mark p's questions about moving to london: let him ask you them

so, holy shit: i've accepted a job in london and i'll be moving there in four weeks time. i'm coming over for the second week of january to do some preliminary recon (ie. bank account, mobile phone, apt hunting) work, but in the leadup, i have lots of questions. some of them are dumb. humor me:

1. apartment: i'd like to live in a one bedroom flat. i'm looking for a young neighborhood that offers relatively decent bang for buck. i don't mind a reasonable (ie. 45 mins or less) commute. is it possible to find something like this in the 150-175 p/w range, and if so, what are some good bets?

1b. does it make more sense to do the legwork on this myself or hire a letting agent?

2-4. banks/broadband providers/mobile phone carriers: is there one company that's generally considered better than the others?

more questions tk. thanks london.

-- ^@^ (map@map.edu), December 29th, 2006 11:45 PM. (map)

Answers

come to lewisham!

a good bank is natwest. vodafone is a good phone company. btinternet is a good broadband provider. they all work for me at any rate!

-- Comrades, meet Tildo Durd, December 29th, 2006 11:49 PM. (Scourage)

lewisham = 20 minute commute to cannon street or charing cross. the former serves the entire City (within 10 minutes' walk) and the latter serves Soho/The West End (ditto). Where will you be working?

-- Comrades, meet Tildo Durd, December 29th, 2006 11:59 PM. (Scourage)

1) where are you commuting to?

2) Nationwide is pretty good, free overseas withdrawals and it is a mutual rather than a PLC. Also check out the COOP/Smile. If you have a bank account with a bank owned by a multinational such as HSBC you may wish to try with that bank as our money laundering laws make getting a bank account and arse over here. Bring Bank statements, letter from your employer, whatever you can to try an prove your worth.

3) They are all rubbish but bethere.co.uk have been fast and hassle free after an immense hassle signing up with them.

4) Orange have great customer service but are expensive; T-Mobile are cheap but are a pain if anything goes wrong, 02 and Vodafone are somewhere in the middle. Just pick the best deal at the time.

-- Ed, December 30th, 2006 12:04 AM. (dali)

i have a question about the UK -- what the fuck should I do in Manchester? Where do bands play?

-- baby wizard sex, December 30th, 2006 12:07 AM. (gbx)

thanks dudes.

ed: nearest tube to my office is goodge st station.

-- ^@^ (map@map.edu), December 30th, 2006 12:08 AM. (map)

and to be honest i am legitimately worried about getting a bank account there. would a simple letter from my employer really not be enough? and would bank statements from my current (canadian) bank really help?

-- ^@^ (map@map.edu), December 30th, 2006 12:09 AM. (map)

you could open an HSBC acct here in the states/north america and then switch when you get to the UK (apparently HSBC is craaaap)

-- baby wizard sex, December 30th, 2006 12:11 AM. (gbx)

You'll be lucky ti get a studio for sub-£800pm anywhere. but try kennington, Oval, Brixton as possible locations.

as far as the bank goes, bring as much info as you have a history of earning from that employer will help. almost undoubtedly you b given a basic bank account for a while, which means no debit card, no direct debit and limited other facilities.

-- Ed, December 30th, 2006 12:15 AM. (dali)

banks: nationwide is good for overseas withdrawals *but* they suck for giving you a switch card - they point blank refused me, saying it'd take at least 6 months. hsbc were much more helpful, and they have a nicer online banking system, in my opinion. it will probably be an arse to get an account with any bank, they will def require very precise employer letters etc.

broadband - do you want to have unlimited bandwidth? do you need to avoid a 12 month contract? adslguide forums are the place to go, anyway, they seem to now be at:

the best options seem to change reasonably rapidly (eg when an isp starts throttling slsk or something), so you should go there rather than trust anyone, i suspect. i'd be amazed if bt is the answer, though!

phones: t-mobile flex-t seems to be very popular, *but* you may well find that no credit history = no contract option, and have to go payg. in which case i don't know the best answer - probably modaco forums or alt.telecom.mobile.uk (or whatever it's actually called) can help.

colette is on the other side of the lounge answering this too, and probably better than me, so i'll stop here for now!

-- toby, December 30th, 2006 12:20 AM. (tsg20)

(multiple x-posts. and congratulations on getting a job and moving here!)

-- toby, December 30th, 2006 12:20 AM. (tsg20)

hello, i moved here a little over 5 years ago (so just after 9/11, they didn't have some of the 'antiterror' stuff yet)

1. you should be able to find places at that price within 45 mins of goodge street (look along the northern line, if nothing else). i've found most of my flats through findaproperty.com and loot online-- if you want to be north you'd be looking at camden, islington, walthamstow, crouch end, holloway, etc. findaproperty is actually divided up pretty usefully by area and price, and things go less quickly than with loot. i tried using letting agents last time and found a huge markup over websites, i'm still living in the great deal in islington i found on findaproperty.

2.nationwide was actually pretty arsey about giving forigners a useful account. they opened a current (checking) account BUT it didn't have a card that could be used except at ATMs. boo. i opened with natwest and they were cool about it with a letter from my school. this may now be a pain because of terrorists. HSBC were pretty bad even after i'd had 2 bank accounts, a job AND a work permit here (trying to open joint account for household stuff, and they still thought i was a terrorist). banking is a bit of a pain, SGS to thread.

i used the website americanexpats.co.uk a lot about immigration questions once i got over here and had to deal with work permit stuff, etc. i think it's membership only now, but is something like £10 a year, so worth it in my opinion if there's anything tricky about your situation, or you want advice of others that are in similar situations (it's not only americans, it's often canadians and australians, as well)

good luck, keep asking questions as you have them!

(lame x-post with someone across the room!)

-- colette, December 30th, 2006 12:22 AM. (colette)

you guys are awesome. thanks so much. i'll be back soon with more.

-- ^@^ (map@map.edu), December 30th, 2006 12:28 AM. (map)

random thought: assuming you are paying power bills wherever you rent you should use uswitch when you move in, and if you use this link you (eventually) get free champagne:

http://www.uswitch.com/landingpages/partners/champagne.lp?ref=champagne~mse

also moneysavingexpert forums are very useful, as are the articles, not just for bargains but also more general consumer advice:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/

-- toby, December 30th, 2006 12:47 AM. (tsg20)

I've been seeing LOTS of £175 a week 1BRs at small agencies in West Hampstead, NW6 which has FAST transport links due to quickness of Jubilee line (you switch to Metropolitan line at Finchley Road and get off at Great Portland Street and Metro is also good for links to social places in East London). This is at least a great time of year to find stuff, due to lack of competition with rich students with subsidizing parents.

Toby also familiar with this area, which has good shops and services and a Waitrose and a huge Sainsbury's.

If you want to walk to work (will save you at least £20 a week in transport costs) the best option is to get a 1BR or large studio in King's Cross WC1; deals do come up on ex-Council places and on a salary you should be free to try haggling.

See if your present bank has any relationship to a UK bank. Could help initially establishing you.

-- suzy artskooldisko (), December 30th, 2006 3:59 AM. (suzy artskooldisko)

hi mark p!

-- RJG (RJ...), December 30th, 2006 5:52 AM. (RJG)

the title of this thread is lollertimes
awesome about uk job btw mark p! (btw, i'm pretty sure that, like, half the men in the uk are named mark.)

-- impermanent rrrobyn (apoemabouteverythin...), December 30th, 2006 6:22 AM. (rrrobyn)

yeah west hampstead is definitely very nice, i enjoyed living round there, and as suzy says it is very quick to get into town. it's perhaps not a very "happening" neighbourhood though, loads of young professionals i guess? but maybe this is the narcissism of small differences talking.

king's cross is a very, very good suggestion, i think.

-- toby, December 30th, 2006 10:18 AM. (tsg20)

also west hampastead is an easy enough walk to hampstead heath, which is very nice in the summer.

-- toby, December 30th, 2006 10:19 AM. (tsg20)

I think my drunken brain erased the hundreds from mark's price range.

-- Ed (dal...), December 30th, 2006 10:56 AM. (dali)

good news, and good luck!

-- cozeny (skiplevel...), December 30th, 2006 11:48 AM. (cozeny)

1. 175 should be enough to get you something pretty good. If you are working in goodge st you can kind of live wherever you want, theres no restrictions transport wise, no difficulties (northern line can be a bit ropey sometimes but not enough)

As Suzy says Kings Cross and around (WC1 or N1) is great for walking distance. As you are ok with commute up to 45 mins, you can think more about buses than tubes as well (cheaper, and, well, you dont need to live further out). Again this works in all directions, which means trawling through all the london threads where everyone argues about which part of london is best.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/spiders/pdf/goodgestreet-2101.pdf

heres a spider map of goodge st, with all buses that pass through it

2. Banks. Please please ignore what someone said upthread about Natwest. There are plently people on this board that can attest to just how bad this bank is. Im sure the others are much of a muchness. I am with HSBC and have had no problems, but Eds suggestion about Nationwide is probably best, they have a very good reputation

3. Broadband. The ones with the best reputation appear to be http://www.bethere.co.uk. People seem to be switching to this quite a bit now, i will be doing the same. No guarantees they will stay good if they exponentially increase their customer base though

4. Mobiles. t-mobile seem to offer the best new accounts. I was going to switch to them in the summer, but my current provider offered me a better deal to stay (but that is as an existing customer, their new deals are not as good as T-Mobiles)

-- Terry Lennox (%@$.$), December 30th, 2006 12:40 PM. (cb303)

Bethere are an LLU provider so they aren't in all parts of London yet.

-- Ed (dal...), December 30th, 2006 12:45 PM. (dali)

for finding a flat

http://www.moveflat.co.uk the friendly way

http://www.rightmove.co.uk the formal way

-- Terry Lennox (%@$.$), December 30th, 2006 12:50 PM. (cb303)

I would worry about living on the N1 side of King's Cross right now - a certain amount of les tetes du crack although they are cleaning it up - but WC1 has some lovely housing stock, especially on side streets. North of Guildford Street and east of Southampton Row = all good.

There is a bit of young professional breeder action in West Hampstead as Toby says but that's mainly because it's a catchment area for decent schools. Otherwise it's just quite pretty and great for links to everywhere.

-- suzy artskooldisko, December 30th, 2006 2:20 PM. (suzy artskooldisko)

Studios only for that price south of the euston rd though.

-- Ed, December 30th, 2006 2:25 PM. (dali)

All I'm saying is this is a good time of year to get a deal.

-- suzy artskooldisko, December 30th, 2006 2:32 PM. (suzy artskooldisko)

not going to get a deal from 245 to 175 though.

-- Ed, December 30th, 2006 2:34 PM. (dali)

hackney, obviously.

-- emsk, December 30th, 2006 2:39 PM. ( emsk )

I'd have said Hackney before the buses went all bendy. I think that's a good option once you know LDN a bit better.

Mark, where will you be staying initially?

-- suzy artskooldisko, December 30th, 2006 2:42 PM. (suzy artskooldisko)

oh noes they will turn you into a north londoner

;__;

-- Comrades, meet Tildo Durd, December 30th, 2006 3:51 PM. (Scourage)

not all our buses are bendy. the 55, 242, 48, 30 and more, as well as all the local buses for local people, are still not bendy.

-- emsk, December 30th, 2006 4:01 PM. ( emsk )

Kilburn also worth considering?

-- toby, December 30th, 2006 8:35 PM. (tsg20)

Only the Camden side, I reckon. It's been kind of dodgy apart from the Lumi lately.

-- suzy artskooldisko, December 30th, 2006 9:35 PM. (suzy artskooldisko)

thanks for the bus information, charlton. to be honest i'd rather spend 40 mins on a bus than 20 on a tube anyway.

will investigate west hampstead and king's cross this week. i used to work in king's cross and always thought it was sort of grotty, but that was almost ten years ago.

suzy: my work is putting me up in an apt in notting hill for the first month or so, but i'd like to get my accoms sorted out sooner before later.

will be in town next week to get the ball rolling on all this stuff. exciting!

, January 2nd, 2007 1:59 PM. (map) (later)

Kings Cross has kinda cleaned up in the last few years.

West Hampstead isnt on a direct bus route, and is probably overpriced. Looking at that bus map again, i'd be looking at kentish town, tufnell park, archway, holloway, finsbury park, stoke newington. but then i would say that

-- Terry Lennox, January 2nd, 2007 2:18 PM. (cb303) (later)

I dunno. If you're spending 40 minutes on a bus stuck in stationary traffic you wind up hating on humanity; see also teenagers in need of attitude adjustment on buses at other times, which is less of a problem on Tubes. I hated the Tube until I moved to West Hampstead, mainly because of Northern Line madness (until I lived in Zone 1 all my housing was on the Edgware branch of the Northern Line and I think the other branch is even more annoying).

Otherwise I'm all for Flaneur's London. A smidgen of gentrification means I think you will be very pleasantly surprised by what's been happening in the WC1. Lots of quality dining in converted pubs, a stunning and particularly friendly Asian grocery on Cromer Street, the renovated Brunswick Centre, a Korean grocery on your way home from work and an achingly trendy café called Konstam where the staff really should not be as nice as they are (plus a lot of proper oldskool working-man's cafes and Italian shops worth knowing in the western bit of Clerkenwell). All the addicts and winos have been moved along by a zero-tolerance policy to...Camden Town.

-- suzy artskooldisko , January 2nd, 2007 3:50 PM. (suzy artskooldisko) (later)

so happy for you buddy. way to go!

-- Jams Murphy , January 2nd, 2007 4:59 PM. (ystrickler) (later)