if too personal then just tell me to sod off!!! LOL

[Kittique]

i am in process of moving flat in a month time and our rent will be 1300 / month and on top of that the bills+council tax which is abt £122.
the flat itself is clean and nice, a real change in comparison with the one we live in at the moment ( mould, damp, storage heaters unfuctional, noisy neighbours, rats etc), but London's rent are just bloody extortionate; I wish i could be able to afford to pay this for my own flat or house.
i will miss the garden tho, but not the foxes lol !

So happy to see someone else in London, I was beginning to get very depressed!

Over £1300/month for a 2 bed here, plus bills and really high council tax - believe it's one of the most expensive councils in the country. And we got a GOOD deal on our place as it had been vacant for a few months. Did the maths though and as DH and I both work in central London, moving further out for cheaper rent just meant higher commuting costs and a longer journey.

It sucks doesn't it! We pay £900 for a crappy 1 bed flat in zone 4 right near the station as we both work in zone 1, don't know how we're ever going to afford to buy and I will never be able to afford to be a sahm with bills+insurance and CT we end up spending close to 1400 a month, if I stopped working when we have a LO we'd be living on about 50 quid a month after travel expenses on ohs wage and he's not on a bad wage!!(27k) he'd need to be on close to 40k for us to live comfortably in this area (mill hill NW7). seriously considering relocating and finding jobs somewhere else

 

[MrsVenn]

We're in Herts and I work in Colindale..have to drive in and hubby commutes to Portsmouth every day. Our essential outgoings (not including car costs, food, mobiles and then anyhting else) is currently near £3k... It's no cheaper moving out (we were in Arkley before) as you have to pay out on the commuting costs instead and we still have high council tax. Joy but can't complain as it's our choice to live where we are.. still can moan about it a little

 

[bananaboat]

I'm in the US (in the suburbs outside of Boston) and our mortgage for our 3bed, 2bath is about $2400/month plus taxes and utilities.

 

[holly2234]

£450 a month rent

 

[rachlou83]

£495 rent for a 1 bed flat of reasonable size with a garage in Gloucestershire.

 

[JASMAK]

$1700 CAN but that is low because we put over 100K down so the payments were more affordable....we had help from family

 

[Hannah's Mom]

our mortgage is £900 pcm thats for a 3 bed 2 bath in sunny Birmingham xxx

 

[summer rain]

Our rent is £554 PCM for a large 3 bedroom housing association flat its in London but one of the outlying boroughs; still a similar private property here would cost anything from £300 per week to £500 per week as this is quite a posh area. They put our rent up by 50 quid a month in April as they said there was some legislation in 2003 that said that all social housing in any given area has to have similar rents for the same number of bedrooms etc. Our old HA house was 3 bedroom as well though the third bedroom was like a cupboard, the rent was only 94 a week and talking to people who live in that estate still it has only gone up to £100 a week now! xx

 

[RoxyRoo]

We have a 2 bed cottage in North Wales, our mortgage is £387 a month.

 

[Kittique]

Our rent is £554 PCM for a large 3 bedroom housing association flat its in London but one of the outlying boroughs; still a similar private property here would cost anything from £300 per week to £500 per week as this is quite a posh area. They put our rent up by 50 quid a month in April as they said there was some legislation in 2003 that said that all social housing in any given area has to have similar rents for the same number of bedrooms etc. Our old HA house was 3 bedroom as well though the third bedroom was like a cupboard, the rent was only 94 a week and talking to people who live in that estate still it has only gone up to £100 a week now! xx

How do you get a housing association flat? x

 

[ferens06]

We have a two bed semi with a medium garden and conservatory for £650 in Cheshire. x

 

[ttcnewbie123]

Our mortgage is £779 a month for a 3 bed semi in bedfordshire - can't wait until its a lot lot less!x

 

[wanna-b-mummy]

£675 for a spacious one bed flat... it's because we're right near London!

 

[pingu89]

my rent is £475 pm for a livingroom/kitchen, a bathroom that can only fit one person in at a time and a small double bedroom. and im in kent (nr canterbury!)
damn the south for prices!! lol
xxx

 

[nickibrum]

I pay 781 rent, but will be getting a mortgage soon and I imagine it will go up to the 900 mark.
We have sky, 1 car between us. We dont have massive holidays, in fact we cant afford one this year. But I guess our animals are a luxury- I have two dogs and a cat. Theie insurance alone if a total of £50ish a month and food is about £75 every 6 weeks. :S

We do have good wages though, and i work from home. My husband walks to work and I roll out of bed so hardly any money goes on petrol. Work also pay from my internet and phone calls so thats about £30 i dont have to pay. As we live in a new build house everything is super efficient. We have a 3 bed town house and pay £67 pm for gas and electric. Water is about £13 pm.

We treat ourselves maybe 4-6 times a month; either cinema or bowling, or take away. but always on an orange wednesday or something like that.

Hope it helps a bit. Its hard but then we work hard. This year I wished we could do a holiday but ive suprised my hubby with a holiday for his bday in March so finances just wouldnt allow it.

 

[summer rain]

Our rent is £554 PCM for a large 3 bedroom housing association flat its in London but one of the outlying boroughs; still a similar private property here would cost anything from £300 per week to £500 per week as this is quite a posh area. They put our rent up by 50 quid a month in April as they said there was some legislation in 2003 that said that all social housing in any given area has to have similar rents for the same number of bedrooms etc. Our old HA house was 3 bedroom as well though the third bedroom was like a cupboard, the rent was only 94 a week and talking to people who live in that estate still it has only gone up to £100 a week now! xx

How do you get a housing association flat? x

We applied for the council housing register which in the borough we were in just required providing proofs of all addresses for the past 5 years and various other IDs and either living in that area for 6 months or having strong links to that area-ie working there or growing up there. Its quite hard to get all the proofs they need but worth it if you can. There weren't any criteria to do with income or anything like that and my OH is on an average wage and I am a SAHM. That borough also let you apply if you were non-priority though it would be considerably harder to get anything via the bidding system, as it would only be if no-one with priority bidded on a property that you'd have any chance of getting it. Those with priority would get the property even if they got put on the system ages after someone who was non-priority. Still against these odds we got somewhere, as this flat was out of borough, and people in that particular borough never want to move out of the area if you paid them so only a handful of people bidded on this, and they all were registered after us and also non-priority bidders so we came first. It took 3 years to have a winning bid. Our old house was very draughty (so energy bills were extortionate), very run down-radiators kept falling clean off the walls and there was mould, and we had invasions of mice, ants and various other pests thanks to nasty neighbours. The housing association we were with at the time refused to do anything except the most basic repairs they were required to do by law, so we desperately needed to move but couldn't afford anything private. Some boroughs require for you to have lived there for two or even five years before applying, but some like Tower Hamlets don't seem to have any minimum limit on how long you have lived there. Housing associations used to have their own bidding system and you could apply directly to them but that doesn't tend to be the case anymore. xx

 

[summer rain]

i am in process of moving flat in a month time and our rent will be 1300 / month and on top of that the bills+council tax which is abt £122.
the flat itself is clean and nice, a real change in comparison with the one we live in at the moment ( mould, damp, storage heaters unfuctional, noisy neighbours, rats etc), but London's rent are just bloody extortionate; I wish i could be able to afford to pay this for my own flat or house.
i will miss the garden tho, but not the foxes lol !

So happy to see someone else in London, I was beginning to get very depressed!

Over £1300/month for a 2 bed here, plus bills and really high council tax - believe it's one of the most expensive councils in the country. And we got a GOOD deal on our place as it had been vacant for a few months. Did the maths though and as DH and I both work in central London, moving further out for cheaper rent just meant higher commuting costs and a longer journey.

It sucks doesn't it! We pay £900 for a crappy 1 bed flat in zone 4 right near the station as we both work in zone 1, don't know how we're ever going to afford to buy and I will never be able to afford to be a sahm with bills+insurance and CT we end up spending close to 1400 a month, if I stopped working when we have a LO we'd be living on about 50 quid a month after travel expenses on ohs wage and he's not on a bad wage!!(27k) he'd need to be on close to 40k for us to live comfortably in this area (mill hill NW7). seriously considering relocating and finding jobs somewhere else

you'd definitely be entitled to social housing I would look into applying in your area xx

 

[Mabelpye]

We live in Cambridgeshire and pay £485 a month for rent. We've got a 2 bed maisonette, with decent sized rooms, spitting distance from the local primary school, and bus route, so not too bad really

 

[AJC]

We have a 3 bed semi detached in the midlands, and we pay £500 a month for our mortgage.... from seeing some of the comments on this thread i would say we are pretty lucky, we have a garage too and a front and back garden

 

[rwhite]

Our rent is $1200 a month