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Comment by vazamb | Hacker News Reader

Flatshares ("WG" , Wohngemeinschaft) are extremely common in Germany. For anyone under 30 living in a major city it is absolutely normal to share a flat with 1-3 other people.

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For students a flatshare is normal but all Germans I know that work full-time live in their own flat. In London, living on your own after university is basically impossible (unless you live very far out).

> In London, living on your own after university is basically impossible (unless you live very far out).

Disagree, since I'm doing it right now 3 years after uni.

I'm not paid amazingly, below average salary for London but above average for the rest of the UK. However half my paycheck goes on rent. My commute is about 45 minutes by tube or 20 minutes by motorbike so it's not too far out. The trick is to find an area that's stabby enough to be cheap but hipster enough that there's decent bars in the area to help you forget. However I definitely got lucky, my rent is a few hundred pounds below market value.

> However half my paycheck goes on rent. My commute is about 45 minutes by tube or 20 minutes by motorbike so it's not too far out.

I don't know how you manages your finances but for me anything above 25% of your income going for rent is absurd. And you are not making it up in distance, either. 45 minutes by tube is a lots of time. (I assume motorbike is not a favorable option given London weather).

My choice is between living close to work, living alone, or cheap rent. I can pick two. All three if I choose to live in a room which fits no more than a single bed.

I'm counting 45 minutes tube/20 minutes motorbike as close because for London that's honestly quite good. About half of the people I know have commutes over an hour each way, at least one above two hours, and I can cut my public transport commute to 35 minutes if I time everything right. Biking is actually the favourable option but not possible if I'm drinking, and the miserable weather doesn't bother me.

I would love to cut my rent down to 25% of income but it's honestly not possible without increasing travel costs and time. Plus I work in computer security, London is one ofthe few places in the UK with any job mobility in my field.

25% for rent in London means you'll have a lot of money to spend. If you spend 25% of your salary of $2000 on rent on the countryside you'll live off $1500. If in the city you can make $5000 but spend 50%, you'll still have more, even after higher other costs in the city. Sounds like an extreme example but in the UK, London vs. countryside further North has those differences.

"A few hundred pounds below market value" makes a huge, huge difference.

If your salary is around £30,000, you'll take home around £1,900 a month after tax and student loan payments. Spending 50% on rent is already huge, spending £300 more (66%) would be madness.

Agreed: I've just looked around and it's closer to £100-200 cheaper per month, but it's hard to compare when you factor in anything more than just number of bedrooms and rough square footage. I did find out I'm paying about £100 a month more than the estimated payments on a 30 year mortgage which seems cheaper than most. I'm in the £40k range which makes it slightly less significant but not by too much.

Either way there's not a huge amount of choice in London. I had to find a room in a flatshare a few years ago and I struggled to find anything under £700 which was remotely reasonable (ie double bed, room for a desk and some floor space).

Can you fill in some actual numbers and a location here? Because that seems just atypical from this description.

Quite reluctant to give actual figures so these are fudged. Salary of £45k, rent £1.2k/month, edge of zone 2/3, tube line within one minute walk, overground and another line quite close. Can't remember what area it is and I'm god awful at estimating area but I'd say the flat is about 500sqft?

Can't give location, sorry. I've doxxed too many people before on less information.

£45k is an enormous salary, especially for someone in their 20s. 85% of the country earn less than that.

Looking at median London salaries from 2015 (which I have to hand), and assuming a 10% increase on that, you earn more than average for all but two boroughs - Tower Hamlets (i.e. docklands) and the City

[1] http://www.itv.com/news/london/2015-11-19/how-does-your-sala...

You've said elsewhere that you're in the 40k range. Median Central London Salary is ~35k, so you're actually well above average salary, even in London.

Here's one big difference: it's also common in London for people over 30.

Which in other European capitals is an age where you would more likely live with your partner and start a family, rather than live like a student.

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