Want a cheap house? Get out of London

Looking at house prices in and around the rest of Britain makes you realise just how expensive London really is.

If you want a cheap house, you might remember that the main part of housing costs is not the house but the land and head as far away from London as you can. Dowle Smith Rutherfordhas a charmer of a cottage for sale in Shetland.

It isn't very big (just the one room) and it hasn't much in the way of services (none). Or an access road for that matter. But it is very pretty, it comes with stunning views, it's a house in the UK and it will set you back a mere £12,000. That's around a tenth of the cost of a London garage.

This has made me think about the idea of a location tax again I'll write more on it soon but here are mythoughts from earlier in the year.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.