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.

Same - I'm in a Kent coastal town that's in the bloody papers every week for being so trendy. It's become so much worse since covid as people are working from home. They're earning London salaries and living for a fraction of the cost. I understand it and I know I can't complain but it does give the area a different vibe.

People have always come from London or down south and bought up properties in the more desirable areas. Nothing new here.

@Granjeanne

OK. Let me clarify. Yes, my main beef is with the selfish bastards who flog their gardens to developers, make a fast buck and then piss off, having sold their house as well as the garden plot attached to it, for an insane amount of money. But there is also the question of a certain type, who move into an area and form cliques in the local schools, where there are lots of similar people with similarly enormous cars, off roaders in many cases, bought as status symbols. One analysis of my hometown suggested that you dare not turn up at the (state) school gates here in a humble Vauxhall Corsa if you want your children to make friends, for fear of ridicule! People are moving here in herds, and many do not even try to integrate. OK, that's a generalisation, but there is more than a grain of truth in it. There are several problems: 1. The actions of successive governments, which have failed to address housing shortages, and who have failed to penalise the foreign investors who are at the root of the inflation of all house prices in all areas (domino effect). 2. The attitude of some newcomers' cliques 3. The NIMBY attitude of those who can't accept newcomers, even if they are nice people.... The real problem is selfishness. That underpins all of the above. Basic human selfishness and greed.

Yes I know those types but they live in these social cliques all over the place and are not specific to area gentrification, the point of the thread.

London produced £487 billion ($650B) or around 1/4 of UK GDP in 2018, while the economy of the London metropolitan area — the largest in Europe—generates around 1/3 of the UK's GDP or almost $1.0 trillion.
They have commuted to their jobs, lost family time, and had to move their children's schools. Why is London supporting the rest of the UK?

Basic human selfishness and greed. That ship has sailed.

@urkidding

London produced £487 billion ($650B) or around 1/4 of UK GDP in 2018, while the economy of the London metropolitan area — the largest in Europe—generates around 1/3 of the UK's GDP or almost $1.0 trillion. They have commuted to their jobs, lost family time, and had to move their children's schools. Why is London supporting the rest of the UK?

That's because of all the customers spread out all over the UK who are buying the goods & services from London based organisations. If you moved some head offices from London to, say, Norfolk, then Norfolk's GDP would suddenly shoot up. It's no surprise that London figures are so high when nearly every major firm has closed regional branches and relocated most of their staff to London. Without country-wide UK customers, London businesses would make a lot less profit!

It happens everywhere, me and my partner are from a seaside town but had to move away from all my friends and family to be able to afford a house, as all the houses close to my family or friends are now too expensive or are used as holiday let's.

Im really sad to read OP's opinion of folk who've ever lived in London. I had to move there for work after university, and met my DH there. We lived there for 9 years, and bought a cheap flat after 6 years. We had always planned to move back to the North once we had DC, but years of infertility treatment meant that took far longer than we anticipated.

We moved just before DC was born, and bought in a village near where I was born and grew up. Everyone has been lovely and welcoming, we have made some great friends. I worry now that people are annoyed with us for having lived in London, despite having spent most of my life in the North.

I live in West Cornwall. Moved here from London in - 1972. 'Nuff said?

You blow in!

I’m a Londoner and don’t really understand your possessiveness of where you live. People from all over the uk and the world move to London and so form part of the demand for buying and renting property in the city. Prices are therefore higher than they would be without this demand. But it would never occur to me to think that someone from Manchester, Warsaw or wherever had any less right to buy a house in ‘my’ area than me.

Maybe it’s a generalised anti-London thing… There were also a lot of double standards around Londoners on the covid threads awhile back. Outraged posters from the North or the West Country talking about Londoners and those from the south east ‘bringing the pandemic to their town/village’. When it’s just as likely that the reverse happened just as much - someone from Devon or wherever is just as likely to give the virus to a Londoner. But some people seem to want to create a narrative of virus spreading rich arrogant Londoners.

Wow what a chippy nasty small minded post. Tarring an entire city of people with the same brush because YOU can't afford to live in the "naive" part of Manchester! I assume we are talking about Didsbury. Seriously get over yourself. What about the huge amount of employment the BBC has brought to the area snd all the linked business and trade that goes along with that, improvements in infrastructure and so forth? Perhaps stop thinking about how hard done by you are and resenting random peoples good fortune, and think about the bigger picture and the many people who may well be less fortunate than you whose lives may have been improved by the changes.

@Lessthanaballpark

Another point for Birmingham is that it has Malala.

That poor girl’s psyche is going to be completely warped forever if everyone keeps treating her like a tourist attraction or a saint. Apparently she is a quite vigilant for cameras already. Let her have some peace and anonymity back, as much as is possible.

Naice not naive!
I live at the other end of the country but so called self appointed locals are exactly the same. It's all blame culture for what they can't have.

@Danielle9891

It happens everywhere, me and my partner are from a seaside town but had to move away from all my friends and family to be able to afford a house, as all the houses close to my family or friends are now too expensive or are used as holiday let's.

It’s such a ridiculous amount of churn.

Once it gets to a point where most people have neither stellar salaries or strong local support, it’s doing real social harm.

Nor^

@SmidgenofaPigeon

A lot of them didn’t actually have any choice if they wanted to keep their jobs when they moved the bbc there.

People complain the industry is too London-centric, it moves to other cities and people still complain.

And FWIW DH works in TV, not the bbc, but we live in London and we are still priced out of the bloody place.

Do you seriously think that this doesn't happen to Born here Londoners? The house my parents bought for £150,000 is now worth well over £1,000,000. London is hugely attractive and diverse - we share our city with people from all over the country and world, and, shock for op - not everybody is rich and the very very very large majority of my friends who were born here in Camden would LOVE to buy here but can't afford to, so they have to move, although I don't know anyone who's wanted to go as far as Manchester, its usually the outskirts, away from their families. You sound bitter, and jealous and very unreasonable.

I lived in London all my life. Had to buy a house in Essex and move away from my family because I couldn't afford to live in the city where I was born. Why? Because every man and his dog wanted to live in London for their job prospects, for the social life, for the universities and museums and transport links blah blah.

So I feel your pain, however it would appear the shoe is on the other foot now and you understand how I felt eight years ago.

@sue20 Sorry I wasn’t clear, I was agreeing there was no particular kudos to being from London and most of the people the OP complains about who ‘love to make sure you know’ they’re from Londoner are probably innocently answering the question ‘so where have you moved from?’

Sorry - tagged onto wrong message but the sentiment remains!

It's all part of the Tory 'levelling up' theory...
And yes, it was a case of move or lose your job.....

housework1977 I thought OP was talking about Altrincham, but if it's Didsbury, that's been expensive for the last 15/20 years as well.

I own property on the outskirts of London but I'm from Sheffield and paid my own way through my (London) uni, wonder if I'd get dark mutterings about "Londoners" and their unspeakable privilege if I ever moved back north?
Most people I know in London aren't originally from here but have moved for work/education etc and lived in their fair share of overpriced crappy housing.

@housework1977 - it can't be Didsbury, the OP specifically mentioned grammar schools and Didsbury doesn't have any.

“Levelling up” needs to happen. I think I read the average house price in the U.K. is £250k or thereabouts? Where I live in London (a suburb that spans Zone 2 into Zone 3, so I’m not talking about Mayfair) that would buy a single garage in crap condition in an iffy alley. I know this as DH just bought a garage.

This kind of disparity is not sustainable and I’m surprised it’s persisted for so long, to be honest.