University funding varies wildly in the UK and it mostly correlates with ranking, at least the 'higher-up' universities generally have more disposal income to give to researchers. Unfortunately, it's a vicious circle because it's the difference between "you can go to this conference" or "we'll pay the article fee" and "we have no money, sorry". Allowing researchers those sorts of freedoms means you tend to get better researchers who can pump out more research with higher visibility.

Oxford University owns pretty much the entire historic town centre, so they're sitting on a lot of assets that aren't obviously visible (beyond the colleges).

UK universities have generally very good staff benefits. 30-35 days of leave is not uncommon, on top of public holidays and the usual academia "if nobody notices" flexitime attitude. Pay is probably a little better than the US when you compare cost of living. The US has notoriously poor PhD and Postdoc salaries and several big universities have had strike action against them. Don't confuse US institutional endowment with what trickles down to researchers.

The US does have per-diem though, which is a fantastic source of beer money when traveling. UK universities are almost always penny-pinchers for staff expenses.