Estate agents UK - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

‘Trust me, I’m an estate agent …’

Updated: 12 March 2022 | Published: 8 August 2021 ~ For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London

Warning!
In response to Russia’s special operation aimed at ‘demilitarising and de-Nazifying Ukraine’, the UK media has embarked upon and is actively pursuing an intensive propaganda programme which is resulting in widespread anti-Russian sentiment and Russophobia. Aimed at cancelling Russian culture and demonising Russian citizens at every level, incidents of verbal abuse and physical aggression towards Russian nationals have been reported in various western countries, including the UK. This comes against the backdrop of reports suggesting that Facebook is greenlighting hate speech against Russians on its social media platform. You are advised to travel to the UK only for essential reasons and whilst there to exercise caution.

Part 4

Part 1: A warning to the Curious
Part 2: How it was for us …
Part 3: Russians Moving to London: Costs

Disclaimer

This is the third in a series of blog articles in which I provide Russian’s who are considering emigrating to the UK real advice, as opposed to the jaunty ‘I’m off to uni’ kind that has about as much gravitas as the WHO in the midst of a pandemic.

It is a ‘taken for granted’ that all who read this are fully apprised of the latest situation pertaining to coronavirus, as defined by the UK government, and equally are fully cognisant of UK travel and entry requirements regarding Covid-19 testing, quarantine and the many and numerous Covid-related restrictions that apply within the UK, especially with regard to ‘vaccination passports’.

This accepted, I write this guide with the honest but bemused assumption that in spite of common sense there are still people who, possibly because they have recently missed their psychiatric appointments, are yet to be dissuaded from moving to Plague Island, and it is with them in mind that I do proceed. Forgive me.

For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London / Jump to Section
Disclaimer
Introduction
Methodology
Cornwall
Penzance
Renting property in Penzance
Buying property in Penzance
Council Tax in Penzance
Crime in Penzance
Durham
Renting property in Durham
Buying property in Durham
Council Tax in Durham
Crime in Durham
Conclusion

Introduction

When anybody asks me in Russia where did I live in the UK, they expect me to answer London, and if I miss out the fact that I did live in London choosing instead to mention one of the 14 other places where I also lived whilst in the UK, they are either stumped or do not want to know. This is because most Russians, like a lot of other people around the world, confuse London with England and have precious little knowledge of anything else about the UK.

This is not their fault, because after all London is the capital city of the United Kingdom, but the disproportionate focus on London at the expense of the rest of the country has been a transformatory one, effectively turning London from capital into country and eclipsing England in the process.

The way in which the UK, and England in particular, is portrayed falsely implies that where London leads the rest of the country follows, which, as my Indian friend would politely put it, is ‘bullshit’! (He’s a real refuge from Idi Amin!) Everything, especially the socio-political makeup of the UK is filtered through a metropolitan media that writes about issues that have no relevance for anyone except a certain political class that lives in a world of virtual reality known to them as London. The UK media is little more than the public relations arm of what is commonly referred to as the ‘Islington set’, a catchall that speaks for itself, as Islington is the London borough that symbolises the unholy ground of neoliberal elitism.

What this means is that the behaviour, beliefs, dogma, political prejudices, attitudes, in fact most everything that you read about UK life as conveyed by its mainstream media is hopelessly skewed and distorted. It represents the minority view of a small percentage of people who live in the Island of London within the British Isles, most of which are as English as Genghis Khan (isn’t he the mayor of London?) and only just make British by virtue of a paper pledge bubble-gum stuck to rights that could be whipped away at a moment’s notice by any political wind depending on where it is coming from and the force of its emission.

Well said that man!

In order for you to know England, not the UK or the spurious Britain in which hardly any Britons live, you need to get out of London and go elsewhere in the country. I am not advocating that you give up on London altogether, far from it. For all its faults and pitfalls, London is ~ still is ~ an interesting and dynamic place, so not to go there would be doing yourself a great disservice. But going there does not mean that you have to live there; you might not even want to live there. So, by all means travel to London to see what it is like, buy yourself some union jack underpants, put them on smartishly so as not to offend the ‘minorities’ and, if you have any money left after you’ve paid your rail fare and been duly mugged in Enrichment Street, you can tell your friends you’ve been to London, and they will be impressed, if only because you’ve been to London and lived to tell the tale. Alternatively, you could save yourself the risk, the bother and the cash, have a cheap day out in Scunthorpe and tell a fib instead!

Experience over or conscience placated, it is now time to get a feel of what England is really like. I will say that again: what England is really like and what English life is about. To do this, you should venture forth, like the fictional character Blackadder, into England’s provincial towns and villages.

I am not suggesting that you substitute London for Manchester, Brum (Birmingham), Leeds and so on. A large city is a large city, and all of England’s cities have suffered the irretrievable fate of the ignominious liberal experiment. Of course, if that is what you have come to see and want to experience, then go to these places you must. But I should warn you that most sane people in the UK, those who have not been indoctrinated and are still free thinkers, most of whom live in the provinces, would only end up in these places if they accidently caught the wrong bus, and then they would not admit to having been there. However, as you are ‘not from ’round ‘ere’ no one can really blame you. I should mention at this point, however, that many of the UK’s smaller towns, especially those ‘up North’ also have the blight. Size is not a guarantee, but sometimes you might be lucky..

Methodology

In the scope of this post and considering that I want to go for a beer, it is not possible, you’ll be pleased to know, for me to ramble on about every town and village in England, so with this in mind, and that pint or six I’m waiting for, I’ll confine myself to outlines and pointers and then we’ll move on to housing costs.

For the sake of brevity and extremes, I am going to follow the simplistic plan of dividing England along its traditional faultline, North and South, but whilst skirting adroitly around London, please do bear in mind that there are many other towns, and indeed villages, from which you can learn about English life other than the two examples that I have chosen here.

For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London: Cornwall

We will start with Cornwall in the southwest of England. It is an interesting place for many reasons, one being that a small group of Cornish nationalists, whilst not pushing for complete independence from England in the way that the Crimea yearned to return to Russia to avoid becoming a vassal EU state, have none the less made protestations for their county to be granted some degree of regional autonomy. This is quite ironic, as I am sure I am not alone in my estimation that Cornwall (and its neighbouring counties Devon, Dorset and Somerset) is one of the most English places in England. I will underline that again English, emphasised because the term British has been hijacked, misappropriated and rendered virtually meaningless by invasion-abetted politics and its confederate appeasement policies.

For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London Map of Cornwall England

Where Cornwall is exactly can easily be determined by a cursory glance at the map of the British Isles. It is the last county at the tapering end of the country, a peninsula of wild moorland, small atmospheric towns and ancient villages. Its two coastlines, no more than 22 miles apart, offer holidaymakers beautiful sandy beaches on the south side and a dramatic shoreline of precipitous cliffs on the north. The south coast, with its quaint harbour villages and sandy coves has earnt itself the name of the Cornish Riviera; the north as the place to go for dynamic seascapes and surfing. At the furthermost tip of Cornwall lies Land’s End, the most westerly point in mainland England. It is rugged, dynamic and a little bit spoilt by over-commercialisation but nevertheless remains one of the country’s most famous landmarks.

For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London: Land's End Signpost

Like the sound of it already? Then let’s take a look at how much it costs to rent or buy a property in this little corner of southwest England.

For no other reason other than that I have been there, the first town that I have chosen for this exercise is Penzance.

For Russians Moving to UK Towns Penzance

For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London: Penzance

Penzance is the last major town in Cornwall before the land runs out at Land’s End. Hey, you don’t think that’s why they called it Land’s End, do you?! It is a market town, whose historical claim to fame is that in the latter years of the 19^th century it was the only coastal town in Cornwall to have its own promenade. Also in the 19th century, the Great Western Railway reached the end of the line at Penzance, a culmination that swiftly diversified its age-old status as a thriving port to that of a major holiday resort. Some say that its holiday appeal has tapered off in recent years, but how much this has to do with the fickleness of tourist preference and how much with being locked down in your own home whilst wearing a mask and putting ‘I’ve had my vaccine’ on your rainbow-tinted Facebook avatar is anybody’s guess and, in all likelihood, tomorrow’s documentary.

What I can say is that to help me with my inquiries regarding renting and buying properties in Penzance, my first port of call was to what has been described as the UK’s largest online real-estate portal and property website. I can see that you are impressed!

Renting property in Penzance

Surprisingly, the largest property-search website in the UK returned no more than four properties to rent in Penzance, and this return was based on a non-filtered search query.

Bottom of the barrel and top of the least expensive list was a one-bedroom property at £460 per calendar month, offering the potential tenant a mouth-watering zero-deposit carrot.

About the deposit: In my previous article on renting property in London, I mentioned the dreaded deposit. This is a lump sum that the prospective tenant pays in addition to one month’s rent in advance as surety to the landlord that on leaving the property the bricks, mortar, fixtures, fittings and furnishings (if there are any) are in the same condition as when the tenant moved in.

The deposit is usually, but not always, equal to a month’s rent. It is a built-in safeguard for the landlord that the tenant treats his property with respect, based on a legal agreement that on vacation of the property should any damage or excessive wear and tear be evident, the cost of repair and/or replacement will be deducted from the deposit. In the event that the property is in tip-top shape on the day that the tenant leaves, theoretically the deposit that he or she has paid should be refunded in full.

This all sounds reasonable enough, until the time comes for you to leave the property. It is then that your scurrilous landlord, or rather the crooked estate agent acting on his behalf, accuses you of all sorts of vandalism, for which you have no redress, and consequently holds back a large proportion of your deposit to compensate for fictitious damage and/or depreciation. So, it is a real boon if you can rent a property in the UK where the deposit is waived, although my advice to you is deposit or no deposit, before you move in take as many photos as possible of the flat/house and all its contents and make sure the photos are date stamped. Even better, send copies to the estate agent, making sure to home in on any existing damage and anything else that is worn and jaded.

For Russians Moving to UK Towns Vampire estate agents

This property, the one-bedroomed one advertised in Penzance , offers the inducement of ‘zero deposit available’. Why ‘available’ and not just ‘zero deposit’ is I suspect a difference to be ultimately determined by the score that your credit-rating check returns, a game-changing factor which can ultimately make the difference between getting that flat you are after or being flatly refused. And incidentally, credit scoring is by no means as straightforward as you might think. If you have never had or never used a credit card, then you will have a zero-credit rating: that’s bad. If you have used your credit card(s) and missed payments, even once or twice: that’s bad. If you owe an awful lot of money but have consistently paid your lender back the capital you have borrowed plus their extortionate interest on top: that’s good. Just saying.

Back to the one-bedroom ‘property’ at £460 per calendar month. By UK standards this is not expensive for a one-bedroom flat. But wait a moment, this is not a flat. It is, and I quote, “a double bedroom in a house of multiple occupancy”? A ‘house of multiple occupancy’, whilst it might sound like a nice way of saying brothel, is, I am sorry to disappoint you, just a posh way of saying bedsits. Your ‘double bedroom’ for £460 per calendar month is in fact no more than a room in a converted Victorian/Edwardian house that has been rabbit-hutched into bedsits.

Note that the room is ‘single occupancy only’, so no migrants with eight children please, or a stream of live-in lovers. It is ‘fully furnished’, which means it has a bed, sofa, small fridge, bedside table and chest of drawers ~ cheap but perhaps not cheerful. There are five other rooms in this ‘house of multiple occupancy’ so let’s hope that you all get on with one another because the kitchen, which is small, is shared, as is the bog and bathroom.

Having been in bargain basement for longer than I cared to be, I then went up-barrel to see what a house would cost to rent in Penzance and found a two-bedroom terraced house at £850 per calendar month. Admittedly, this property, which is unfurnished, has been refurbished in a style that will be attractive to some, especially younger people (it would be interesting to see an interior photograph of this property as it was in the 1930s!), but it is still a terraced house. There is no garden, front or back, not even a few feet of owned space between the front door and the pavement. If this is unimportant to you, no sweat. What you see is what you will get.

Eight hundred and fifty pounds per calendar month for a two-bedroomed terrace house in Penzance would seem to compare favourably with the £1,152 you would need to stump up for a two-bedroom flat in one of London’s more down-market boroughs, such as Bexley, until that is you consider that the average wage in Cornwall is £28.8K¹, which is pretty piss poor compared to the national UK average salary, which is alleged to be £38.6K (2020).

But what if you are not interested in renting a property in Penzance but want to join the UK’s masses in declaring your home your castle?

Most people in the UK want to buy a property these days because even with a barely supportable 25-year mortgage and all the entrapment and misery it brings, for a while at least you can enjoy the illusion of owning your own home even if in reality it is actually owned by the bank. It is well to remember, however, that UK castles are not impervious to debt collectors, county court judgements and bailiffs, hence the small print in your mortgage contract telling you that ‘your home can be repossessed if you fail to keep up repayments on your mortgage or on a secured loan’. For those perspicacious readers, and I know that you all are, the emotive use of the word ‘home’ instead of property will not have escaped your attention.

Buying property in Penzance

To assist me in finding an Englishman’s castle, I turned again to the superior property portal that I had consulted earlier, what’s it called? Wrongun, where I found instead a flat, the main features of which were listed as a double bedroom, open-plan living room/kitchen, shower room/wc, gas-fired central heating, glazing and no onward chain.

Before we go any further just a word to the wise: When considering any house purchase or rent, learn how to translate estate-agent speak. For example, what we have here is a ‘double bedroom’ (a room into which a double bed will fit ~ usually just), an ‘open-plan living room/kitchen’ (living room and kitchen lumped together without dividing wall), ‘shower room/wc’ (a room with a toilet not big enough to get a bath into), ‘gas-fired central heating’ (good point), glazing (does that mean double-glazing or that the windows have panes of glass in them?). The last feature, ‘no onward chain’, is an important one and also a good selling/buying point.

“A property with no onward chain is one which is ready to be sold straight away. The seller will not need the funds (or proceeds of sale) from an existing sale to purchase the next property or move on. For buyers, it’s an advantageous position to be in as, by and large, it simplifies the sales process.”²

The price tag on this double-bedroomed flat in Penzance with glass in the windows and ‘no onward chain’ is a mere £100,000, and I jest not when I affirm that in this day and age this is a good price in the current UK market.

However, before you break your piggy bank, take note that the tenure of this property is ‘Leasehold’, not ‘Freehold’. What does that mean exactly? It means that if purchased you will own the property but not the building or the land on which it sits. This will be owned by a ‘freeholder’ to whom you will be expected to pay ‘ground rent’. Conversely, should you purchase a ‘freehold’ property you own both the building and the land, which is really what you want if you want to call your home a castle.

Moving on, but not necessarily swiftly, I looked next for a house as opposed to a flat in Penzance and found one which was described as being “located in an exceptional position … ” which, knowing Penzance as I do, I can assure you from the description of it, it most certainly is.

Although this house with its ‘captivating outlook’ is offered as a two-bedroomed property, the description of it suggests that it has the flexibility to be three-bedroomed, which means, I assume, that with a bit of imagination and some DIY skills alterations could be made. With this house you get great views across the bay, gardens to the front and a carport at the rear. How much? £395,000.

At first you may think that the price tag on this property owes a lot to its location in Penzance and the rejoiceful views that it offers, but a quick skim through various property portals reveal that for a two-bedroom house in Penzance £360,000 is about the average minimum price that you can expect to pay, and as most of the ads for properties in Penzance are not cast-in-stone prices but ‘offers over’, ‘offers in excess of’ or ‘guide prices’, you can expect to pay much more. Now what was the average wage in Penzance again?

We conclude, therefore, that properties in Penzance though not half as expensive as in London are, in terms of like for like, still way beyond most people’s pockets. However, if you are not most people but a well-healed high-roller, houses and flats in Penzance make good second-home investments, and high-flying executive types forced to accept distance working because of coronavirus charades could find that working and living in Penzance, with its captivating view over the bay to St Michael’s Mount, infinitely more agreeable than watching statue-molesting thugs at work somewhere in downtown London.

Council Tax in Penzance

But we have yet to mention that second mortgage, the UK’s dreaded council tax, the devious nature of which I adumbrated in my previous post. Council tax bands in Penzance compare unfavourably on an income-to-expenditure ratio to what you would pay if you lived in London. But, hey, there has to be some compensation for living in one of the world’s most rip-off capitals!

The lowest council tax you will have to pay if you live in Penzance is £1361.31, the highest £4,083.90 per year³.

As for the cost of living in Penzance, whilst nowhere in the UK is the cost of living higher than it is in London, equally nowhere in the UK is the cost of living low. Penzance located in one of England’s most desirable holiday destinations is bound to mug your wallet and having a big one to enjoy what is arguably the best coastlines, best sea views, best historical venues and best of dramatic landscapes is not a surprising contingent.

Crime in Penzance

What is surprising is that on the flip side of beauty lies dread: “Penzance is among the top 5 most dangerous small towns in Cornwall and is among the top 10 most dangerous overall out of Cornwall’s 218 towns, villages, and cities. The overall crime rate in Penzance in 2020 was 73 crimes per 1,000 people. This compares poorly to Cornwall’s overall crime rate, coming in 41% higher than the Cornwall rate of 43 per 1,000 residents. For England, Wales, and Northern Ireland as a whole, Penzance is the 177th most dangerous small town, and the 1,300th most dangerous location out of all towns, cities, and villages … The most common crimes in Penzance are violence and sexual offences⁴.” So Crimerate.co.uk tells us. But the good news is, from the same source, that “Penzance’s least common crime is bicycle theft”. So, even if you are raped, beaten to a pulp or murdered, at least you can be fairly sure that your bicycle will be safe, but I wouldn’t count on it.

As I said in my previous article, and if I forgot to, then I should have said it, the UK’s famous North-South divide is nowhere more conspicuously reflected than in the price you have to pay to put a roof over your head.

For Russians Moving to UK Towns not London: Durham

In the second part of this article, I decided to go to Durham. Why? Two reasons. First, I have always wanted to know what it was about Durham that made the singer/songwriter Roger Whittaker want to leave it so much; and second, and more to the point, it is cited on many property prices and cost-of-living websites as being the most inexpensive UK city in which to purchase property.

Durham is a cathedral city, which means that is a town that has city status because it has a cathedral. Durham is the county town of County Durham in northeast England, noted for its Romanesque cathedral, Norman castle, low-cost property and Roger Whittaker’s insistent desire to leave it, leave it, leave it … (I know he said that leaving was ‘bringing him down’ but he did not sound at all convincing!)

Apart from its university, tourism and Roger Whittaker’s song, I know very little about Durham’s employment market. They no longer mine coal thereabouts and flat caps and racing pigeons are possibly not as chic as they used to be, but I have it on good authority (our cat told me) that one of its major industries has earnt Durham the title of the ‘City of Medicine’, named such for the 300 medical and health-related organisations that thrive there. Thus, I think we can say without fear of rebuttal, not the best place to be if you live in fear of compulsory vaccination but a tremendous city to live in should you want to get out on the streets to protest against the iniquity of vaccination totalitarianism.

But first you will need to live somewhere. According to the property and estate agents sites that I visited, the average house price in Durham is £174,841 as of August 2021. Flats sold for an average of £157,792 and terraced houses for significantly less, at an average of £135,425. But let us take a closer look.

Renting property in Durham

For some reason, the rental market in Durham is not particularly cheap. Our old friend Arightbigportal reveals that two-bedroom apartments (which means flats) are priced at £700 per calendar month. The one that I looked at online was, admittedly, ultra-modern and fully furnished to boot.

However, perhaps a better deal is the three-bedroom semi-detached house that I discovered on the same site. It is a modern gaff with a rental price of £575 per calendar month. Now, that’s more like it!

Well, it would be, until you consider these gloomy statistics provided by Payscale.com⁵. The average salary in Durham UK is £26K. Not as much as Bill Gates earns in his lunchbreak? But wait, there is more: “Trends in wages decreased by -100.0 percent in Q2 2021. The cost of living in Durham, England: Durham is 100 percent higher than the national average.” Gulp!

Buying property in Durham

Buying a castle in Durham, even a one-bedroom castle, does not bode well for those who have to subsist on the average Durham salary, but at least in Durham one can cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth. In other words, property type and prices vary and those variations are quite broad. An internet search revealed that one-bedroomed flats can be purchased between £65,000 and £85,000 and that there was a smattering of two-bedroom flats from £80,000 to £115,000.

Two-bedroom mid-terrace houses have an asking price of £140,000~£150,000, with the magic qualifier ‘offers in the region of’ (so, hows about £140,000.01?), rising to £250,000 depending on property type, ie Victorian, and area.

Things are better in the semi-detached bracket provided you have no objections to a modern housing estate. Here, you can pick something up ~ I mean a property ~ for less than £120,000.

Council Tax in Durham

You might be tempted to believe that given Durham’s ‘up North’ location that the one prime advantage of living there would be a relatively low council tax. Thing again, sucker!

Durham’s Band A council tax, the lowest band, is £1360.91 and its Band H, the highest (‘H’ for high, you see they are clever are British councils), is £4082.74⁷, which means if you move from Penzance to Durham, travelling, for example, on your unstolen bicycle, you could end up saving yourself 40 pence at the lower band and £1.16 at the higher. ‘That’s it!’ I hear you cry, ‘Durham here we come!’

The price differential between any property type in Durham compared to similar property in London is as striking as the difference between respect and social cohesion in 1930s’ England and what there isn’t today, but this ‘advantage’ has to be weighed against Durham’s abysmal wage packets and what about its quality of life?

Crime in Durham

Apart from the insecurity of living there if you are not on better wages than the ones they pay in Durham, how does Durham shape up in the national crime stats? Allegedly, when compared to the national crime rate, Durham county’s crime rate comes in at a depressing 115%⁶.

And there’s more: “Most crimes, 39.5k crimes were violent crimes which is 33.3% of all crimes committed in the area. Violent crime rate is at 142% of national crime rate. Public order crime was the fastest growing crime and it increased by 12.5% over the last twelve months⁶.”

Little wonder then that the healthcare and medicines industry is a thriving concern in Durham.

Conclusion

In compiling this article, I obviously appreciate that the number of Russians hungry to live in Penzance and/or Durham might not be incredibly high. London with all its intrinsic peril and high-octane Woke has a great deal more to offer in every capacity than small regional towns and small cathedral cities and that ‘more’, most essentially, also includes job diversification and higher earnings opportunities, not to mention a ‘vibrant’ culture, albeit a rather dangerous one, and the kind of teaming nightlife that you’ll never be able to ever afford because of the cost of your rent or mortgage.

For those of you who are mega-wealthy or have a secure and reliable well-paid job, preferably working from home, the likes of Penzance or Durham may be a marriage made in Heaven ~ or somewhere. Otherwise, it’s sea fishing and amusement arcade operatives in UK coastal towns or in Durham, for example, NHS workers or prison officers.

At least we now know why Roger Whittaker left. He most likely left Penzance as well? And on the evidence of his most excellent intuition would most certainly have thought about leaving London before he ever went there.

Where do you want to leave? In considering life in the UK, you’ll never run out of places to choose from.

###############################################