London exodus??

[Newdonewhugh]

Has anyone else noticed that their Town has a lot of people moving from London?
Are local Town and village FB pages literally have 2/3/4 people a day joining and posting with the likes of “I’m moving to ..... from London next week, can anyone help me with X,Y,Z”
My Sister and others said they’ve noticed it too.
We live in South Coast.
I just wonder what this New World will look like. What will happen to London?

The only people who I’ve seen be specific about their reasons for moving on Facebook mentioned beach and the other mentioned the crime in London.

Also in terms of the people I know moving within the area, it seems to driven by wanting to be happier at home. Such as wanting a bigger garden for a veg patch etc.

I have MANY clients with property within London and far out in the UK. I do not know of a single one who is selling up in London and moving out due to Covid.

Not a single one.

I suspect there is a lot of fabrication on this thread.

@Tessiot it depends on who your clients are? are they middle income families? None of my colleagues are moving out, i am 28 and my colleagues are also young and mostly single. They have actually moved more centrally as the rents have dropped so they have taken full advantage.

For higher income families, I don't really see the push to move out. I would rather have a £1 million terraced house in London even if its not that much bigger than my flat than a big house outside London, this is mainly because DH doesn't want to leave London and also because I don't really want a big house to clean and maintain. I suspect I might think differently if I couldn't afford to do things like order authentic japanese food from the local japanese restaurant regularly because I would feel like I can't enjoy all London has to offer. For people with disposable income, its hard to beat london even during a pandemic.

I agree, Zoom is shit. And I don’t believe people who say that companies have had a marked increase in productivity through WFH either. I work about half the hours at home as I did in the office because I get distracted so much easier!

This is what I'm seeing too, lots of people just commenting on their own perception of their own productivity whilst working from home and hearing what they want to hear.

Everything has been shit when dealing with other companies whilst wfh - an issue I had with British Gas took 3 weeks to sort during lockdown whereas I would expect it to be sorted in a day or two had their staff been in the office. Dealing with solicitors is taking weeks to get paperwork sorted and again I'd expect it to be done in a few days had they all been in their offices, etc.

I get the impression that those that are commenting about working from home becoming the norm even once the pandemic is over are trying to convince everyone else that it's for the best because it suits their life circumstances. My boss with her 4 bedroom large garden house, married, kids, etc was leading the charge back in May to close the office down permanently mostly due to lockdown being 'perfect family life'. Senior management were on board too but by August the company had lost out on a new client, existing clients complaining about the standard of work, support staff were nowhere near as productive, employees were moaning about their mental health, etc. Management have now completely disregarded her and have said the office will open and we will go back as soon as it is feasible to do so.

*Tessiot", it's a bit much to suggest people are lying! The Financial Times had an article recently about this exact issue - that apparently people are moving from flats in London to houses with gardens either in London suburbs or further away and that also co-relates to falls in London rents and inner London property prices. Since the Romans were in Londinium London has always done okay, although it waxes and wanes and I am sure over time it will be fine again but I do think quite a few people do want to move further out (although the house I viewed on Saturday for my son, at the end of a tube line apparently has an owner who is wanting to move the other way to near me in outer London which surprised me, if true)

@Xenia my parents house bought in the mid 80s for 60k sold for 1.8m about 6 yrs agos

I suspect there is a lot of fabrication on this thread.

Why?

I mean I think we will see more movement & a shift to more remote working but not a huge exodus. Why does saying that = fabrication? Are you worried about the value of your London property?

Wow. I have always thought I was London's worst property investor/home owner! We sold two buy to "lose" flats in the 1980s at about 50% losses (and one one we had a fixed 13% a year interest rate fixed for ten years -really bad deal that turned out to be).

You parents' would be about £183k after inflation so it went up 10x the rate of inflation. I suppose we have just bought int he wrong places - outer London or sold during a property crash or my parents in NE England not exactly been a property price inflation hot spot. The house my father grew up in in Bishop Auckland costs about £65k today.

@Xenia what i find interesting is how the property price inflation varies from area to area within london. I am comparing my DH's grandpa house in Wembley (quite near you) and my MIL's house in Hendon Central. Both were worth 100k in 1990s, both 3 bedrooms.

In 2020, the 3 bedroom house with huge garden in wembley is worth not significantly more than my flat in East Finchley (450k-500k). my MIL's house with tiny garden is now worth over 700k. This is because there is a university in Hendon and it is also very well connected to the City (Tube and Rail) and in zone 3 (inner london). I imagine that for areas in z2, the property price appreciation would be much more steep, which was why in the past, the advice was to buy as centrally as you can afford within reason because even though most properties go up over time, the central areas go up even more. Mumsnet property advice seems to be the exact opposite- move further out for bigger garden and bigger living space and countryside location.

This was all in the past though and is no guarantee that this would stay the same.

This is what I'm seeing too, lots of people just commenting on their own perception of their own productivity whilst working from home and hearing what they want to hear.

My company has been more productive, why would I make that up?

Why are some people so scared of an increase in remote working?

On my east London street, four families have moved out in the last few weeks. One lot up to Yorkshire where they were from, one lot to Dorset for a new job, one lot to Brighton where they used to live and one lot to Margate. I think all of those people would have gone eventually, but 2020 has given them the onus to go. Their houses all sold quickly and for over asking too.

Why would people lie about this? The thread was started as an observation of something I’ve noticed in my area. I wish I could edit the title to scrub out the “what will happen to London” bit because it’s just drawn in people that are stupidly defensive of London, when there’s no need to be. No ones slagging off London, and if they were, so what if you like it?

@Xenia it was a big house, 5 natural bedrooms in z2/3. A school friend bought a house for 1m in the late 90s sold for 7m.

her family not her!

This was all in the past though and is no guarantee that this would stay the same.

I can't see how it's sustainable to continue because so few will be able to afford it

I suspect the flow of people from London will shortly dry up, as PPs have stated I guess many have made the move they were planning to do anyway, just a bit earlier.
Whilst there are people to buy their London home, this will continue, but the elephant in the room is the 10,000s of people living in flats in London who can't sell because they can't get a ESW1 certificate, if they cant move on then the whole chain starts to break down.

@dollyoix I don't know. My DH's friends have had their parents downsize their million pound house to give their children deposits. As these children were gifted deposits, this would stand them in good stead to upgrade in future as they have that free equity in their homes. These friends did not come from rich families, their parents were lucky in the property game and chose to help their children.

Of course these are all born and bred Londoners. Its not fair and it might mean that anyone without a 6 figure salary/london parents is priced out. But there are quite a few people who fit that demographic in London, and also people from abroad.

whenever people talk about a massive London exodus i do wonder why so many people dont like London. I mean - i love the countryside and used to spend most of my weekend in the mountains (not in the UK). But for us now that we have DCs London really comes into its own. Lockdown has been hard but mainly because all the attractions/museums are shut. Here I never have to think of what we can do, in fact, there's too much to do. Between seeing DGs, friends, hobbies, walks plus museums etc it's great. Being by the sea would be lovely but then what??

The big question is whether people have to come in for 2 or 3 days in the office. If it's the former - then maybe moving somewhere like Bristol/Manchester is ok, but you'd want to be on the tube if you have to traipse in three times a week. But zones 1+2 might become less appealing i.e. families living in small two-bed flats and paying 700k for them. So we might go back to the 1990s/early 2000s when families all lived in zones 3plus and zones 1+2 were either full of really rich people or social housing

well yes my parents helped us on & up the ladder but I think the way the economy is going there will be more tax in general to fund everything.

I love London but I'm getting a bit tired of the business & the traffic. I remember getting a seat on the Northern Line!

This won't end well for some people. It is just too premature to know the direction of travel of office vs home based working and a bit naive to think employers will continue to pay London salaries to people working in e.g. Wales. I imagine working from the office will slowly return. Lots of people are getting fed up with being at home all the time.

My company(london based financial services provider) just confirmed that we are going back full time with no changes to our work structure pre pandemic. Apparently, people have reported having to work harder and longer to achieve the same results, it was harder to train people. We wouldn't take out more office space, but other than that, everything would be the same as pre pandemic.

Previous polls by staff had indicated that 90% of people found wfh very positive but management has taken the final decision.

I live in London and 4 kids have left my DD's class to move to the countryside. So 13%.

They were all living in flats with no gardens and have moved out to have more space.

@Silvergreen

This won't end well for some people. It is just too premature to know the direction of travel of office vs home based working and a bit naive to think employers will continue to pay London salaries to people working in e.g. Wales. I imagine working from the office will slowly return. Lots of people are getting fed up with being at home all the time.

I fully agree. WFH is a short term "fudge" for lots of people/firms - it's keeping things ticking over, and, yes, may well work for some, but for others, it is only temporary. Those WFH may think it's working well (for them), but customer service has fallen through the floor in huge numbers of organisations and sooner or later, that will have to be addressed, or customers will walk to their competitors. Likewise with professional firms (accountants, solicitors, architects, etc) that train their own staff in house - training remotely is a lot more difficult, more time consuming and less effective. None of our local accountancy firms took on any trainees this Summer, part of this is reduced demand of course, but the main factor is that most staff were working from home so weren't in the office to train them. And yes, over time, the pay premium paid by London based firms will start to fall if they can get cheaper staff working in the regions (or abroad), so workers moving to WFH in the regions may well find they regret that decision in years to come.