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People Post What $250k Can Get You Elsewhere, After This Ludicrous London Apartment Listing Goes Viral
Those of us who have spent some time in London know that property prices there can be completely bonkers. You’d think that if you’re paying an arm and a leg for an apartment, you’ll at least live like a noble. Unfortunately, huge prices don’t guarantee quality.
Case in point, Richard Brooks’ post on Twitter went viral after he shared photos of a ridiculously bad studio apartment listing. The asking price? 200k pounds (nearly 255k dollars). It’s a humongous amount of money and Twitter users posted all the different amazing properties you could buy for that price elsewhere. And it’s got us thinking: why live like Oliver Twist in London when you can live like Queen Victoria elsewhere?
RELATED:
Richard Brooks showcased the type of horrible apartment you can buy in London for a huge amount of money
Image credits: Just_RichardB
Here’s what the building looks like from the outside
Image credits: zoopla
And here’s a short tour of the inside
Image credits: zoopla
Image credits: zoopla
Tiny, isn’t it?
Image credits: zoopla
The studio apartment’s features aren’t exactly inspirational
Image credits: zoopla
Kensington and Chelsea is a great borough but the prices can border on extortion
Image credits: zoopla
Here’s the apartment plan
Image credits: zoopla
Image credits: zoopla
Image credits: zoopla
Plenty of people could relate to Richard’s post because of how expensive apartments are in London. His thread got more than 52.4k likes and over 8.7k retweets and comments and Richard used the attention to spread awareness about all the ways that you can help the Black Lives Matter movement.
As amazing as London is, the cost of property in the city is getting ridiculous. News Anyway reports that the average house price in London was 472,901 pounds (over 603k dollars) in November 2018, more than double the United Kingdom’s average.
The result is that there are fewer young first-time homebuyers in London and their average age has risen to 34 in some parts of the city.
People posted what properties you can get elsewhere for the 200k pounds it would take to buy the small studio apartment
Image credits: Miss__Cairns
Image credits: JIrwinOfLarne
Image credits: vickyfl0rence
Image credits: AliceWoodsworth
Image credits: McCannRachel13
Image credits: LM_0200
Image credits: SenterClub
Image credits: smithy1876
Image credits: SacredSilenced
Image credits: LiberalDespot
Image credits: Kieranwhm
There are several reasons why homes are so expensive in the capital of the UK. First of all, there’s a limited supply of new apartments and houses, even though the population keeps growing by leaps and bounds. In other words, the supply can’t keep up with the huge demand, so prices go up.
Secondly, London is full of people with lucrative careers, so some of them can obviously afford to pay the extortionate property prices. Third of all, rich people from overseas see houses and luxury apartments in London as great investments (even if they don’t live there or rent the properties out for fear of reducing their value).
So if you want to live a quality life in the UK, you might just want to spread your gaze wider and aim for a great apartment or house further away from London.
Here’s what other people said about the British housing market
Image credits: Theknowlestweet
Image credits: AlanWatt2
Image credits: MercerRyanJ
Image credits: ClaraWSparkles
Image credits: agw1437
Image credits: Woojwh
Image credits: Jayprobe1982
Image credits: skinprof
What do you think ?
Dietmar Pichler 5 years ago
The sad thing about this story is that it is not a joke. This is actually going on all over the world. And the government that cares about taxes doesn't change that at all, although it should. It would be so easy to set a fixed maximum affordable price everywhere on every square meter. But nobody in politics wants to cut into their own flesh, because they probably rent out 2-3 houses themselves... Capitalism is an issue. We need to talk about this...
Craig Lee 5 years ago
This is with everything though, it's not an affordable housing issue, it's a human issue. People are greedy, that's why most manufacturing is done in China. The companies that sell products want to turn higher profits, the people buying things want to pay less. Just look at the most recent major catastrophe in COVID-19. People were buying up all the toilet paper, masks, hand sanitizer and a lot of them were trying to gouge the prices to sell them. People want to blame the ultra rich, but then you have regular, every day people doing rotten s**t like that.
Load More Replies...
Hans 5 years ago
These postings are entertaining but ultimately missleading, as they compare the size and equipment of houses to a small flat of which the price is driven by just one thing: location. The real debate behind this is how cities nowadays work; the centralisation of work and the decoupling of places of living and working quite possibly are very bad ideas.
Chutney Hawkes 5 years ago
You'd s**t yourself if you saw the price of an actual house in London.
Load More Replies...
Loki’s Lil Butter Knife 5 years ago
I remember looking for a job in London when I graduated and coming to the realization that I would need several roommates crammed together in a tiny flat just to make ends meet. I would be living of a diet of Greg's sausage rolls and beans on toast- needless to say, moving to London was out of the questions. There are just some parts of the UK where housing/living costs border on extortion. I'm sure you can say the same for other parts of the world as well. A lot of it comes down to location.
earringnut 5 years ago
There is a similar housing crisis in LA and other parts of California.
Load More Replies...
Mme de Poppadom 5 years ago
To encapsulate what others are saying from around the world, every time a local government decides to open the housing market to foreign investors, people who actually live in these cities gets f*cked in the a*s, creating a new poverty line, outrageous cost of living, and homelessness so someone can make a temporary buck. Why oh why is this shortsighted move preferable to the real-life fallout of the local economy? Like dominoes being set up to collapse.
Steve Barnett 5 years ago
The only worst thing about paying so much for a property in London is that it's also in London.
Chyppa Homer 5 years ago
Our friggin bathroom isn't much smaller. Maybe I should try to rent that out.
littlesaresare 5 years ago
Meanwhile in Australia, $250k might get you a cardboard box on the street. Small houses even outside cities easily surpass $600k.
Electric Ed 5 years ago
That's AUD you mean? 600k AUD is about 330k GBP, right?
Load More Replies...
bryguy 5 years ago
I like the one from Ohio lol "Y'all get on down her' to ohio! Make dat dollar go far!" ...no thanks.
Becca Gizmo the Squirrel 5 years ago
Yeah that Ohio house would be about $120,000 here. You could build a 4 bedroom around 2600 sq ft home on ten acres here. Bad location. North alabama.
Load More Replies...
Truth Monster 5 years ago
I mean, yeah, its small, but if the location is amazing, I'd live there. People live in micro houses all the time quite happily. And its not so expensive when you consider the cost of heating and cooling with some clever carpentry, this studio would be amazing. For starters, I'd build a loft for the bed to clear some floor space and allow for a couch. Then I would reunite the bathroom and shower ( all in one like a camper. Super floor compact) which would allow for a decent sized kitchen to be placed.
Carrie Laughs 5 years ago (edited)
They make spaces in camper vans work so this could be made to be much more efficient! I personallly wouldn't pay for this location as its price is inflated by having royalty on the doorstep and lots of posh people with possibly more money than sense.
Load More Replies...
Brendan 5 years ago
My house in Bristol (UK) cost £169k. It's a semi-detached on a cul-de-sac, with three bedrooms, front & back garden
Dónal Ó Murchadha 5 years ago
Nevermind the price or location.... that's not a bathroom, it's a cupboard that you s**t in. Thats not a kitchen, its a beside table. You wouldnt stay in a hotel like this so why on earth would you buy a home like this?
Kathy Baylis 5 years ago (edited)
Not to mention, where TF would you put your stuff, like your pots and pans, or food? Clothes? Books? TV? You know, the comforts of home? The way I see it, a room like this (as the ad itself kinda hints at) should probably be considered just a “crash pad”, or tiny place to crash when you’re in town way too late to drive or catch the train/subway/bus home to the ‘burbs—-though most of us peasants just schlep ourselves home anyway. Regardless, this is Not👏At👏All👏 the kind of “studio apartment” which should be considered your main home.
Load More Replies... WilvanderHeijden 5 years ago
Real estate prices are indeed going through the roof in some countries. Has got partially to do with building rules that make it impossible to build a new houses at an affordable price and with investors buying property as a long term investment. In some parts of the Netherlands, city councils have made that impossible because you have an obligation to live in the house that you buy in that region. I'm lucky. I bought my house for around €60 000 and now it's estimated at €218 000.
chi-wei shen 5 years ago
My house where we raised our 4 children isn't worth more than 200,000 €, and it's a nice home and each of the children had a separate room.
D C 2 years ago (edited)
I don't get people who whine about the high prices in literally the largest city in their country/region/state. Do you understand how supply and demand works? High demand. Higher prices. Because more people want it. And yes.. someone will pay. And real estate is a finite resource.. unless you start building vertically. But even that costs extra in construction that someone has to be paid for. You want to live in London? Pay London prices.
The-JoeBai 4 years ago
I wouldn’t recommend that *anyone* live in Larne, even if they were the ones being paid…
Derek Neibarger 5 years ago
In 1991, I rented an apartment the same size, but with a shared shower/toilet, for $120 a month.
Julia Mi 5 years ago
Roughly 212k pounds can buy you: a brand new 2 bedroom (3 bathrooms) townhouse
with back garden, garage, in front of community outdoor swimming pool.
in Dubai (barely 30 minutes to downtown or to prime tourist location Marina) tadaaa
either way cannot afford :D but just sayin' Screen-Sho...2f-png.jpg 
Odette Greyling 5 years ago
The same thing here in Spain. You can buy a 45m2 flat in the centre of Barcelona for 1.200 000 euro. Not a joke at all. And some idiot with too much money will buy it and turn it into a luxury tourist trap which will send the prices in that area up even more. Barcelonians are actually leaving the city because of this. I assume this is happening elsewhere too?
Steve Cruz 5 years ago
I have friends who were bought out of a true hovel on a redevelopment site. They bought three former Council Flats (welfare housing) with a large deck for £70,000 each. They planned to flip and sell them, but the tenants they moved in were zero trouble and achieved all the renovations in exchange for reduced rent. They're now worth around £1 Million each and they receive a tax consideration for providing stable low rent to the same tenants who have been in them over 25 years.
Isabella 5 years ago
It's not only UK problem. It's all over the world. In Poland main cities like Krakow or Warsaw - you won't even buy a flat for 200K PLN. No way. And there is not one place in Poland where you can get house as one of those in photos for this price... so yeah, half of us is homeless by the law - since we don't own any place, and second half either live with parents [miserable thing to do when you are over your 30s, since more and more drama comes in] or crammed with random strangers in small student apartments :/
Stannous Flouride 5 years ago
Over 50% of the houses and flats in London are bought for second homes or lease/rental investments. Between 2014 and 2019 the percentage owned by non-UK natives went from 10% to 24% (and since Brexit the cost of the top 10% most expensive ones have exploded as the £ became devalued). About half the luxury apartments in recently built towers fail to sell within the first two years and ¼ remain empty much longer. The "housing crisis" is not caused by a lack of housing, it's caused by greed and speculation. A study done at Cambridge and MIT last year found that simply building more units can never solve the issue. Without gov't intervention in the form of lower taxes builders have no incentive to build less expensive housing. And since it takes years for a project to get approved they have plenty of time to assess the market. Long before the market reaches the needed capacity they have moved on to other projects.
Stannous Flouride 5 years ago
In San Francisco a 3 BR flat in a 3 unit building sells for about $1,200 per square foot.
Load More Replies...
Erica Vandegrift 5 years ago
Meanwhile in Georgia (US) we bought our 7 bedroom, 3 bath house on almost 8 acres for $160k. (We lived in New Hampshire and Maryland as well and that price would get you a crappy trailer in those states. But still more than that awful flat)
Bob Belcher 5 years ago
I wonder what will happen to prices if companies allow their staff to continue working from home. There would be no point in paying excess premiums to live downtown.
Lara Mig 5 years ago
I live in San Francisco and there's already a wave of Silicon Valley techies moving out into cheaper locations. Rents have fallen in response to that.
Load More Replies...
Adam Francis 5 years ago
A studio like that in Palo Alto, CA goes for 1 million. No joke. If you're really lucky you might be able to find one for 900k
Rob Chapman 5 years ago
The San Francisco Bay Area & New York City are exactly the same, if not much worse. I just saw a listing for a 800 sq ft studio condo in the suburbs 15 miles from SF, repeat, studio condo...for $900,000, Then there's rent. The studio apartment I rented just 6 years ago for $1000 is now renting for $3500. It's 480 sq ft.
Sasha Kuleshov 5 years ago
With ₤200,000 I can buy here in México a three story house in a well-to-do neighborhood -with a view- and still have some to spend on extra furniture ($5,739,080 pesos) XD
Parmeisan 5 years ago
Cost of living shouldn't really be discussed without also talking about minimum/average wages in that area. Yes, cost of a house alone does matter if you're considering moving somewhere e.g. once retired. But in most cases you also need to know what will happen to your salary in any given profession if you move - you might be in for a terrible surprise otherwise.
Meyer Weinstock 5 years ago
Add another US$150K and you have San Francisco, which is even more expensive than New York.
Treessimontrees 5 years ago
It's sadly not that stupid to buy this, as if you stayed in a hotel it would be minimum 25k a year, at an average of 100 a night, if you could find a hotel at that price. And this place goes up in value month on month as there's always someone else who will pay more for it. A place to literally sleep and shower.
Martti Laurson 5 years ago
$250K in Estonia gives you a 5 bedroom house with a nice big yard close to the city. https://www.city24.ee/en/real-estate/9231581?selectedTabMenu=list
Pittsburgh rare 5 years ago
In most Spanish cities, £200.000 won't get you a house but an apartment and in major cities will most likely be an old, run down apartment that needs full renovation. That's how crazy and artificially inflated our housing market is. About time people started investing in smaller towns /villages and work remotely whenever possible and flip the bird to all those vulture realtors
Pamela24 5 years ago
Prague is faster and faster becoming its own little Eastern European London, unfortunately. :( But it's hard to fight against it when most of what's happening is there, so are a lot of people. I envy people form Vienna for example where there's a better distribution of city-owned apartments and the market is somewhat reasonably regulated.
Dietmar Pichler 5 years ago
The sad thing about this story is that it is not a joke. This is actually going on all over the world. And the government that cares about taxes doesn't change that at all, although it should. It would be so easy to set a fixed maximum affordable price everywhere on every square meter. But nobody in politics wants to cut into their own flesh, because they probably rent out 2-3 houses themselves... Capitalism is an issue. We need to talk about this...
Craig Lee 5 years ago
This is with everything though, it's not an affordable housing issue, it's a human issue. People are greedy, that's why most manufacturing is done in China. The companies that sell products want to turn higher profits, the people buying things want to pay less. Just look at the most recent major catastrophe in COVID-19. People were buying up all the toilet paper, masks, hand sanitizer and a lot of them were trying to gouge the prices to sell them. People want to blame the ultra rich, but then you have regular, every day people doing rotten s**t like that.
Load More Replies... Hans 5 years ago
These postings are entertaining but ultimately missleading, as they compare the size and equipment of houses to a small flat of which the price is driven by just one thing: location. The real debate behind this is how cities nowadays work; the centralisation of work and the decoupling of places of living and working quite possibly are very bad ideas.
Chutney Hawkes 5 years ago
You'd s**t yourself if you saw the price of an actual house in London.
Load More Replies... Loki’s Lil Butter Knife 5 years ago
I remember looking for a job in London when I graduated and coming to the realization that I would need several roommates crammed together in a tiny flat just to make ends meet. I would be living of a diet of Greg's sausage rolls and beans on toast- needless to say, moving to London was out of the questions. There are just some parts of the UK where housing/living costs border on extortion. I'm sure you can say the same for other parts of the world as well. A lot of it comes down to location.
earringnut 5 years ago
There is a similar housing crisis in LA and other parts of California.
Load More Replies... Mme de Poppadom 5 years ago
To encapsulate what others are saying from around the world, every time a local government decides to open the housing market to foreign investors, people who actually live in these cities gets f*cked in the a*s, creating a new poverty line, outrageous cost of living, and homelessness so someone can make a temporary buck. Why oh why is this shortsighted move preferable to the real-life fallout of the local economy? Like dominoes being set up to collapse.
Steve Barnett 5 years ago
The only worst thing about paying so much for a property in London is that it's also in London.
Chyppa Homer 5 years ago
Our friggin bathroom isn't much smaller. Maybe I should try to rent that out.
littlesaresare 5 years ago
Meanwhile in Australia, $250k might get you a cardboard box on the street. Small houses even outside cities easily surpass $600k.
Electric Ed 5 years ago
That's AUD you mean? 600k AUD is about 330k GBP, right?
Load More Replies... bryguy 5 years ago
I like the one from Ohio lol "Y'all get on down her' to ohio! Make dat dollar go far!" ...no thanks.
Becca Gizmo the Squirrel 5 years ago
Yeah that Ohio house would be about $120,000 here. You could build a 4 bedroom around 2600 sq ft home on ten acres here. Bad location. North alabama.
Load More Replies... Truth Monster 5 years ago
I mean, yeah, its small, but if the location is amazing, I'd live there. People live in micro houses all the time quite happily. And its not so expensive when you consider the cost of heating and cooling with some clever carpentry, this studio would be amazing. For starters, I'd build a loft for the bed to clear some floor space and allow for a couch. Then I would reunite the bathroom and shower ( all in one like a camper. Super floor compact) which would allow for a decent sized kitchen to be placed.
Carrie Laughs 5 years ago (edited)
They make spaces in camper vans work so this could be made to be much more efficient! I personallly wouldn't pay for this location as its price is inflated by having royalty on the doorstep and lots of posh people with possibly more money than sense.
Load More Replies... Brendan 5 years ago
My house in Bristol (UK) cost £169k. It's a semi-detached on a cul-de-sac, with three bedrooms, front & back garden
Dónal Ó Murchadha 5 years ago
Nevermind the price or location.... that's not a bathroom, it's a cupboard that you s**t in. Thats not a kitchen, its a beside table. You wouldnt stay in a hotel like this so why on earth would you buy a home like this?
Kathy Baylis 5 years ago (edited)
Not to mention, where TF would you put your stuff, like your pots and pans, or food? Clothes? Books? TV? You know, the comforts of home? The way I see it, a room like this (as the ad itself kinda hints at) should probably be considered just a “crash pad”, or tiny place to crash when you’re in town way too late to drive or catch the train/subway/bus home to the ‘burbs—-though most of us peasants just schlep ourselves home anyway. Regardless, this is Not👏At👏All👏 the kind of “studio apartment” which should be considered your main home.
Load More Replies... WilvanderHeijden 5 years ago
Real estate prices are indeed going through the roof in some countries. Has got partially to do with building rules that make it impossible to build a new houses at an affordable price and with investors buying property as a long term investment. In some parts of the Netherlands, city councils have made that impossible because you have an obligation to live in the house that you buy in that region. I'm lucky. I bought my house for around €60 000 and now it's estimated at €218 000.
chi-wei shen 5 years ago
My house where we raised our 4 children isn't worth more than 200,000 €, and it's a nice home and each of the children had a separate room.
D C 2 years ago (edited)
I don't get people who whine about the high prices in literally the largest city in their country/region/state. Do you understand how supply and demand works? High demand. Higher prices. Because more people want it. And yes.. someone will pay. And real estate is a finite resource.. unless you start building vertically. But even that costs extra in construction that someone has to be paid for. You want to live in London? Pay London prices.
The-JoeBai 4 years ago
I wouldn’t recommend that *anyone* live in Larne, even if they were the ones being paid…
Derek Neibarger 5 years ago
In 1991, I rented an apartment the same size, but with a shared shower/toilet, for $120 a month.
Julia Mi 5 years ago
Roughly 212k pounds can buy you: a brand new 2 bedroom (3 bathrooms) townhouse
with back garden, garage, in front of community outdoor swimming pool.
in Dubai (barely 30 minutes to downtown or to prime tourist location Marina) tadaaa
either way cannot afford :D but just sayin' Screen-Sho...2f-png.jpg
Odette Greyling 5 years ago
The same thing here in Spain. You can buy a 45m2 flat in the centre of Barcelona for 1.200 000 euro. Not a joke at all. And some idiot with too much money will buy it and turn it into a luxury tourist trap which will send the prices in that area up even more. Barcelonians are actually leaving the city because of this. I assume this is happening elsewhere too?
Steve Cruz 5 years ago
I have friends who were bought out of a true hovel on a redevelopment site. They bought three former Council Flats (welfare housing) with a large deck for £70,000 each. They planned to flip and sell them, but the tenants they moved in were zero trouble and achieved all the renovations in exchange for reduced rent. They're now worth around £1 Million each and they receive a tax consideration for providing stable low rent to the same tenants who have been in them over 25 years.
Isabella 5 years ago
It's not only UK problem. It's all over the world. In Poland main cities like Krakow or Warsaw - you won't even buy a flat for 200K PLN. No way. And there is not one place in Poland where you can get house as one of those in photos for this price... so yeah, half of us is homeless by the law - since we don't own any place, and second half either live with parents [miserable thing to do when you are over your 30s, since more and more drama comes in] or crammed with random strangers in small student apartments :/
Stannous Flouride 5 years ago
Over 50% of the houses and flats in London are bought for second homes or lease/rental investments. Between 2014 and 2019 the percentage owned by non-UK natives went from 10% to 24% (and since Brexit the cost of the top 10% most expensive ones have exploded as the £ became devalued). About half the luxury apartments in recently built towers fail to sell within the first two years and ¼ remain empty much longer. The "housing crisis" is not caused by a lack of housing, it's caused by greed and speculation. A study done at Cambridge and MIT last year found that simply building more units can never solve the issue. Without gov't intervention in the form of lower taxes builders have no incentive to build less expensive housing. And since it takes years for a project to get approved they have plenty of time to assess the market. Long before the market reaches the needed capacity they have moved on to other projects.
Stannous Flouride 5 years ago
In San Francisco a 3 BR flat in a 3 unit building sells for about $1,200 per square foot.
Load More Replies... Erica Vandegrift 5 years ago
Meanwhile in Georgia (US) we bought our 7 bedroom, 3 bath house on almost 8 acres for $160k. (We lived in New Hampshire and Maryland as well and that price would get you a crappy trailer in those states. But still more than that awful flat)
Bob Belcher 5 years ago
I wonder what will happen to prices if companies allow their staff to continue working from home. There would be no point in paying excess premiums to live downtown.
Lara Mig 5 years ago
I live in San Francisco and there's already a wave of Silicon Valley techies moving out into cheaper locations. Rents have fallen in response to that.
Load More Replies... Adam Francis 5 years ago
A studio like that in Palo Alto, CA goes for 1 million. No joke. If you're really lucky you might be able to find one for 900k
Rob Chapman 5 years ago
The San Francisco Bay Area & New York City are exactly the same, if not much worse. I just saw a listing for a 800 sq ft studio condo in the suburbs 15 miles from SF, repeat, studio condo...for $900,000, Then there's rent. The studio apartment I rented just 6 years ago for $1000 is now renting for $3500. It's 480 sq ft.
Sasha Kuleshov 5 years ago
With ₤200,000 I can buy here in México a three story house in a well-to-do neighborhood -with a view- and still have some to spend on extra furniture ($5,739,080 pesos) XD
Parmeisan 5 years ago
Cost of living shouldn't really be discussed without also talking about minimum/average wages in that area. Yes, cost of a house alone does matter if you're considering moving somewhere e.g. once retired. But in most cases you also need to know what will happen to your salary in any given profession if you move - you might be in for a terrible surprise otherwise.
Meyer Weinstock 5 years ago
Add another US$150K and you have San Francisco, which is even more expensive than New York.
Treessimontrees 5 years ago
It's sadly not that stupid to buy this, as if you stayed in a hotel it would be minimum 25k a year, at an average of 100 a night, if you could find a hotel at that price. And this place goes up in value month on month as there's always someone else who will pay more for it. A place to literally sleep and shower.
Martti Laurson 5 years ago
$250K in Estonia gives you a 5 bedroom house with a nice big yard close to the city. https://www.city24.ee/en/real-estate/9231581?selectedTabMenu=list
Pittsburgh rare 5 years ago
In most Spanish cities, £200.000 won't get you a house but an apartment and in major cities will most likely be an old, run down apartment that needs full renovation. That's how crazy and artificially inflated our housing market is. About time people started investing in smaller towns /villages and work remotely whenever possible and flip the bird to all those vulture realtors
Pamela24 5 years ago
Prague is faster and faster becoming its own little Eastern European London, unfortunately. :( But it's hard to fight against it when most of what's happening is there, so are a lot of people. I envy people form Vienna for example where there's a better distribution of city-owned apartments and the market is somewhat reasonably regulated.
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