| Perhaps it is local familiary. Living in Oakland and working in San Francisco I made $175k and was able to save $4,500 per month after all of my living and familial expenses. When I’ve spoken to companies in London they seemed to max out around $100k. Whenever I looked at apartments online trying to find an equivalent lifestyle (30 minutes door to door commute, nearby parks and restauranta, 1 br 85 m^2 with good amenities) the rent always came out about the same as what I was paying ($1,840/month). The difference being home in Oakland My hood was mostly single family homes with yards (and a few yuppy apartment complexes like mine). In London everything within that commute range seemed to be a concrete jungle, and I couldnt figure out how to find an equivalent neighborhood withot really going far away from the tech companies. Whenever I visit london my dollar never seemed to stretch far and food / groceries / transit felt reallly spendy. London pubtrans is clearly better than anywhere in the USA, that goes without sayyng, but was also more expensive (if I went to the office I think I paid $4 each way for the transbay bus, with a 5-10 minute walk on each end of my commute). It’s a great city (except for the traffic. I would be terrified to ride a bicycle there), and one of my favorite things to do in life is smoke a spliff and walk down the camden locks trail. |
The 30 minutes door to door commute is the problem if comparing, as London is huge. A 1 hour commute is closer to the norm. But a 1 hour commute on a train is very different to the same 1 hour if you're driving and can't spend a good chunk of it with your face in a book or watching Netflix or whatever.
In terms of housing, my current mortgage for a 3 bedroom terraced house with a garden in London is about USD $2k/month, but that does mean living further out from the centre than what you want.
For anyone moving to London, my tip is Croydon. It has an awful reputation which is mostly unearned (it's a very large borough, and very diverse, and it's reputation is pretty much down to scale and some small pockets of the most deprived parts of the borough), and so it's unreasonably cheap for how good transport links it has in to the centre. There are places in London I might prefer if money was no object, but money really would need to be no object, as up until maybe the 3-4 million pound range you'll get more for your money here than ost other places in town.