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.

@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.

YANBU - but you're basically arguing for an entirely different economic system, or at the very least you're looking at a left wing form of capitalism that redistributes jobs, incomes and wealth around the country.

Irony here is that you're suffering from an attempt to spread the wealth by moving the BBC... but it's no good if it's just one off projects, you need proper policies that do a much bigger and better job of increasing equality of opportunity and outcome.

@Tealightsandd

It's hardly left wing to attack Londoners. Not when it's the capital of homelessness. A city where vulnerable disabled and low income people have no stability of housing at all. Stuck in crappy homeless hostels or HMOs or deprived estates suffering from gang crime. And those who've bought living in tiny cramped over priced flats with little or no outside space. Thanks to people from Manchester and everywhere else pricing them out. The same people who complain about London's'investment'. Not sure what's 'left wing' about that.

The people saying that are so clueless they think all Londoners are loaded. When they see stuff about London homeless being shipped to Birmingham and the Kent coast they turn the page.

True, I'm sure there's just as many born and bred londoners who hate all the immigrants and middle classes moving in.

@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.

You'd have to live in your shoe box for more than year or two in order to build up a reasonable amount of equity.

A lot of people in London aren't 'Londoners'.

Maybe if they move back to their part of the country us Londoners could afford to buy more than a shoe box.

is it altricham? Not stockport right?

Yes they don't like to accept that inconvenient truth. No sympathy for those displaced homeless families and disabled people. I doubt their distressing experiences are helped by the insular locals.

@AngeloMysterioso

Are Londoners not allowed to leave London then?

Nay, wench, ye bringeth plague seeds with ye.

Moving the BBC would have been great if the jobs were then filled by people from Manchester and Salford. That would have been 'spreading the jobs'. Instead what seems to have happened is that it's the same old people doing the jobs just in a different location.

Re prices. I sold my maisonette in St Margaret's 20 years ago and bought a family home in Hale for the same price.

Now if I look at RightMove my old maisonette is still about the same price as my current home.

All prices have gone up ridiculously.

OP it’s not Londoners or the BBC that are the problem. It’s capitalism. The housing market is honestly one of the biggest evils of modern society as far as I’m concerned. I agree with you that it’s an unsustainable situation for this gentrification to continue until pretty much everyone except the rich is priced out. Most people on this thread agree with you, as you can see. We need socialist housing policies more than ever - yet people keep voting for the tories. I honestly wonder what it’ll take for this country to wake up and realise this is the consequence of a Tory government who want to artificially prop up the housing market (and want to move the BBC around the country) and this government isn’t on their side. So many people can’t see past their own interests that sadly I think it would take a fair few people to face homelessness themselves before they’d change their political persuasion.

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

They had to leave, I mean they were actually forced to leave despite having 'great jobs'? They could surely have stayed put a bit longer, areas are changing all the time.

This isn't an issue with Londoners, it's a problem with the housing market. My home counties town about 30 miles outside London has loads of ex Londoners who never had a hope in hell of buying there. You know, normal people like teachers. Local people often can't afford to buy where I'm from to start, where the cheapest flat is around £250k+, so they probably piss off other folk by moving there. What do you really expect people to do? Struggle in their tiny rental properties glumly wishing they'd been born in another postcode?

I wonder if your new neighbours 10 miles down the road will resent all the Altrincham folk pushing up their house prices?

@Macncheeseballs

True, I'm sure there's just as many born and bred londoners who hate all the immigrants and middle classes moving in.

They just hate the hypocritical ones with insular double standards. And successive government housing policies.

I'm not sure it's legal to sack staff cos you're moving premises

I've been priced out of London....where am I allowed to go?

@TedMullins

OP it’s not Londoners or the BBC that are the problem. It’s capitalism. The housing market is honestly one of the biggest evils of modern society as far as I’m concerned. I agree with you that it’s an unsustainable situation for this gentrification to continue until pretty much everyone except the rich is priced out. Most people on this thread agree with you, as you can see. We need socialist housing policies more than ever - yet people keep voting for the tories. I honestly wonder what it’ll take for this country to wake up and realise this is the consequence of a Tory government who want to artificially prop up the housing market (and want to move the BBC around the country) and this government isn’t on their side. So many people can’t see past their own interests that sadly I think it would take a fair few people to face homelessness themselves before they’d change their political persuasion.

What a sensible post.

I’d happily hand in some of my hard (and belatedly) won equity to ensure a better system for future generations to live in sustainable, inclusive cities.

And also what TedMullins said...

In my industry the London software houses moved up and had their starting salaries at what we used to see as a mid/senior salary, and the 35k jobs all became 50k. Most of us developers were headhunted and poached and now have very high salary expectations. I guess that's a plus if you're a dev.

@FlippingFlipFlip

I've been priced out of London....where am I allowed to go?

The OP will let you have a pre-approved list.

YANBU. The whole house price situation is so unfair.

I moved to London and rented. I didn't understand that there was a deadline on buying in London. By the time DH and I properly considered buying in London we'd been priced out and had to leave. DH's sister is 7 years older than us and had bought early in her life. She sold up her tiny London place and bought a massive palace in Manchester. By being 7 years younger (also not understanding importance of buying earlier in our lives) this same option was not available to us.

It's an age lottery and it should't be. You can't blame the 'up from Londoners' though, it's house prices generally. Lots of people were priced out of London too, and the nature of London has changed as only the very rich can afford to buy there now. As you're seeing, the nature of Manchester is now changing and the same is happening to you that happened to people who grew up in London and were then priced out. It all sucks.

Some people were lucky enough to buy in the right town at the right time and basically won the lottery, now having huge palaces and loads of choice, while the people coming up after find their money doesn't go very far or they can't afford to buy at all.

I don't know enough about economics or what governments could do to stop this situation, but I wish they would stop it. Housing is a basic right and shouldn't be a means for a few generations to get rich.

@FlippingFlipFlip

I've been priced out of London....where am I allowed to go?

Pretend to be Spanish and move wherever you like.

Remainers will like you. Brexiters would not dare to give you all this verbal abuse that we Londoners attract.

@FlippingFlipFlip

I've been priced out of London....where am I allowed to go?

Nowhere apparently.

@Serin

I live in a small NW town, we have had a fair amount of families from Hong Kong move in (to the posher houses). They have been made very welcome and have obviously brought their wealth with them. Don't know of any Londoners, except for DH who moved up 40 years ago for uni and never returned.

Yep, this is what's happening in altrincham, the prices are being pushed up but it's Hong Kong money.

YABU

I live in London and was priced out in the same way years ago. We live in a box because we need to stay here for work but cannot afford anything bigger.

@TedMullins

OP it’s not Londoners or the BBC that are the problem. It’s capitalism. The housing market is honestly one of the biggest evils of modern society as far as I’m concerned. I agree with you that it’s an unsustainable situation for this gentrification to continue until pretty much everyone except the rich is priced out. Most people on this thread agree with you, as you can see. We need socialist housing policies more than ever - yet people keep voting for the tories. I honestly wonder what it’ll take for this country to wake up and realise this is the consequence of a Tory government who want to artificially prop up the housing market (and want to move the BBC around the country) and this government isn’t on their side. So many people can’t see past their own interests that sadly I think it would take a fair few people to face homelessness themselves before they’d change their political persuasion.

Always remembering that London is more pro Labour and anti Brexit than most of the rest of the country.