Places to rent in London

Soldato
Joined
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Howdy all,

So I recently got myself a job in Soho, London and will be moving over near the start of January from Dublin. I really don't know London that well, I was there for a day during the interview but that's it. Taking into account that the oyster card is apparently £100/mth for just zone 1 & 2 would I be better off living somewhere central and cycling or living further out and tubing to picadilly circus or tottenham court?

I'm willing to move in with others in a shared place, get a place on my own (if affordable) or rent a 2/3 bed apartment with friends of mine as there are 1 or 2 others coming over around the same time as me. My salary will be £26k and I can live on quite a small amount of money but that doesn't mean I want to spend a fortune on rent, £500/mth would be nice to get but I've heard I'd be lucky to get that.

So any tips on good or cheaper areas to rent in (would prefer not to get mugged) would be very welcome, I'm sure there must be quite a few on here that are renting in London atm.

On a related note and not to derail my own thread but my girlfriend will be staying in college in Dublin for the next year and a half. I've been looking at skype on android phones but I've never used a "smart phone" or even a bill pay phone. Basically we want to be able to keep in contact without paying a fortune on calls from mobile to mobile. Something that could connect to Wifi instead of eating up whatever download limit we have would be good, not sure what phones can do that. I'm a nub when it comes to things like that. So any tips on good ways to stay in touch, I've seen the HTC Desire HD is free for £40/mth from vodafone bill pay but it's €180 to buy on a €35/mth bill pay from vodafone in Ireland which is insane, no way to get it free over here.

Any ideas on either front would be very much appreciated, this'll be my biggest move and the worst as we have been going out for over 5 years so it'll be pretty bad at first, Skype will be the only thing keeping us sane I reckon, that and cheapass ryan air flights hopefully!
 
If you take a look at houses in the Kilburn area north-west London, it has great links to the very heart of London on the jubilee line and its in zone 2. Bit of a studenty area to live though (few of my mates are renting there at the moment) which makes it cheap, but not so rough that you’re going to get stabbed to death over a 20p coin!

Alternatively you could look at the Highbury area (great to watch a bit of footy, as long as you support arsenal!), it has great links into central London on the victoria line, although its probably going to be a bit more expensive to rent.

I only have a years’ worth of London experience so I wouldn’t say any of the above is strictly right but it’s a start!

Hope it helps
 
Thanks cravin, I've heard Kilburn is the Irish quarter of London so I guess it'd be fitting :)
 
www.gumtree.com is always useful

You should be able to get a flat share within budget in say Caledonian road area - should be a fairly easy commute on the tube or could easily cycle.
 
Hey,

If both of ye have meteor phones you can get free meteor to meteor calls and she'll be able to ring you for free and you can recieve them free too. Ye might have to spend €20 a month on credit, but odds are ye'd be doing that anyway. Skype is alright every now and then, but on a day to day basis it's a pain trying to co-ordinate yourselves.

There's plenty of Irish around Clapham/ Balham area and it's fairly handy to Heathrow as well. I think you can get a train from Balham?

I'm in a similar scenario, but not in London. You will grow to despise Ryanair, but when it's cheaper to fly than get to the airport you learn to keep your mouth shut :-)

Let me know if you need any more gems of Ryanair wisdom (for example, how many minutes late they can be but still chance playing their stupid "On-Time" fanfare, if you don't know what I mean by "On-Time Fanfare" you soon will!). I did exactly what you're doing 2 years ago.

You also picked a hell of a time to leave, shur didn't they just take a whole loada money outta London and drop it over to Dublin? You'd wanna be going in the other direction bud ;-)

Brian.
 
I'd do the bike thing. Fixed gear and skinny jeans with Converse. Don't try to fight it... live the London life :p
 
A 4 weekly zones 1-3 travel card is £116 so don't discount zone 3 just yet if you're worried about cash for the travelling costs. Unless you're very well off then you're always going to find a trade-off between convenience of being central with the price you pay. I'm in zone 3 (15 minutes to Victoria assuming the trains aren't screwed by the weather) and pay somewhere around £500 p/m for my share of a rather nice 3 bedroom house but it is a slightly unusual situation and unlikely to be that cheap for the area normally - however with that said it should be quite possible to find a reasonable place for that sort of money but you may have to look around a bit.
 
Greenwich is really nice and not that expensive.
Train into Charing Cross, walk to the office. Sorted.
 
Thanks for the area tips guys :)

Any good websites to keep an eye on? I've been looking at rightmove.co.uk and it had some places up there. I was told that 90% of lettings are done through agencies though.
 
If you are on a budget I know the travel card sounds like a lot but it still works out cheaper than living in central London.
Plus you are going to need a travel card in some form anyway to get around.

You are working in a good location though that is easily accessible from most of London so you've got lots of options.

For example you could go South London, Balham and Tooting are both fairly cheap, nice areas and a bus ride away from the bars of Clapham.

Or you could North up the Northern line, East or West on the central line. Whereever you move to I would check out your commute at rush hour (or the time you would be going into work) as some of the closer places to central London, it will be impossible to get on the tube then.

London is a bit different to other cities as although there are good and bad areas, it's more like there are small pockets of bad areas within areas. Eg people my say East London, or Brixton or Willesdon are bad areas, but in reality there are only small pockets of these areas which are bad, and because of public perception you can live in the good parts of these areas for much cheaper rent than areas that are perceived as good (many good areas also have pockets of bad sections as well.)
 
www.gumtree.com is always useful

You should be able to get a flat share within budget in say Caledonian road area - should be a fairly easy commute on the tube or could easily cycle.

True but if it sounds too good to be true it is! Careful on there, a fair few scams.

Which company are you going to be working for, I'm in Soho too :)
 
For example you could go South London, Balham and Tooting are both fairly cheap, nice areas and a bus ride away from the bars of Clapham.

Or you could North up the Northern line, East or West on the central line. Whereever you move to I would check out your commute at rush hour (or the time you would be going into work) as some of the closer places to central London, it will be impossible to get on the tube then.

Tooting and Balham certainly arn't cheap and it would be an hour to commute up to soho.

We used to pay £950pcm for a 2 bed new build in tooting bec, but now a mate of ours has moved their from balham and pays around 1100-1200 for a 1-bed. Not easy to find places these days tbh.

Also RE: Northern Line. Remember all the fun of the Jubilee Line closures and signalling upgrade. That is nearly complete and closers will eventually take hold for the Northern Line which will also require plenty of track work to install the new signalling. That will mean weekend closures and probably early closing during some nights in the week.
 
Which company are you going to be working for, I'm in Soho too :)

I'll be working for Double Negative as an R&D programmer :)

Thanks for all the tips everyone, I'm now starting on the 4th of January, even less time to find a place. Ideally I'd like to find somewhere east side, maybe even within walking distance or quick commute to liverpool station as Stansted will be the airport I'll probably be flying in and out of mostly.

Thanks VFM for that website, some very useful stuff to look through. From what I've heard most letting in London is done through agencies and the hoops they are making my mates jump through are crazy. Copies of passports and birth certs, recent bank statement to check activity in the account. Crazy things. Over here it's just, give us the deposit, here are the keys, this is the account for the standing order, goodbye!
 
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