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.

There are tonnes of new estates popping up in green belt rural Surrey. There isnt enough land to meet demand. Golf course, industrial estates, brown fields, farmland even green belt woodland is being built on.

Not a great time to be living near to farmland around my village. Even the police station was converted into about 300 dwellings.

It's happening everywhere. In Cornwall and Devon, and it parts of Wales, for example, locals can't afford to buy because of second home ownership in tourist areas. I live on the Surrey/ Hants border where the problem is garden grabbing. Every square inch of available land in my once peaceful village is being developed, without any concern for local infrastructure, which is stretched to breaking point; hospitals, schools and GP surgeries are all vastly over subscribed, Internet connections are failing because there is no dedicated cabling here yet and a handful of old BT cables are being expected to serve hundreds of new dwellings. The water companies cannot cope with the increased demand, so the water pressure drops and the sewers are overflowing. The parking is impossible, unless you have a long drive. I live in a semi and have building work going on on all three sides of my house, with all the noise, pollution and loss of privacy which that entails. A tiny bungalow next door was bulldozed to make way for TWO miniscule semis with rabbit hutch dimensions and no gardens. A garden behind my house will soon be covered by a new five bedroom house. We have been here 30 years and have raised a family here, but we now feel that we don't belong here anymore because of all the newcomers, with their alien materialistic attitudes and their Chelsea tractors parked everywhere. My husband is retiring soon and we are thinking of leaving. Our house is probably worth quite a lot more because of all this but I would rather that things had stayed as they were. My own children have moved far away (one abroad) because they couldn't afford to rent or buy here. If you don't need to live where you are, grab your equity, as others have done, and move! It won't solve everything but it might help you to find somewhere where you feel comfortable. That's what we are planning. Except that we too may be considered "foreigners " in our new area! Nobody has an automatic right to live anywhere. That's a myth. But I do understand how you feel! It's not just the overcrowding. It's the money grabbing, selfish and materialistic attitudes of most of the newcomers.

YANBU you are being nasty

www.swlondoner.co.uk/news/26052021-housing-emergency-two-in-five-londoners-denied-the-right-to-a-safe-home/

Two in five Londoners not allowed a safe home... Living it up in London on those gold paved streets (quite literally on the streets in many cases...).

Single mum Fatima, 44, who is homeless and has been sharing one small room in a London hostel for the last five years with her 10-year-old son

Two up, two down terraced house of your own...or five years in a hostel sharing one room with your child...

“The emergency is particularly severe in London, where we face the highest homelessness levels and worst housing pressures in the entire country

Oh yes. London has benefited from the 'investment' so much. Definitely to be envied and resented. Without a doubt.

I read an article about a welsh town where there are only one or two locals left living there. Most of the homes have been brought by wealthy home owners who wanted a second holiday home. The place is empty most of the year. It made me feel sad for the locals who were left. Our own experience of inflated house prices was my in-laws trying to buy a house recently and being unable to do so because Londoners we’re putting offers in on houses without viewing them just to have a second home or a buy to let property. I sympathise with the OP because locals are being priced out of the market. I know the same is true for London too but I’m afraid those of us who don’t earn high London salaries are finding it even harder.

Oh shut up!!!! Why so bitter. Lots of the people you’re talking about would never have been able to buy in London and probably wish they could. Lucky for you that you have a council house but here you’re paying 2k for a 2 bed. Why shouldn’t they move somewhere more affordable? How selfish are you being? This just reeks of jealousy.

@IncessantNameChanger

New build estates? They aren't really helpful though, a small % are social housing and it just isn't enough to ease pressure. The rest of the estate will consist big houses with new-build premium fees attached or stupid "Help to Buy" and "Shared Ownership" schemes. The people who are benefiting from those schemes aren't the homeless. It the middle class first time buyers who just want on the property ladder. We need proper social housing estates.

I would say it's the same in Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, which, for better or worse, are fast becoming the Londons of the North and Midlands.

As I’ve said upthread, that’s not the experience of my (non-British, so no baked-in preconceptions) friends who have experienced life in both London and some of the cities you’ve mentioned and feel that the inclusivity of local identity (rather than the local demographics, etc) are markedly different in those cities. In that the only qualification for being a Londoner is that you live here; local identities where more people have spent their whole lives there and have lower foreign-born populations as well are bound to feel different in terms of those complex questions of identity and belonging (rather than living in).

YABU - In fact HUGELY unreasonable and incredibly small minded.
Do you seriously believe that people ought to stay for their whole lives in the place they were born? Wow!
I personally would never leave London for Manchester, my son went to un there and I've seen enough to know that it's not for me, but you should count yourself lucky that some cool open minded and adventurous people are moving into your area to broaden your horizons and open your tiny mind to the concept of freedom of movement for ALL people.

@Granjeanne bloody hell, you must be taking the piss 😂 ‘alien materialistic attitudes’ what a pathetic generalisation!!! You know you’re actually describing the investors with your ‘money grabbing’ comments not the poor families who have probably moved from overcrowded homes to your area. And people do have a right to live anywhere, stop talking trash. What horrible comments!

All those in Greater Manchester are now moving to Wallasey, on the Wirral so those poor people there will be priced out of their homes .... so what’s the difference then - London, Manchester? That’s life, no one ever said life was fair.

I read an article about a welsh town where there are only one or two locals left living there. Most of the homes have been brought by wealthy home owners who wanted a second holiday home. The place is empty most of the year. It made me feel sad for the locals who were left.

I think second homes are a massive issue but totally separate from people relocating with housing wealth gained in more expensive cities.

I’d love to see a punitive tax system to discourage second home ownership and laws that would allow local councils and planners to restrict the amount of housing sold to non owner-occupiers or landlords for long-term rentals, with penalties if the property is left unoccupied/isn’t a primary residence for more than x% of the first five years (without good provable reason).

Not going to happen, but it would be so much better for those local communities than being bought up by weekenders and Airbnbs to the point where local services became untenable.

Oh, they'll all get pissed off with the rain and the muggings soon enough and come back I'm sure. Just wait it out.

People have been moving to London for years from all over the country.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

How awful. I think houses should only go on sale to local people. And my definition of local people (no-one I don't know personally, and no-one who hasn't lived here for 30 years - minimum.

But when I sell, I should be able to sell to anyone, I mean, I don't want to limit the market to just locals, that would be madness, and would cause a house price crash.

Oh, hang on...

Londoners have been priced out of their own town by people moving in from Manchester (and many other places). More people have moved into London than out over the last 10 years (although that may now have reversed recently)

We need proper social housing estates.

Yes this.

Morals aside, long term it's cheaper too. Taxpayers fund extremely expensive temporary accommodation.

That London single mum in the article I linked above, sharing a room with her son (for five years!). Her hostel likely costs more than the market rent on a one or two bedroom flat.

There's also the knock on costs to society. Criminal justice, social services, mental and physical health. All impacted by mass homelessness. Stable homes lead to more stable communities.

Social housing offers affordability and stability - but also flexibility, so people can move across the country if they want but no one is forced to.

It's the money grabbing, selfish and materialistic attitudes of most of the newcomers.

Isn’t it the long-term locals who sold their gardens to developers for a quick profit that you should be annoyed at for being money grabbing and materialistic?

Congratulations, now you know how us Londoners feel about also being priced out of our home city. God forbid we try to find somewhere affordable for ourselves and our families!

The answer is to create house price “ghettos” ...ring fence people and never let them leave....

Yeah. I -perfectly reasonably, I'm sure - don't want outsiders from London or anywhere else to come to live in my small and delightful Greater Manchester town.

But I want to move to the west coast of Ireland...

Here's what I make of all this, there's a few people you don't like at your kids school that've moved from up from London for work who've been vocal about their situation...the rest of it is socio-economics - which they are not responsible for.

Buying schemes are a complete and utter scam and clearly a Tory distraction.

Hypothetical couple Steve and Jane are a 25 year old middle class working couple can now afford a new build family home in a semi-rural area with ridiculous prices because of Help to Buy. Good for them. How does that ease the pressure on the thousands stuck in temporary accommodation in the local city? Meanwhile hypothetical single parent Maria who is stuck in a 1 bed temporary accommodation flat with a baby and a toddler has to hear about how the housing crisis is being fixed just because the likes of Steve and Jane have managed to buy their nice family home because of a buying scheme. But what is being done for Maria and her children?

Steve and Jane of course, SHOULD be able to have housing that they can afford to buy. But shouldn't the priority at least first be housing people like Maria?

I grew up in London and couldn’t afford to buy there and neither could any of my friends. The only ones who stayed rent and one inherited. I don’t know anyone living there on these huge salary ‘London jobs’. All are teachers, nurses, admin in unis and art galleries etc. My last London job most staff were on between £20-30k. They aren’t buying houses on that there.

Those I know who work in London on big salaries aren’t from London themselves and live in Surrey or Kent (apart from one who lives in Battersea).

Covid has changed everything and pp now want to live differently. Hopefully in time there will be a rebalancing as everything has been much too London focussed for decades