> It's a shame because Perth and even Melbourne used to have a relatively low cost-of-living and high quality-of-life.
I'm British and have just moved to Perth. I am looking at being able to get a house 2-3 times as large here compared to the UK, for similar outlay.
Add to that the weather and the sheer space... the QoL here seems so much higher than back home.
I have spent time in some parts of the US (about 4 months in Texas, probably about a year in other parts in total), but haven't lived in NYC. It always seemed nice, if you like the big city, but I had my fill of that in London some time ago.
Now over east? Yeah housing seems utterly inaccessible in Sydney and Melbourme. But out west here it doesn't look that insane by my (British) standards.
Australia by and large is also much less grubby than the UK.
(I say, 'grubby' not 'dirty', because I don't know whether the UK is actually dirty. Eg all the buildings just look dirty and drab compared to Australia. Perhaps it's a leftover from centuries of burning lots of coal?)
I agree, Perth has always seemed sparkling clean compared to most cities in the UK. Other Australian cities I've visited seemed that way as well.
I think partly it's the light - it's so bright here in Aus that things look cleaner anyway, but also the light and the heat keep things a little cleaner, UV sterilises and the sun bleaches after all.
Aus doesn't have as much of a legacy of concrete brutalism, either, lumpen concrete buildings in the UK that started out grey and end up brown, water-stained from all the rain and oppressive-looking.
And also I think better care is taken. Visiting London after having lived here in Perth for a couple of years about ten years back, I was struck by just how often as I walked around my nostrils were assaulted by smells of rotting rubbish or just plain urine.
So yeah, bunch of things, but it does feel much cleaner here.
I'm genuinely curious about this. My questions are:
1. What do you do for a living in Perth? What I guess I'm really trying to determine is what income bracket you're in.
2. Where in Perth are you looking at renting or buying? and
3. How much of your ability to buy is because you sold a house in the UK so have a huge deposit to put down?
I've known quite a few British people who have moved to Australia and pretty much all of them had (3).
I would say that QoL is generally much higher than the UK though. Houses and blocks are of course larger. Earning potential in London at least is pretty high though. But if you want a house you're probably commuting for an hour each way when the trains are running, which they generally aren't. Crossrail will be interesting.
I'm British and have just moved to Perth. I am looking at being able to get a house 2-3 times as large here compared to the UK, for similar outlay.
Add to that the weather and the sheer space... the QoL here seems so much higher than back home.
I have spent time in some parts of the US (about 4 months in Texas, probably about a year in other parts in total), but haven't lived in NYC. It always seemed nice, if you like the big city, but I had my fill of that in London some time ago.
Now over east? Yeah housing seems utterly inaccessible in Sydney and Melbourme. But out west here it doesn't look that insane by my (British) standards.