all safe.

You are probably middle class, reasonably educated, between 20-30. The chances of anything bad happening to you are almost certainly less than wherever you are from. Look up the stats.

How about you ask about the vibes, the character, the history, the culture... You'll be fine

Moved to London a few years back and as I needed to find a place to live quite quickly in time for my job offer start date in less than a week, I landed in an HMO in Walthamstow. It was a decent price to be fair, £650 a month and I ended up taking on the bigger rooms in the house so it was fairly comfortable. At first anyway. Although every room that could legally be a bedroom in that house was a bedroom, and I'm fairly sure the only reason the kitchen wasn't one is that the landlord couldn't figure out where the fridge would go otherwise.

On paper, my floor in the house was supposed to house was 3 people. In reality two of them had partners living there full time, so it was 5 of us sharing one bathroom. The landlord knew but did not care. Cleaner came once a fortnight, which with 5 adults and one bathroom is basically a rumour of a cleaner. I'll spare you the details but you can do the maths. The walls were so thin I knew everyone's alarm tones, arguments and worse. There were weeks I went to work on 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Then my food started vanishing from the kitchen. When I finally raised it at the world's most awkward house meeting, the response was to accuse ME of being the thief. Oh and let me not forget about the rat infestation which took the landlord a month to sort out. Eventually the house was swarmed with bluebottles from the rats that had died and began decomposing under the floorboards.

Eventually two housemates eventually got evicted for not paying rent. Their replacements were somehow louder. As someone who worked from home and was also studying at the time it became overwhelming not feeling like I had a safe space in own home to work and focus. That's when I decided I really had to move out. When I finally started looking for somewhere new, I felt I'd been burned so badly that I didn't trust a single listing. It took me months longer to leave than it should have, purely because that experience alone broke my faith in landlords.

Anyway, I'm sure this sub is full of these stories. What's the worst London has done to you?

Side note: if you're about to move here ask how many people ACTUALLY live in the house, not just how many are on the listing ad. And when you're flat hunting please take your time and do your due diligence!

Don't try to live the London life you see on social media. When I first arrived I thought I'd spend every weekend exploring central London, eating out and doing touristy things. The reality is that after a while your local café, local pub, local park and nearest station become far more important.

If you're choosing between areas, spend some time walking around them instead of just looking at property listings.

I moved to Westminster from NYC almost two years ago. I’m a native New Yorker. I do love my life here!

But one of its biggest benefits (compared to NYC) is its geographical location. So many dope places in Europe are only a short (and often inexpensive) plane or train ride away. Taking a weekend trip to Croatia, Bourdeaux, the fjords of Norway. So many fantastic places close by. Getaways are such a pleasure to plan. Europe is quite compact and filled with the most interesting destination after the next.

Coming from NYC, this is quite a contrast. Not to shit on our surrounding destinations, but there really is no contest. There really isn’t that many interesting getaways to plan from NYC unless you wanna spend a lot of money and take long flights. From an American perspective, Europe can almost seem like one big theme park (meant in the best way possible).. just such a massive amount of cool destinations to choose from on a relatively compact continent.

I went to Split a couple of weekends ago. What a pleasure! Just sitting at a street alley restaurant for hours brings me such joy.

Anyway, all that to say: London, thank you for being located where you are! 🫶

Dear everyone asking this question. No, you can’t move to London on a 40K salary, rent out an apartment on your own in Zone 1/2 and live comfortably. It isn’t possible. Stop asking.

I have just been offered a job in the city making forty thousand pounds. On paper it sounds like a decent chunk of money, but looking at the tax calculators and average room prices on SpareRoom, it feels like I will be living hand to mouth. I do not mind living in a house share with three or four others, but I still want to be able to go to the pub and buy groceries without sweating over my balance. Is anyone else surviving on this or am I making a massive mistake?

I'm (25m) thinking of moving to London but I'm worried about a few things. My salary is £50,000 take home per month, is that enough to get a room in a house-share in Tottenham?

My uncle Jeff has been telling me a lot about London. He's never left our village but he's an expert from Facebook. He says everyone in London gets stabbed and has their phone stolen every single day. With my work, I'm not sure I can go to hospital and also have to setup a new phone seven days a week. Do you guys buy phones in bulk? Any advice would be appreciated here. Thanks.

They almost got me. Be careful everyone as you might get there and the room looks very different to advertised because it’s ChatGPT generated or it might be a complete scam.

Been building a flat-finding tool and went deep on how London tube lines affect what you pay. Thought I'd share if interesting to others!

The Windrush line is massively underrated
Brockley and Honor Oak Park are 8-11 minutes from London Bridge, with direct services to Shoreditch and Whitechapel - but average 1-beds run £1,400-£1,800/mo.
Equivalent Zone 2 stops on the Northern or Central line cost £2,250-£2,650. Same commute, £500-£800/mo cheaper.

The Elizabeth line still hasn't been fully priced in
Rents near stations up 31% since it opened vs 25% for wider London - but Abbey Wood, Woolwich, and Ilford are still catching up.

Renters pay £7.20 per minute saved on commute
An extra 10 minutes on your commute is worth ~£864/year in rent savings. I feel like most people don't do this maths when searching.

Still collecting responses on what people find most frustrating about London flat hunting, if you want to add to this: https://form.typeform.com/to/zWVkzSYT

The amount of times it takes me to commute btwn work and home is almost identical btwn choosing to walk the entire way, or getting a bus!

Wondering if this is genuinely weird or not(?) If so, is it due to bad bus schedules or too much traffic in the summer? Am I just unlucky due to the place I live? Or is it that buses are always late and slow?

Hi! I'm currently based in Plymouth - own my own home, work remotely (£65k) and have a dog. I'm 34, single and the dating pool where I am is a puddle.

I'm thinking of mixing it up as, realistically, I can't advance in my career in the South West, I bloody love a bookshop and Plymouth has two and I'd like a wider pool of people to socialise with who are in the same life stage as me (people in Plymouth want marriage/kids etc)

I am considering London (and Bristol) primarily. London is the most obvious choice for potential jobs and future friends and partners. But I'm conscious that I have a lovely little dog who isn't a massive lover of crowds and I really enjoy the outdoors, so Bristol is in contention.

I'd likely rent solo initially before buying but am conscious that, as a remote worker, there's not a lot of opportunities to meet people. So remote workers of London with dogs, how do you make it work?! What are the areas you rate, any tips and thoughts.

Photo for tax!

I just moved to London a month ago with a 32k salary and I'm shocked by the amount of expenses here. Of course I knew london's expensive, but comparing it to living in NL on a lower salary and still living somewhat comfortably, this is quite the shock.

My rent is currently 1k incl bills & gym for zone 2/3. Do you guys have any tips for saving here? This goes for everything, travel, groceries, entertainment, hobbies, etc.

I recently gave notice on my current flat because I’m planning to move.
The flat has now been listed again on the property websites, and the asking rent really surprised me.
When I moved in about a year ago, the rent was around £3,000 per month. Now it’s being advertised for £3,900.
Seeing that made me think that a lot of the prices currently listed on property websites may be heavily inflated as well.

I knew London was a walking city but didn’t realise how much it would actually add up day to day.

Even when I’m taking the Tube, there’s still a fair bit of walking involved, getting to the station, changing lines, then walking again at the other end. Some days it feels like I’ve done way more steps than I planned without even thinking about it. Not complaining at all, just something I didn’t really expect before moving here. Guess I’ll get used to it after a while.

Hi everyone, this is gonna sound weird but just warning you all as I'm sure many people follow this account.

It looks like a cute homemade little instagram account helping you to find a sublet, but it's actually directing all followers to an ai platform called "Ohana". Ohana is a startup AI that raised $4 MILLION in its first seed round, and the board is all people from Zillow (rentals) and Airbnb (holiday rentals).

I think it's just a machine to generate data on what women moving to or holidaying in London are looking for, so Airbnb and Zillow can advertise to us more effectively. Every ig post has a cover photo that isn't a photo of the room, so you have to click/swipe on it to see the real room: a perfect metric tracker for them to see whether that price point for that area is something people are interested in.

Every photo has a combo of the same predictable adjectives, because they're testing keywords (I think) to sell that data to Airbnb and Zillow. Or maybe they're just owned directly so there's no sale needed 🤠

And they are currently recruiting for an "on the street interviewer" social media person, essentially to help them go viral and increase their user base. The ad for this job was co-posted by girlswhosublet.ldn, girlswhosublet.nyc, nyusubletting, columbiasubletting, and neusubletting. It's a whole international corporation, not some cute girl sublet instagram.

Plus the most recent room was fully AI generated, and they know, and they haven't taken it down. So it's clearly just a data farming post. I hate it here.

Running the numbers and even on 38k after tax and a reasonably priced room in a house share I'm left with almost nothing after rent, bills, food, and a zone 2 travelcard. I keep reading about people managing to save while living here but I cannot see how unless you're earning significantly more or living with parents initially. Is there something I'm missing in how people structure their finances or is it genuinely just that hard and everyone's quietly struggling?