To be irritated by the Londoner exodus to my town?

[thesecondnamegame]

I've been priced out of my Greater Manchester town by the London diaspora. Anybody who knows the area will know which town I mean. My tatty council town centre terrace is worth 300k. A load of Londoners came up after the BBC moved to Manchester. Half the kids in my kid's school's parents are from London and they love to make sure you know that. House prices have become ridiculous and are in a different world to the rest of Greater Manchester. It's ridiculous as it used to be a very unremarkable market town (albiet with not much to it) and now it's gone all 'naice' and I'm having to move 10 miles away because it's reaching the surrounding towns and I simply cannot afford to live here and I want to buy a property. It annoys me, I keep imagining somebody who had a London salary and bought a house in London, sold it, and came up here and bought a house 3 times bigger for the same price as their smaller London home. It just seems like they cheated. There are no school places either, because a lot of the Londoner's chose this particular town for the schools. The catchments are bloody tiny, I know somebody who lives in a village about 4 miles away. The schools in this town are the closest schools. No school would take her child and she ended up having to home educate for months.

All my relatives who bought properties or private rented have had to leave, even those who went to uni and got great jobs.

And actually most of the born and bred Londoners I know, who've left, didn't go anywhere else in the UK. They've gone abroad. The best choice imo.

Well guess what, it’s happening in areas that are cheaper than Manchester, by the folks from Manchester and the like and guess what? My cousin couldn’t find a house to rent in her local town, because there were people from different areas moving there.

The rents where she lives would be about £650-700 max for a 3 bed detached and now it’s nearer to £850/£900 and she still can’t get one because demand outstrips supply.

If you had £800 a month to pay for a rental property, you’d get one in an Instant before covid. Not now!

So it’s not just you!

You just don’t like our accents do you OP. That’s what it is. And that we have alleys and you have ginnels.😀

Now, give yourself a shake and stop this nonsense.

Happy to say I won’t be contributing to your house price rises in Manchester as I’m staying put in London. So one less to worry about.

Do sometimes look on Rightmove and see what I could afford in Manchester/Exeter/Bristol, realise that this would involve actually having to move away from London, and promptly hightail it from Rightmove back to mumsnet.

I feel the same about people who have moved to London with more money than locals and priced us out

And then you get the comments oh it’s so much nicer here now - when it’s becomes another very middle class full of cafes and card/gift shops place

Sadly London has been socially cleansing for years now and it’s happening in other areas of the country.

@Tealightsandd

And actually most of the born and bred Londoners I know, who've left, didn't go anywhere else in the UK. They've gone abroad. The best choice imo.

This is true IME - i don't know anyone who was born and bred in london who has moved to another part of the UK. I know plenty who have moved abroad either part or full time depending on work

@pleasehelpwi3

There is no god given right to live where you grew up in. People move around; both into and out of London for jobs. Some countries like France or Cuba have a system where for some government jobs (like teaching or medicine) you get sent to certain areas when you start your career as payback for the subsidised training. Can't see the Daily Mail agreeing to that. If you can't afford to live where you live, go and live somewhere else or get a better job.

Yup, and in some countries being able to remain living in your home country at all is a luxury. Nearly two thirds of my generation had to emigrate in search of employment, and it was obvious from our schooldays we would have to. At a global level, it’s quite normal not to be able to live where you grew up.

parochial...how odd?

Perhaps if people had stuck up for Londoners when it started happening to them, said it shouldn't happen, instead of telling them to suck it up and 'just move' if they got priced out, maybe it wouldn't be now happening to them. What did they think would happen? Eventually it was going to spill out to other places.

People sat back and let it happen to London. That gave the green light for it to start spreading elsewhere.

Op you maybe on the wrong site to get much understanding or empathy

Even though it’s mainly left wing

@thesecondnamegame

Somebody born and raised in London who was able to go to uni and go into a job on a London salary is incredibly privileged. They had the opportunity buy a shoebox in London, stay there while it builds equity for a year or 2, then sod off up to Manchester and buy a 4 bed semi-detached without batting an eyelid because it's "Oh so cheap compared to London!" When lots of people are doing that it then unnaturally inflates the local house economy and so they all benefit even more. The issue is, it doesn't work the other way round. All that happens is house prices sky rocket and the locals have to leave so the town just becomes London away from London with the ridiculous house prices and pathetic school catchments to go with it.

Nope. I was born, raised, educated and started my career in London (only left for Uni and one year abroad) and it took me 15 years of working in a professional role to save the deposit to buy an extremely modest flat in a rough area. A few years later I had to leave London forever for health reasons and because we were overcrowded and couldn’t afford to upsize in London.

Where the fuck do you get the idea that all graduate Londoners can afford to buy shoeboxes? That hasn’t been the case for decades. Initially more because of the deposit than the mortgage, but latterly because prices shot off entirely out if sight.

Not everyone is able to buy young, has a gifted deposit, picks a gentrifying suburb at the right moment.

In retrospect I stayed too long chasing the ever moving target of saving a 10% deposit, and so did a lot of my contemporaries.

London is for the very rich and the very poor now. There will come a point when the nursing/teaching/public sector staff crisis in London really ignites, and it will be messy.

One of the offputting things about moving out of London is the minority of ignorant but mouthy provincials spouting nonsense about how loaded and privileged we all are. We might have had greater housing rationality if it wasn’t for the chippy nonsense.

There's an awful lot of people who live in London who aren't Londoners. That's why it's such a wonderful diverse city.

We’ve seen it in our area too and have had so many letters through the letterbox since the first lockdown lifted. All asking if we’d be interested in selling. We threw the first few out, now thinking we should have saved them to compare!

@bookish83

I bloody love ramsbottom, don’t get me wrong and would probably go there for a forever home as next move- further driving people out there 😬
Just the OP immediately made me think Trafford - Ramsbottom is nice but not Really the stomping ground for those working in media city.

I think it’s still way cheaper than affluent areas in greater Manchester though...I was thinking of moving up the M66 to be able to swap my 3 bed semi for a 4 bed detached.

YANBU

It's happening here too. All the house prices rising significantly. Locals being priced out and people WFH with their much higher salaries buying houses that look like the price is peanuts to them.

@JaJaDD

I feel protective of North Greater Manchester, plus love Altrincham too. But have you seen parts of Bolton North? Lostock, Bromley Cross, etc? Not exactly shabby

This thread is so interesting because the majority of people that I know in London (myself included) aren't 'from' London, nor did they go to Uni here. I actually know of people who've moved back to their home towns or thereabouts, surely they're not Londoners?

I did exactly that OP. Not born and bred but worked a few years in London and traded a one bed flat for a 3 bed Victorian terrace in what I think is where you are if you mean altrincham . #sorrynotsorry you don’t own it. You could have moved to London and saved etc too 🤷🏼‍♀️

Well, they probably didn’t want to move to Manchester, but were told they had to because “people in the North” complained the BBC, journalists and politicians were “too London-centric.” As a consequence, people from Manchester are now pricing people from cheaper areas out of their homes because they can no longer afford to live close to Manchester - selfish twats those Mancunians, apparently. And let’s not comment on those Londoners who have been shipped all over the country by the boroughs they live in, because they can’t afford to buy a home anywhere, so are at the mercy of their Local Authority choosing where it will buy up and ship them off to, to the irritation of people on the housing lists of the LAs the Londoners are being forced to move to, because then the locals in those areas are then likewise forced out.

@Freckers

Also as an aside, how much were Alderley Edge prices increased by Manchester United being the top team for a decade? Other than Becks and Sheringham I don't think they had too many Londoners in their ranks.

And by the argument of those on here who say someone is a Londoner because that's the current place they live (before they move), then Beckham and Sheringham became Mancunians after living there.

I never knew so many house sellers (and their neighbours) looked at their buyers birth certificates!

@thesecondnamegame

The fact that several people on this thread have correctly pinpointed which GM town I am in pretty much proves that the northern investment isn't well distributed and has just inflated certain areas.

It proves no such thing. This has been an incredibly desirable and therefore very expensive area for years. There are lots and lots of very very wealthy northern people living here and pushing house prices up. Plus as you’ve mentioned we have excellent and competitive grammar schools here - again, that inflates house prices. Most people can’t afford to live in Altrincham, wherever they’re from.

Don’t be ridiculous. People are able to move where they want. And most Londoners can’t afford London

[quote JaJaDD]@bookish83

I bloody love ramsbottom, don’t get me wrong and would probably go there for a forever home as next move- further driving people out there 😬
Just the OP immediately made me think Trafford - Ramsbottom is nice but not Really the stomping ground for those working in media city.

I think it’s still way cheaper than affluent areas in greater Manchester though...I was thinking of moving up the M66 to be able to swap my 3 bed semi for a 4 bed detached.[/quote]
I get you! No the commute is hell round the 60 or through Prestwich... not great for Media City or Centre workers. A lot do it but it isn't a quick drive or bus.

Some areas around it are so expensive now, they make Ramsbottom look cheap! (And it is not!)

You Manchester folk driving up the prices of Rammy

I have family up there. Seems to be an awful lot of rich footballer types rather than nasty Londoners.

@OhWhyNot

Op you maybe on the wrong site to get much understanding or empathy

Even though it’s mainly left wing

Oh she has my sympathy and she’d get my undiluted empathy if she wasn’t making out that all Londoners are privileged.

It’s just beyond boring now. Being a Londoner was what kept me off the housing ladder for so long. People like the OP stopped me from wanting to move to cities like Manchester. Who wants to listen to this uninformed shite forevermore?

Maybe if she sounded more left wing herself she would get a better reception?