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?

I can see a lot of people moving away in order to wfh. In the short term it is wonderful but long term I can see companies either getting rid of the wfh employees and going with cheaper people from abroad or deciding that they need people back in the office full time.
Agree that customer service is dire atm. Not being able to get hold of someone to talk to because they are all wfh is a particular bug bear
What I don’t think people have budgeted for is the cost of travel into the office once or twice per week or maybe even staying over night in a hotel or Airbnb on a regular basis

You get paid a London wage because you have to get yourself to and from the office in London 5 days per week.
If you don’t have to do that then the salaries are going to be reduced.

Then what happens if once you are living in your nice detached house in Cornwall you decide you would like to move companies or you find yourself unemployed and there isn’t any other jobs around that pay anything near what you were on.

Dp has been in this exact position and found the only way to get another job was to use a friends London address.
We were told at the time by someone who was in recruiting that if an employer sees an address that is no where near the office then the application went straight in the bin. They had plenty of people to choose from who actually lived in London and the surrounding areas. Employers when faced with 100 applicants for one job are looking for reasons not to look further into an application. They want maybe 10 to look at and would interview 5.

It took Dp nearly 2 years of fruitless job applications before he got that advice.
Within 6 weeks of using friends address he was starting his new job.

Move out to the Home Counties. Plenty of countryside and villages around but unless you are completely convinced that you company is going to employ you on a f/t wfh basis for the next 40 years then really think about what you are doing.
It could be financially disastrous.

@Oliversmumsarmy i think most people are moving to home counties. If you do 9-5 at the office 5 days a week, home counties isn't that great unless you have a nanny, a stay at home parent or some sort of backup support as for a lot of places, its realistically 1.5 hours door to door. Unless its something like St Albans where its just as expensive as London in the first place.

And the high prices means you aren't really saving much money. If you can wfh at least part of the time, its more doable even if the cost of your travel is still likely to be higher than london tube fares.

@SheepandCow

It's not as if London hasn't has loads and loads of people from the rest of the country moving there (and pricing out locals). It's a bit rich if anywhere complains when it starts working the other way. I'd hazard a guess that lots of the so-called Londoners moving to other parts of the UK aren't actually Londoners but are in actual fact people originally from other parts of the country.

Exactly! People from other towns have been pricing Londoners out for years, and now that it's being done back to them, they're all complaining about it.

i think most people are moving to home counties

Not according to this thread.
It is Central London and far away places that are going. Can only go for my sort of area (Zone 6) There are very few houses for sale and the ones that are, aren’t selling.

If you do 9-5 at the office 5 days a week, home counties isn't that great unless you have a nanny, a stay at home parent or some sort of backup support as for a lot of places, its realistically 1.5 hours door to door. Unless its something like St Albans where its just as expensive as London in the first place

Know a lot of people who work in London who live further afield than St Albans. No idea where you get that they need a SAHP or a nanny to manage to work in London. A lot just pay for nurseries that are 7.30am - 7.30pm or wrap around care when they are in school.
Don’t know anyone who has a family support network.

Depends where you live but even in some further out places you can get into London within an hour and it is definitely cheaper than Central London

@Oliversmumsarmy 1.5 hours is cutting it very fine. was looking at monkey day puzzle nursery in chesham, opening hours are 7.30 am to 6.30 pm. WHich means that you must leave on the dot at 5 pm. What happens if the tube is delayed? It was a problem pre lockdown, rail was very unreliable. Childminders are more flexible, but daycare is already not cheap so you are paying high rail fares + extra childcare costs + commuting. with wfh you don't have those problems. Hence Home Counties is more of an option for those without money for a nanny/more hours of childcare/have family support.

The people at my workplace who lived further afield usually had a wfh parent or stay at home parent if they had kids, or a nanny. The ones who lived in London tended to use nursery and have 2 working parents

@Oliversmumsarmy I am not saying people with kids can't work in london and commute from the home counties, i am saying that the pre pandemic reality of rail delays and fixed hours were a deterrent. But if you can work from home reliably and go in for meetings, its no longer a consideration.

No way can you have two commuting parents when you have no back-up (grandparents). Innumerable times dh has been hours late home due to signal failures/tree on line/“incident” on line etc and I have had to fetch him from distant station as no trains at all past a certain point.

One parent doing that is a pain, two could be a disaster.

Prices have gone crazy round here recently. The local estate agent said business had doubled this year. Now, I notice, there has been a sudden drop in “sold” notices on Rightmove and very optimistically-priced properties are not flying off the shelf as they were in the summer.

I also agree that people should not get too comfortable wfh. Dealing with a firm of lawyers recently, the partner -wfh in Devon or some such - was moaning about the junior employees making mistakes in the office in London. Well, duh! Yet the partner seemed in no hurry to offer any in person overseeing of their work...

At least these young people have a job. So many new graduates have had their jobs/schemes axed “because no one is in the office”.

I assumed lots of people moving out & commuting would be moving closer to parents or would use a nanny. Lots of my neighbours in London use a nanny once they have more than 1dc as it's better value.

@dollyoix the ones who live in 'prestige' commuter towns like Beaconsfield and Radlett where the average prices are £1 million do have nannies.

However, for average families, many people avoid paying for a nanny by spacing out their children so that DC1 gets 30 hours free childcare by the time they pop out DC2. So they only have to pay after school care for DC1 and full time nursery for DC2, which is cheaper than a nanny. The families who can't afford family homes with gardens in London are also the most likely to tempted to move to the commuter belt for cheaper housing but also might find it difficult to pay £10 per hour for a nanny + NI + pension on top of that. I am sure that some people move to be near grandparents but personally the people i know who moved to the home counties just moved to where they wanted to live. I don't know anyone where both parents commute.

I live in London and a lot of my friends have moved / are moving out. But to be honest, they are people who were always going to move out - to be closer to family, or for secondary schools, or because they're not from london and always were going to go back to where they grew up etc. I honestly don't know anyone who has left who wasn't going to leave anyway, so I think this has just accelerated their decisions. Anyway, houses in my part of London are going super quickly too, so someone still wants to live here, thank god! Just need to make some new friends :)

I don’t think nannies are easy to come by out in the sticks. What’s in it for a young person when there’s nothing much to do or no one to meet locally? It might be all right to work for a high net worth family with a country pile, but nannying all day (and all night) for a merely well off family in a picturesque but dull as ditchwater village in Sussex... not so much.

@hopingforonlychild well my neighbours are those people 😆 A nursery place at our local nursery is £92 a day.

I don’t think nannies are easy to come by out in the sticks.

Are the home counties the sticks?

But the people I know who moved that way have both parents working but 1 is from home & or p/t.

Yes I’m on the border of Surrey and Sussex and our town page has posts all the time where is best to eat, send children to school, best roads etc, it’s to be expected three new estates have been built all a 5-10 minute drive from the town centre and we are on the main London to Brighton line and very very close to Gatwick airport.

@Thepilotlightsgoneout

I think it’s a risk making a massive life decision like that based on the pandemic. This time next year (presuming the vaccines work) we’ll all be back to long commutes, churning out carbon emissions from our excessive flights and paying through the nose for a bedsit in Hackney. Guarantee.

My husband has had it written into his contract that he will no longer be needed in the office more than 4 times a month. So we are upping sticks and moving away from London for a more rural lifestyle.

I’m In what’s suddenly became commuter belt A few years back, it is mental and developers are sniffing round. Prices have gone truly mental.

It’s depressing as a long term renter so I hope for your towns the Londoners scatter so it doesn’t have the same affect on yours

The big, posh houses around here are selling really well to people relocating from London apparently.

I'm one who's moving back to London to be near my children. I've been away living in a lovely city for 14 years, but actually quite pleased to be back. Dramatic downsizing for us though, by choice.

Should also add that I sold my last lovely house to someone from London though, and everybody who moved close to us since we moved there also came from London.

I agree it's a bit premature to be packing up and moving to Wales etc - no one really knows what is going to happen regarding WFH in the future. In DHs company, the word is that they will never be in the office 5 days a week again, and long term will probably be in maybe 2 days a week and at home 3.

Yes, I noticed that. All the people with more cash moving out of London and buying the places that I could afford in the country. I moved abroad because I couldn’t compete with London cash

@dollyoix Yes London nurseries are expensive. the nursery that i plan to send my DC is £1673 for a baby per month. I checked with my colleagues and its not much cheaper in zone 6 orpington either. BUT it gets cheaper when the child is 3 and gets 30 free hours. And then the child goes to school and you don't need childcare for those times and a lot of primary school have after school daycare.

Which is why for a lot of people, nanny is the expensive option. On the other hand if you are living outside london with a 1.5 hour commute, it may very well be a necessity even for primary school aged children if both parents are constantly facing train delays and can't pick up the children from after school daycare.

I am a Londoner but live in Kent. What public transport companies will need to offer is some sort of incentive to get people to work in London again post covid even for say 2 days a week as current travel cards are inflexible to what is going on.

I completed the sale of my house on the South Coast yesterday. The London couple who have bought it seem very nice. They are really chuffed with it and the builder arrived in his van today 🤣. They have even bought a puppy to take for walks on the beach.