London is a city on most people’s bucket lists. Whether you want to live there or just visit, there’s something for everyone – museums, theatre, attractions, places to eat, the list goes on.
If you’re one of the people who want to live there, you will no doubt be wanting to know the cost of living in London and whether or not you can afford its high prices (slight spoiler there!)
We’re here to help! We’ve got answers to what the cost of living in London is, whilst also telling you what salary you need to live comfortably in London and also the expense of London compared to other cities.
If you want to quickly find an answer, you can use this menu as a guide:
To be short and honest, yes London is expensive to live in. London actually has the 3rd highest property prices in the world (according to ‘Salary after tax’). This would lead you to question why the cost of living in London is so high? What is making London so expensive?
Well…
London is the financial capital of the world, as it captures both Eastern and Western time zones so can gain capital a lot faster than other countries. This means London will generally offer the highest paid jobs, causing more people to move to London following a better pay, increasing the demand for housing, which sadly pushes up the prices of housing, meaning a high cost of living in London.
London also attracts big and small businesses, as due to the high volume of people in London, whether they who live there or tourists, having a business in London will almost guarantee your business attracting traffic. The attraction of businesses is another factor that causes a high cost of living in London.
Although a big cost of living in London is paying for housing, whether that be buying or renting, paying for transport, food shopping, and going out for food are also larger costs in London than in other cities in the UK.
If you’re wanting to buy or rent a house in London but don’t know where to start looking, we’ve written an article about the cheapest and up-and-coming areas in London, so be sure to check it out!
There is no one cost of living in London, as everyone will live in different places, in a house of differing sizes, and will have different spending habits – there’s no ‘one size fits all’!
To help you get a rough idea of the cost of living in London, we have a few lists of prices of ‘essentials’, such as rental prices, cost of transport, and utilities:
Rental prices:
House purchase prices:
Statistics from ‘MoverDB’
Cost of Transport:
Statistics from ‘Salary after tax’
Day to day ‘utilities’:
Statistics from ‘Numbeo’
Everyone will have a different idea of what ‘comfortable’ is, as we all have different spending habits, so, once again, this answer is only a guide. Taking into account the cost of living in London, the salary one person would need to earn to live comfortably on their own is 40k a year.
If there’s two people, both parties need to earn at least 30k a year, as this would leave you with about £4000 and after covering housing, travel, food shopping, etc, you would have about £1500 to spend on whatever you’d like – whether that’s shopping, going out, travelling abroad or maybe saving too.
If you want to see where your salary would get you in London, this calculator will be a useful guide. It will tell you what sort of standard of living you could have in London compared to other cities and will also tell you what sort of accommodation you could afford to live in.
When you decide to live anywhere, it’s a good idea to think about the ‘good and bad bits’ of living in the area. With the cost of living in London being so high, it’s extra important to be sure that the good outweighs the costs.
To help you decide, we’ve got together a list of pros and cons of living in London. It’s important to remember something that we’ve put down as a pro could be something that you see as a con, so if you’re seriously considering living in London, you may want to write your own list too:
PROS:
CONS:
On the note of comparing London to other areas, our next section compares the housing, food shopping and restaurant cost of living in London compared to other cities across both the UK and the globe…
So, by now we know the cost of living in London is high, but we don’t know how this fares compared to other cities – is it just a case of all cities being expensive, not just London?
Well let’s find out…
Here is how London rent compared to other cities around the world:
City | Percentage difference |
Edinburgh | 55.68% less than London |
New York | 41.73% more than London |
Los Angeles | 5.48% less than London |
Toronto | 42.35% less than London |
Sydney | 5.52% less than London |
Paris | 40.01% less than London |
Dubai | 3.97% more than London |
Statistics from Numbeo
Here is how food shopping in London compares to other cities around the world:
City | Percentage difference |
New York | 40.96% more than London |
Toronto | 6.96% more than London |
Sydney | 25.51% more than London |
Paris | 21.26% more than London |
Dubai | About the same |
Statistics from Numbeo
Here is how restaurants in London compares to other cities around the world:
City | Percentage difference |
New York | 8.58% more than London |
Toronto | 36.14% less than London |
Sydney | 23.08% less than London |
Paris | 15.63% less than London |
Dubai | 39.39% less than London |
Statistics from Numbeo
What do you think about the cost of living in London? Does it outweigh the pros of living there? Whether you have another question about the cost of living in London or want to have a go at writing an article like this, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Millie is perfectionist with a passion for property and writing articles. You’ll find her researching the latest housing trends and the newest up and coming areas worth investing in. Read more about Millie here.
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