Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain under the Microscope. 欢迎你回到闲话英伦. Hello, Alan.

Hello Lulu. Hello, everyone.

Let's continue our price comparison between life in London and life in Beijing.

Absolutely.

Today we're gonna move on from food to housing. 衣食住行我们说了 “食” 今天来说 “住”. Housing is a big thing for people living anywhere in the world really.

Pretty much. Whenever you get people getting together, you can always guarantee that house prices or housing always come up in conversation. Same in China as well.

So today we're gonna talk about three things we're gonna talk about for university students. I know a lot of our listeners, you are students so you live in universities. We are gonna talk about university dorms and then we're gonna move on to renting and then we're gonna move on to buying, covering the entire spectrum. Talking about university dorms first, my university days are behind me, but I remember university dorms in China there heavily subsidized, so they're quite cheap. 在中国住这个学校宿舍because we have likes 6 or even 8 people in a room. It's quite cheap. What about in the UK? Is it the same like cheap?

Let's stay with London and Beijing. So same as the previous episode, let's take a look at UCL as a good example.

UCL, that’s right in the center of London.

It's right in the center of London. It's a university that I know many of our listeners have heard of. And it's a good way of indicating kind of roughly how much it will be in in London.

Great.

First of all, UCL, same as many London universities, doesn't have a campus.

If it doesn't have a campus, where do people stay in?

They normally live in halls of residence or they rent themselves.

Halls of residence is a little bit like dorms.

It is. And halls of residents, they are normally spread out throughout the city. They're close, but they're normally spread out. First of all, one major difference in China in a dormitory, you'll normally share in a room with people.

With lots of people I guess.

With lots of people. In the UK, you’ll may be only sharing with one extra person or in many cases you have your own room.

And how much is it? I'm really curious.

A catered twin in UCL, that's not en suite.

Ok, let me explain. Catered means someone providing you food就相当于包食宿的这种twin would be two people in a room. Not en suite means you don't have a toilet. A bathroom in your room.

Yeah, you have to share. That is ￡170 per week.

Per week. 一周是170磅, 那一个月就是680磅了.

Yes. It's not cheap.

That's a lot. That's only dorms, essentially. What about if I don't want food, I just want a single and I want my own bathroom.

You want a single with your own bathroom. If you don't want food, but you want your own en suite. You're looking at ￡210 to￡270 per week.

￡210 to￡270! What kind of students can pay that price seriously?

There are some students that can pay that price.

Wow. If you cannot afford it, I guess you just cannot go to universities in London.

Pretty much. Yeah, you do have the option that you can rent somewhere.

That's what we're gonna talk about. Is renting any cheaper than halls of residence?

Not much.

So let's talk about renting. A lot of people they do share house or flat. In London, you can choose to rent house or to rent flat. Let's just say within London, in the center, let's just say still around UCL or just center of London. One bedroom flat.

A one bedroom flat per month would be￡1,700 roughly.

￡1,700 that would be fifteen thousand RMB. 15,000左右, 这是一居室是吗？

Yeah.

I think in Beijing even in the central area, one bedroom is probably going to be half of that. So that's much, much cheaper.

But you need to take into consideration the extra costs. So that includes council tax.

Council tax is what you have to pay on top of your rent which is usually over￡100 a month.

It is anywhere between ￡100 to￡200 a month.

这个就叫房屋税, it's a kind of tax, right？

It's a tax. It's for essential services in that area. But the more expensive the area, the higher the council tax.

I guess probably some people would have to, like in Beijing you have to move way out of London.

But if you are student, one bit of good news is that you don't have to pay the council tax.

As a student, you don't have to pay.

As a student, you don't have to pay. But you do have to pay for electricity, gas, heating.

See, in Beijing I don't even think about that because really compared to the housing price, electricity, gas. All of these, they are not really that expensive, a few hundreds, maybe.

In the UK, it's not the case. If take an example, you're not a student. You have a 90 square meter flat in London. You're looking at probably￡180 per month. All the bills.

Just for utilities, water, electricity and gas, 水电煤气. 一个月就将近1600人民币了. That's for 90 square meter flat. Yes, I just chose to forget all of that. Now I remember paying quite a lot for gas electricity, but since the rent is so high, how can people afford to？Because in China we say like押一付三，押二付三, how can people pay that amount of money, 3-month rent？

That's because in the UK, what we would normally do is you'd pay a maximum of 2 months in advance and deposit is normally, let's say1 month roughly.

That's the same.

But sometimes you can negotiate with the landlord. If you pay more up front, you might get a slight reduction on the rent.

You can negotiate a little bit. So living in a dorm, in the halls is very expensive, renting hugely expensive, probably doubling the price in Beijing. Buying must be also through the roof then.

Compared with Beijing, not really.

This is something that's really getting to me. To buy, Beijing is almost comparable to London. But renting, half of the price.

That's correct. I would say the things that are quite expensive are the extra things like.

Let's get to that in a bit. First of all, let's talk about when you're buying, how is the price calculated? Do you do per square meter or whatever, per square feet?

No.

For you, it’s just a total price of the house.

It’s a total price. It's the number of rooms, it's the location. It's also the price as set by other houses and flats, in the neighborhood as well.

I see. That's roughly the same. And then about down payment. About down payment就是首付. In China, down payment is still quite high. I'm not sure exactly how much. It depends on the projects, but definitely over 20%, sometimes even over 30%. In the UK how much down payment do you have to put down?

The lowest is about 5%. If you're a first time buyer. And that's something you might get government support with. But you are looking maybe about 10%, 20%, 30%.

Obviously you can put down as much as you want, but I think it is possible to buy if you only put down 15% for example, what about mortgage rate？按揭贷款, 房贷的percentage, I know for a fact it's much lower than in China.

In the UK it's normally less than 3%.

I think right now, according to the stats that I’ve checked: lower than 3%. It's much, much higher in China. We're not gonna go into the details because it's so complex, but early on you said there's a lot of extra cost apart from all these entrusted banks. In the UK, you actually have to go through a lawyer to buy a house.

You have to hire a solicitor. You also have to surveyor, and also, very importantly, you have to pay stamp duty as well.

这个我听说过叫印花税. Yeah, it's just like a house whenever you want to buy a house or flat, you need to pay and it's a percentage of the house and how much is that？

It depends on how expensive the house is. It can be between 2% to 10 %.

2% to 10%. That’s another chunk of money.

And also it depends if it's your second or third home as well.

That's the same here. Actually, that makes me really curious. Do we know the average house cost, house price in London?

In London, it's according to the latest statistics, it's about￡476,000.

Let me do my math, that be roughly 4.2million 400多万. I don't think in Beijing you can get anywhere decent to be honest.

But in London you could actually get yourself a house for that.

And although perhaps not in center London, it is still on the outskirts.

Yeah, it will be in the suburbs but relatively easy to get to London.

I'm not sure in Beijing like in the suburbs how much is it. I live in very, very expensive area, so I don't really know other parts of Beijing, what is it like, but I think just about 4 million in Beijing you won't get much you really wouldn't be able to get much.

No, no.

But we all know housing is all about location. What about all over UK?

The average cost of the house in the UK is￡218,000.

So less than half of London. 所以整个英国来说平均房价是差不多不到200万人民币这样, and that's a house.

That would be a house. There were some areas that more expensive than others. Generally the further south you are, the more expensive the house is. The closer to London it is, the more expensive it is.

Same here in China. If you're talking about the first-tier cities, think about Shenzhen. That is even crazier than Beijing. Okay, today we've talked about halls for students, we talked about renting, we talk about buying. If you guys have ever lived or been to London, or if you are living in Beijing or any of the other cities in China, share with us what it is like in your city. So we can compare.

Can't wait to see your responses.

We'll see you next time.

Bye.

Bye.