Comment by JansjoFromIkea
8 years ago
I've lived in both SF (and Berkeley) and London. Accommodation in London zone 1 is a good bit lower than SF without the same level of competition. Accommodation further out is (overall) significantly cheaper than the BART accessible parts of Oakland and Berkeley with a drastically better public transportation setup. Pretty cool and inexpensive but (by London standards) not that accessible areas like Peckham are about as long of a commute into zone 1 as my Civic Center to Berkeley BART commute, and probably much shorter once you factor in the time spent waiting on platforms at before getting on and/or a connection at 19th Street/MacArthur.
It's actually possible for me, a not-especially-good junior/mid developer to consider living alone with a <40 minute commute in London; that seemed to be a no go for guys making far more than me in SF.
All that being said, I saved a stupid amount of money in SF working on intern level wages. If your goal is to slum it and accumulate money, London does not come close. SF is a place to go and pile up money with a get out plan in mind.
I was curious about this since it seems unlikely SF can be so much more expensive than London. When I looked into it a couple of months ago, I found zone 1 London rents are a fair bit higher than equivalent apartments in SF if you compare by square-footage and quality. I speculate that the idea SF is much pricier than London is caused by significantly lower standards/expectations for London.
Well it's needless to speculate, the variation is because London has the public transportation infrastructure to keep demand in prime areas under control. Wanting a large high quality apartment in zone 1 of London is a trio of luxuries that most people will happily compromise on, and they have the ability to do so without it being a big issue.
As far as space is concerned, in my experience one of the Bay Area's biggest problems was inefficient use of space in every which way possible. Even beyond the lack of usage of vertical space, every room I had was pretty huge, double bed, desk, room to do just about any kind of yoga I could think of and still a ton of extra on top of that. I'd have happily traded half of it for a few hundred off my rent.
I'd need to know what metrics are being used for quality (e.g. I'd take an absolute slum of a single room over sharing in prime apartment).
Thanks for the input! I haven't lived in London for long, but I found I had much more disposable income in SF, even compared to living in a non-London uk city.
Talking to people from around the US, it's just generally cheaper in other places in the US. Gas is cheaper, insurance, (non-SF)rent etc.