Sharing used to be a phase between university and adulthood, and in London it has become the standard arrangement for anyone earning under fifty thousand
London Flatshare Costs: Why Sharing Is No Longer Just for the Young
Virginia Woolf said a woman needs money and a room of her own if she is to write. She did not specify that the room should be nine feet by eleven, overlook a bin store and come with three flatmates and a shared bathroom. She lived in Bloomsbury before the letting agents arrived.
I have been thinking about rooms because of some numbers. A guide to the real cost of living in the capital reports that room shares in a three-bedroom flat are now commonly priced at 950 to 1,200 pounds per month in Zones 2 and 3, and calls sharing the dominant solution for people earning under 50,000 pounds who want to live within reasonable commuting distance. It puts the average one-bedroom flat at 2,100 pounds, citing property portal data, with Hackney at 2,400 and Barking and Dagenham at 1,350.
The Salary Question
The same guide suggests that for a single person to live independently, meaning their own place, comfortable but not lavish, with some saving, the threshold has moved to around 55,000 to 60,000 pounds gross.
Another analysis is starker. Applying the traditional rule that rent should be no more than 30 percent of income, it calculates that to afford an average London one-bedroom you would need a gross salary of roughly 95,000 to 100,000 pounds. On an average UK salary, the 30 percent rule gives a rent budget of 685 pounds a month, which it notes is far below even the cheapest London areas. Most people on average pay, it says, flatshare and spend 35 to 50 percent of income on their share.
These are estimates from websites, not official statistics, and they use different assumptions. But they point the same way. Living alone in London is, for most people, out of reach.
Who Shares Now
When I arrived, sharing was what you did in your twenties. You lived with friends from university or strangers from the internet, you labelled your milk, and at some point around thirty you moved in with a partner or got a place of your own.
That timetable has gone. The people in house shares now include teachers in their forties, nurses, civil servants, people who are divorced, people who simply never earned enough to escape. Flatshare websites have reported rising numbers of older users.
What It Is Like
I want to be honest about this, because sharing is often written about either as a jolly sitcom or as a tragedy. It is neither.
There are real pleasures. Company when you come in. Someone to split a takeaway with. I have had flatmates who became friends for life.
There are real costs. No control over who uses the kitchen at eleven at night. A living room that is often someone’s bedroom. Negotiations about heating that would tax a diplomat. The particular loneliness of being forty and having a shelf.
And there is the precariousness. If one person leaves, the others must find a replacement or cover the rent. If the group falls out, somebody has to move.
The Economics for Landlords
It is worth understanding why the market has gone this way. A three-bedroom flat let to a family might fetch a certain sum. The same flat let as three or four rooms, with the living room converted, brings in more. Shared housing is simply more profitable per square foot. That gives landlords an incentive to convert family homes into shares, which reduces the supply for families.
Larger shared houses need a licence and must meet standards on fire safety and space. Enforcement varies by council.
Things to Check
For anyone looking for a room, a short list from experience.
Is your name on the tenancy? If you are subletting informally from another tenant, you have fewer rights.
Are bills included? A room at 950 with bills can be cheaper than one at 850 without.
Is the deposit protected in an approved scheme? It must be by law.
Is there a living room, or has it become a bedroom?
If there are five or more people, does the property have the licence it needs? You can ask the council.
Meet the flatmates. You are choosing people as much as a room.
What It Does to a City
I think there is a quiet social change in all this that does not get discussed enough. A generation is reaching middle age without the experience of having their own front door. That affects when people form couples, whether they have children, how much they save, whether they stay.
It affects the city too. People who cannot put down roots are less likely to join things, to know their neighbours, to feel that a place is theirs. London has always been a city of arrivals. It is in danger of becoming a city where nobody can afford to settle.
A Small Defence of Sharing
Having said all that, I would not want to suggest that living alone is the only acceptable goal. Plenty of cultures regard a household of unrelated adults as perfectly normal. Co-living, done well, with decent space and security, can be a good way to live. The problem is not sharing. It is having no choice.
Woolf Again
She put the sum required at five hundred pounds a year. Adjusted for the London rental market, it is now rather more. I have the room. It is nine by eleven. I am told the bin store is very well managed.
On a Lighter Note
The house share is a British comic institution. The London Prat does it justice in its British satirical news on flatmates and London satirical news about house shares. More of my dispatches from Zone 3 are on the same site. Bohiney Magazine covers the American roommate.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
