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.

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.

You really have no idea OP. No idea.

And neither me nor my London born friends and family have any intention of coming to your ‘friendly’ and ‘welcoming’ town.

YABU. I live in London, and my neighbours come from all over - including Manchester. It cuts both ways.

So you’d ideally like Londoners to stay stuck in their overpriced shoeboxes in London so that people in Manchester can keep the nice big cheap houses for themselves?

I understand your frustration. But it's not the fault of Londoners. The government should have put brakes on property buying becoming an investment rather than a necessity. Londoners can't afford to live in London either. My grown DC despair of ever being able to even afford a one-bed ex-council flat on a professional salary - that's if they are lucky enough to get a secure job which pays well. London is becoming an empty shell of homes bought by foreign investors. A family member lived near the centre and said whole apartment blocks are empty, all owned by overseas investors. Some got damp and had mushrooms a foot high growing through the carpet. No one even rents them or services them. They are treated like stocks and shares.

@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.

Born and raised in London here and priced out of anywhere near where I grew up (dw, still in london and not planning on moving your way)...but I'm sick of people assuming we are all wealthy and also not realising the irony that it's so rare to be a londoner working in London nowadays. All my colleagues are from elsewhere in the country, particularly up 'north' and are so shocked saying 'ooh it's so rare to have an actual londoner on the team's and it is often them who are driving up the ridiculous rent prices. It works both ways. I blame rich kids from elsewhere inthe country coming to london from uni and paying ridiculous rates for flats, part subsidised by their homeowner parents who paid off their mortgages and are now pumping value into pur over inflated market via their kids....it works both ways. Stop being so prejudiced against Londoners as if somehow being born near Manchester makes you special

I hope you, OP, and the (thankfully) few who agree with you, are feeling fairly embarrassed. Don’t worry though, us Londoners (and those elsewhere who can see sense) are a forgiving bunch.

School mums formed the london cliques and would only interact with other london mums.

To be fair people are spiteful about Londoners, this thread being one. If I moved to somewhere like the OPs place, I would stick to my own aswell. If hearing a london accent makes you think privilege or moaning that other British kids are daring to get an education at your local school then I doubt them areas are very welcoming.

Given that it seems there are now lots of jobs that can be done remotely there is nothing to stop the 'locals' from also accessing these jobs and therefore increasing their wages. Or are you suggesting that 'locals' are somehow entitled to benefit from a lower cost of living than others in the UK?

Many locals don't have the same skill set to do the same kind of jobs online. There are less opportunities up here so they don't have the same skill set. The cost of living is cheaper exactly because historically wages are far lower, so people working here aren't 'benefitting' from a lower cost of living as you say. They don't make the wages that would make it a benefit. And now they can't afford homes where they live. Surely you've got to understand why that causes resentment for those moving in? It's not the fact that people are moving here, that's always happened, but at present it's en-mass which is having a significant impact in small communities where homes and opportunities are limited.

I'm a Londoner who was priced out of London, where the fuck should I live then? Can you give us a list of approved locations for Londoners who can no longer afford to live in their home town?

London cant win, people moan the country is too London centric then moan when it isn't. What a ridiculous thread. Last time I looked I was British and could live whever I liked in this country...

'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'

Because only Londoners can apply for London jobs!

Loads of "Londoners " are trapped in now worthless flats because of the cladding crisis. Young London flat owners who cannot take the next step in the property ladder ,start families or look elsewhere for jobs. That's a pretty miserable and anxiety inducing situation too . ( Other towns will be involved too!)

Well if all the Londoners are moving out of London surely house prices will fall there soon and everyone can move there to live to escape the Londoners in Manchester 🤔

It's called the ripple effect op. The sector of society that has been most disadvantaged are younger Londoners who have been priced out of London by foreign investors buying here with enormous tax breaks which afaik do not exist in other countries. You'd be lucky to buy a 2 bed flat with no garden for £300k in most areas of London. Lobby the Govt. to close this insane tax loophole for the filthy rich.

The big BBC move was 10 years ago, anyone who was coming came then, it’s not really a recent thing!

Plus since then people have moved on meaning some of those jobs previously mostly in London are now available for people in Greater Manchester.

And tbh standard BBC wages really aren’t that high, yeah the big name talent are on ££ and a few execs are, but most of the jobs pay very average salaries.

@Littlelegs2

Maybe they are being priced out of London?

Also for familys on low income. People with housing issues are being moved by London councils to places such as Manchester.

Yes vulnerable low income families and disabled individuals are being socially cleansed out of London. Local authorities forcibly ship homeless people out to other parts of the country, far away from family, schools, and valuable support networks. It's been going on for a while now. Poor things. Traumatic enough in itself but then they have to contend with ignorant insular locals.

London is the capital of homelessness.
Thanks in no small part to people from Manchester and everywhere else pricing Londoners out of housing.

Tony Blair wanted to make London into a playground for the young, healthy, and rich.
His successors followed his lead.

When Gordon Brown cut housing benefits, so low income and disabled Londoners couldnt afford to stay in their home city, around their communities and families and schools, everyone everywhere else in the country was in favour - claiming if people can't afford to live in an expensive area, they should move.

Oh the double standards when they might face being priced out. We need to stay in our local community, near family, they cry. As if they're more special than Londoners. They're not. Either it's not ok for anyone to be priced out - including Londoners - or its ok for everyone.

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

Aw bless you OP, so clueless.

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.

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.

Why do you think everyone working for the BBC was born and raised in London?

I get your annoyance, but I also think YABU.

On the one hand you are absolutely right - people with higher wealth and from affluent areas DO out-price locals and it’s shitty. But I really don’t think it’s them to blame - the housing market is shitty in itself and most of it is luck. These people didn’t have much choice - move or lose their jobs so what else would they possibly do?

I for one am pleased to see wealth move into other areas and it’s more likely to create better paid jobs (and I say this being in a very poor but reasonably priced Midlands area). Look at the bigger picture - yes, housing is out of reach right now but if a big corporation moves there then so will others, opening up jobs for local people.

The ‘incredibly privileged’ born and bred Londoners have been priced out by incomes for years now, OP.

That immense privilege of being a London resident on a ‘London salary’ (do you really think everyone’s on £100k+?) is now being shared more equitably across the country. ‘Levelling up’, I think they call it. So you get to enjoy the immense privilege of being just like a Londoner!

These threads really baffle me. ‘I want the jobs, investment, opportunities and institutions of the South East. But I don’t want any of the downsides that come with it.’

On MN you could be forgiven for thinking that every other person earned a 6 figure salary. In RL I think the average salary is 30k. That will include many people living in London.
Do you suppose all the retail, hospitality, cleaners, transport workers and public sector workers in London are on about 80k?? I work in London (incidentally in none of the above sectors) and I earn 26k. A good salary in my sector is 40k.

@JewelGarden

Well if all the Londoners are moving out of London surely house prices will fall there soon and everyone can move there to live to escape the Londoners in Manchester 🤔

and problem solved 😂

Wow. You use the word "Londoners" to mean middle-class/wealthy. Most Londoners aren't.
I understand why you're pissed off with the house price situation but some of your comments are just prejudiced.
Can't stand north/south bigots either end. And I'm speaking as someone who's lived in both, and doesn't actually originate in either (or should my parents never have moved for work)
The bigger picture is the horrible, unfair UK housing market.

Re-reading this, I can't help but wonder if this is actually a troll. There was another thread this week about moving out of London that really whipped up anti-London feeling and it all got a bit heated and now this has popped up, ticking all the boxes guaranteed to rile Londoners, calling us privileged, cheaters, annoying etc, and we're all rising to it!