ROOM WANTED

edited October 2011 in Local discussion
I am posting on behalf of some one else:-


Room Wanted

Female professional n/s looking for a room to rent in the Crouch End/Stroud Green Road/Highgate/Muswell Hill area.
I have lived in Crouch End for more than eight years. I am leaving my current flat as the landlord is selling the property.
I'm a huge fan of the area and would love to stay.
I have a budget of £500 pcm inclusive of bills.
If you can help, please call Eileen on: 07980 663606.
Thank you.

Comments

  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • KazKaz
    edited 3:25PM
    Misscara is right, not many cheap flats around here. On that note, I'm also looking if anyone knows anything! Crouch End/Stroud Green-ish. Room in flat share or studio, could stretch to 600-650. I know I'm being optimistic, but whisper if you know of anything! When the f**k did it become so bloody expensive to live around here??? I don't want to live at the end of the central line! Agh....
  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • edited 3:25PM
    You might be lucky... I know of one person who was lucky enough to get an incredibly bargainous and lovely room in a gorgeous house through a post on this forum. Keep trying!
  • KazKaz
    edited 3:25PM
    Where do you check on Twitter? Any particular sites worth following or is it just random posts from people? Already checking spareroom and gumtree and various estate agents. Flathunting is a fulltime job! Would be up for buddying up, but my working hours are all over the place, so would be really difficult for me to meet up and see flats with people. :(
  • edited 3:25PM
    We should push for more social housing. Why should greedy landlords/ladys make money off the back of hard working people. Often these people have got these properties through inheritance or luck and then rent them out at high prices to make easy money. Scumbags.

    On a positive note I know of many people who have got bargains in the private sector.
  • edited 3:25PM
  • I keep hearing about these bargains - friend of a friend of a friend - but I've yet to find one.

    We've been looking for years to move out of our tiny one-bed flat into a larger one, but rents have outpaced our salaries. We'd have to pay an extra £200 a month to get anything even remotely decent.

    £500 a month for a room seems very low. That's the equivalent of £1,000 a month for a two-bed flat. A two-bed in SG goes for £1500+, excluding bills.

    We may be in a recession, but there are still plenty of people who want to live here, and who can afford it.
  • edited 3:25PM
    You may be lucky and find a homeowner privately renting out a spare room that's not too greedy, but even so, I think £500 including bills is a bit optomistic for the area.
  • edited 3:25PM
    @Kreuzkav. Where do you draw the line between someone being allowed to make money from something and when not? Food is a basic need, like shelter, but i don't see people going on about having subsidised food from Tesco or the £2.99 "low income meal deal" at Petek. As for trust fund landlords, another generalisation (which may or may not be true)....either way, it would appear that in your eyes anyone born into money should either give it all away or will forever be an evil scumbag. Something tells me you may have a much higher quality of life if you didn't choose to live in a area where your resentment of gentrification just bubbles hotter and hotter every day. I hope you're not going to turn into Michael Douglas in Falling Down! I was in Burnley 2 weeks ago. You could quite easily buy yourself a nice 2-bedroom terrace for £20,000. Alternatively, you could rent one from my girlfriends dad at £40 a week...extra fiver a week for a new shower! Plus, at Xmas he buys all his tennants an xmas present and delivers it. Affordable housing is out there, it just might not be where you want it to be. As Kirsty and phil always say......."thats the compromise!"
  • I hate to sound like a Tory, but I think that housing benefit is part of the problem. I don't really have any data on this, just personal observation. Most of my London friends are poor student/artist/charity worker types. The ones who work and pay the rent live in smaller flats than those who get housing benefit.

    The local housing allowance for a one-bed flat is much more generous than what we can afford to pay. One friend had to move out of her lovely flat once she got a job. She couldn't afford to pay what housing benefit was paying.

    I have no problem with landlords charging what the market can bear. I'm just not thrilled with the government pushing up the market price while benefit recipients complain that it's not enough.
  • edited 3:25PM
    I agree with you rainbow. I know of people living on Stroud Green Road, in nice ground floor one bed flats that have never worked a day in their life. Meanwhile, even though I have a relatively well paid job, I can't afford a flat to myself and have to houseshare.

    It's not really fair that someone who has never paid a penny in tax, and has no intention of ever getting of their arse and doing a days work should have a flat in an expensive area. Obviously there are genuine cases where people need help, but it seems bonkers to me that situations like this exist.

    I'm sure people that have claimed benefits for years like this would soon find a job if they were told they had to move to a towerblock in an undesirable area if they wanted benefits to pay for it!

    Hmm, I'm sounding like a tory now too.....
  • edited 3:25PM
    I have to agree that £500 is very optimistic. The price you pay is reflected in the quality of the accomodation. We have just let out a spare room through Gumtree. I must say we chose the person through her advert rather than advertised it ourselves, so may that be a possiblity for you? Good luck.
  • edited 3:25PM
    Please read my post again, I was sympathising with the plight of hard working people who don't earn much and have to pay high prices for a room in a shared house or for a flat.

    I think that this view equating social housing with housing benefit is a bit of an over-dramatisation. Yes, I'm sure many people who live on council estates claim benefits, but the vast majority of people who live in properties provided by my social housing group work (including myself). I think social housing cuts out the middle-man when done properly. And many operate without any subsidies from the government apart from a few interest free loans. It's a positive solution to the housing situation. And many of these properties are low grade and require the tenants to put in a lot of effort to bring them up to a standard, which is fair enough.
  • edited October 2011
    @ Brodiej. I'm not going to start gunning down the toffs that have moved into this area. It's always been a bit middle class round here. It's just that a cruder type (with more money) have moved in recently. Places like Bolangerie Bon Matin have set up shop trying to turn it into Crouch End. I like it a bit rough and ready which is how it still generally is.
  • KazKaz
    edited 3:25PM
    I came across a two bed in Homerton the other day, 375 per week. I guess I'll be moving to Burnley... I think I am actually entitled to some form of support as I'm not earning very much. But, to be honest, frankly I prefer to work harder/more, even if that means having two jobs. I'm not disabled, I don't have any dependants, I'm not ill, I'm sure there are people who need social housing way more than me. I could have easily gotten a boring arse job just as a receptionist or PA in the city and earned way more than I do now. But I choose not to. You can't have it all, as they say. There is something wrong somewhere though when 30-40 somethings with a decent job and income still have to share flats and struggle to get on the property ladder...
  • edited 3:25PM
    I wish we were more like other European countries where renting was the normal and affordable thing to do and people weren't utterly obssessed with owning property.
  • KazKaz
    edited 3:25PM
    I quite like renting, as I'm not very practical when it comes to fixing stuff. But it is a massive pain when your landlord decides to sell and you are all settled. And it would be nice to think you had the hope of owning your own place at some point in time before retirement.
  • edited 3:25PM
    Gosh that post started a discussion. Which I suppose just reflects the way housing is the big issue in London, and compared to the rest of the country getting more pronounced every day. (I see that prices in "Central London" went up by nine per cent last year)

    My friend is looking for a room in a shared house and may have better luck in the Crouch End area as there are a lot of large houses there not yet turned into flats or bed sits. Also during a recession you get people taking in lodgers.
  • edited 3:25PM
    @David Barry - you're definitely right about that, I spent a very long time looking for a room in Crouch End, and there are some lovely huge houses there - even if the bedrooms are usually on the small side. The downside of course is that there's a LOT of people wanting to live there, which means that the people renting are spoiled for choice. And it turns into an inevitable popularity contest.

    Crouchy is great but of course Stroud Green is better.... ;)
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