Immigrating to the UK

Hey, that's a lot? Right? Housing will be 'free' won't it? - it's not part of UC?

HTF do people live on R350 here in SA is what gets me.
 
Dave said:
How the fúck does someone survive on Universal Credit long term?

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No idea!

Another thing, I asked him when he is visiting SA again. He said "Never" to which I asked why not, and he said "Because I will get arrested". I decided to leave it there.

Let's just say he is the kind of person I would likely avoid in SA, just felt dodge.
 
TedLasso said:
Hey, that's a lot? Right? Housing will be 'free' won't it? - it's not part of UC?

HTF do people live on R350 here in SA is what gets me.
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He is paying rent privately somewhere for £1200 for a 3 bedroom house.

Funny thing is that he was telling me his friend's son works at Amazon, and he earns £1800 a month. He then said he is thinking of leaving his job and applying to work for Amazon as it is more than he earns now.
 
killerbyte said:
That's disgusting.
Glad they changing the rules and forcing people to find employment rather than stay on UC.

This is the problem with the utopian socialist systems... people forget that generally humans are lazy, but that there are truly lazy people who will suck off the system and abuse it.

I have a friend who came to the UK with his wife and two kids. She has a BP. He found a job within 2 weeks of being here, she went on UC until their youngest was able to go to school since child care was outside their budget. Now that their youngest is at school she has gotten a job. She was on UC for 9 months.
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Smart move. Child care takes up an entire salary. Thinking of starting a crèche and charging just half of what everyone else does. I’ll be minted in a few years.
 
The joys of trying to rent in London...

I got a job in Mayfair so we are trying to find a rental nearby (NW6 or NW3).

Almost every apartment listed is gone less than 24 hours of being advertised.

I tried calling an agency today to enquire about an apartment listed yesterday. I was told that the apartment hasn't been taken yet but I'm number 43 on the waitlist.

The wife went to view a place yesterday, offered the asking price for rent (with 6 months upfront) and was rejected because someone else made an offer above asking.

We then viewed another place, offered 6 months upfront, but the landlord has rejected because they want 12 months upfront front.

We have another viewing scheduled for Monday but who knows what will happen. The rental market isn't for the feint of heart.
 
x32 said:
The joys of trying to rent in London...

I got a job in Mayfair so we are trying to find a rental nearby (NW6 or NW3).

Almost every apartment listed is gone less than 24 hours of being advertised.

I tried calling an agency today to enquire about an apartment listed yesterday. I was told that the apartment hasn't been taken yet but I'm number 43 on the waitlist.

The wife went to view a place yesterday, offered the asking price for rent (with 6 months upfront) and was rejected because someone else made an offer above asking.

We then viewed another place, offered 6 months upfront, but the landlord has rejected because they want 12 months upfront front.

We have another viewing scheduled for Monday but who knows what will happen. The rental market isn't for the feint of heart.
Click to expand...

The market has been **** for years, but you know you don’t necessarily have to live in London, right? Why not look a bit further out?
 
x32 said:
The joys of trying to rent in London...

I got a job in Mayfair so we are trying to find a rental nearby (NW6 or NW3).

Almost every apartment listed is gone less than 24 hours of being advertised.

I tried calling an agency today to enquire about an apartment listed yesterday. I was told that the apartment hasn't been taken yet but I'm number 43 on the waitlist.

The wife went to view a place yesterday, offered the asking price for rent (with 6 months upfront) and was rejected because someone else made an offer above asking.

We then viewed another place, offered 6 months upfront, but the landlord has rejected because they want 12 months upfront front.

We have another viewing scheduled for Monday but who knows what will happen. The rental market isn't for the feint of heart.
Click to expand...

We have not had that experience. Places we have been interested in have been listed for months and some even reduced.

But then we are looking well outside of London and in the £2k plus range (due to size we need) and finding that we get lots of responses or people chasing us to fill in forms etc.

Haven’t secured anything yet. But it’s looking promising.
 
Priapus said:
We have not had that experience. Places we have been interested in have been listed for months and some even reduced.

But then we are looking well outside of London and in the £2k plus range (due to size we need) and finding that we get lots of responses or people chasing us to fill in forms etc.

Haven’t secured anything yet. But it’s looking promising.
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Probably 90% of the uk can't afford 2k a month in rent. You're playing in a much smaller market :)
 
Sinbad said:
Probably 90% of the uk can't afford 2k a month in rent. You're playing in a much smaller market :)
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Yeah that’s fair I think. Hope it works out to our advantage.

I also think people spending £2k plus on rent would rather buy at that level.

Which we plan to do as soon as I have a decent credit score and savings.
 
x32 said:
The joys of trying to rent in London...

I got a job in Mayfair so we are trying to find a rental nearby (NW6 or NW3).

Almost every apartment listed is gone less than 24 hours of being advertised.

I tried calling an agency today to enquire about an apartment listed yesterday. I was told that the apartment hasn't been taken yet but I'm number 43 on the waitlist.

The wife went to view a place yesterday, offered the asking price for rent (with 6 months upfront) and was rejected because someone else made an offer above asking.

We then viewed another place, offered 6 months upfront, but the landlord has rejected because they want 12 months upfront front.

We have another viewing scheduled for Monday but who knows what will happen. The rental market isn't for the feint of heart.
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So Bond Street station is close to Mayfair (short walking distance).
If you don't want to have a car then consider areas on the Metropolitan line... Chesham, Amersham, Little Chalfont, Watford, Rickmansworth, etc.
These areas are quieter than the city, with far less of a competitive rental market.
If you plan to get a car then you can look at Aylesbury (which is a 25min drive to Chesham) and that way you stay even more out in the country while earning London money. This is the way I live.
 
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The Voice said:
Smart move. Child care takes up an entire salary. Thinking of starting a crèche and charging just half of what everyone else does. I’ll be minted in a few years.
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I guess you will drown in the ohsa rules and crap. And to pay staff - where most of money goes.

Wonder if you can get away doing 2-3 children at home.
 
The Voice said:
The market has been **** for years, but you know you don’t necessarily have to live in London, right? Why not look a bit further out?
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Yeah, places like Ealing, etc on tube network, and sorta nice to live in. I would never want to live in central London
 
AdrianH said:
I met a "useless" expat yesterday.

In a nutshell, he was telling me how he came here with his wife and adult daughter, and how wonderful universal credit is as both his wife and adult daughter don't work but claim benefits.

The kicker, he isn't even British. Came here just before Brexit on a French passport.
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LMAO - listen to this.

I met some people when I was still living in SA. They were in the process of applying for British passports with the intention of moving to the UK to come live on the doll because "things were not going too well in SA".

No shame what so ever, I thought they were joking
 
x32 said:
The joys of trying to rent in London...

I got a job in Mayfair so we are trying to find a rental nearby (NW6 or NW3).

Almost every apartment listed is gone less than 24 hours of being advertised.

I tried calling an agency today to enquire about an apartment listed yesterday. I was told that the apartment hasn't been taken yet but I'm number 43 on the waitlist.

The wife went to view a place yesterday, offered the asking price for rent (with 6 months upfront) and was rejected because someone else made an offer above asking.

We then viewed another place, offered 6 months upfront, but the landlord has rejected because they want 12 months upfront front.

We have another viewing scheduled for Monday but who knows what will happen. The rental market isn't for the feint of heart.
Click to expand...
The wife hasn't gotten a job yet but will most likely be somewhere in the City so we don't want to move too far away without knowing where she will work.

I also think it would be nice to experience the
London life for a while. I don't see us settling down there long term but to be there for a year or two would be nice. We are still young enough and don't have kids yet so we figured why not.
 
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