The figures aren't quite honest: the UK prices are extravagantly high for mortgage anywhere apart from London, which is one of the world's most expensive cities. Elsewhere in the country you can expect to pay c. £700 or less, which brings the yearly total down to £15k -- well below the travelling costs.
Author of the article here - as the post states, the mortgage figures include other items too, not just the mortgage. The figures include: Council tax, contents insurance, buildings insurance, all utility bills (including phone/internet & mobile phones), TV licence etc. etc.
We recently came back to the UK for a few months and had to go through all this setting up of bills etc. again and were shocked at how much all the extras add up, which you just don't get when you live overseas in furnished rental apartments. I think many people would be shocked if they added up all these extra little bits too.
If you don't mind me asking, where in the UK were you came back?
Also it sounds like you were buying somewhere, not renting. A furnished rental apartment shouldn't require buildings insurance, contents should either be part of the rent or not at all (as the landlord is required to insure their equipment by law - but not yours - you'd do that separately but you'd certainly have to do that anywhere else I've been), a TV licence is optional - you only need it to watch live TV and all the major channels have on-demand Internet equivalents that are perfectly fine unlike other countries you may have been (we're looking at ditching the licence when the Digital TV switch kicks in). I'm surprised you're putting phone, internet and mobile phone in there - unless you're flatsharing I'm not aware of anyone that would include those as part of the rent, especially mobile phones?
I guess my point is that it's not a like for like comparison to compare your rental costs in one country with mortgage + all inclusive of everything, even secondaries in another. Rather than defending it, and I appreciate it's a PITA to do what I'd suggest and may contradict what you're trying to achieve, I'd like to suggest that you write a followup comparing like for like costs with their equivalents and provide explicit examples alongside the benefits and drawbacks of each - e.g. being near the beach at Cape Town versus being near the beach at Blackpool.
I don't get this. I live in London, on the edge of zone 1-2; renting a room. Expenses: 510 pounds / month for rent including utilities; 300 pound for food (granted, I haven't really upgraded my lifestyle ever since college -I simply don't feel the need.).
So this comes to 800 pounds + occasional funtime = 1K -still below what they've calculated for most places. Are they really that bad at negotiation?
