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.

Though I'm only going 10 miles not selling a house that's gained crazy area based equity beforehand.

Buying a house in London and gaining masses of equity was also a 90’s thing.

I could drive 15 minutes up the motorway and buy a house exactly like my 300k valued one for 80k.

It wouldn’t be exactly like it because it would be somewhere comparatively worse, in whatever aspects. That’s how house prices work.

I live in London and none of my neighbours were born here. I don't get your point OP - people can live where they want, and there are plenty of born and bred Londoners who have been priced out of their neighbourhoods by incomers!

The double standards.

For years people were perfectly content and happy for this to happen to Londoners. Indeed they added insult to injury by envying it. The 'investment' they cried.

Only now that it might happen to them is it suddenly a problem.

When Londoners couldn't afford to buy or even rent in their home city, they were told to suck it up, not to expect to live in an expensive city (despite it until then being much more mixed housing price wise, with only a few particular costly areas).

So many hypocrites.

@mam0918

I find a lot of Londoners are awfully like when you see a lot of Americans on holiday.

They dont need to 'make sure you know that' they are from London/America, the obnoxiousness that exudes announces it loudly for them.

I'm surprised you can hear them over all the squeaking your pet ferrets make while your flat cap falls over your ears... 🙄

Seriously, if that's the best you can contribute to this debate then really don't bother.

I'm not on about the Londoner's who couldn't afford to buy a left to get on the property ladder. I'm on about those who already owned in London.

But what about people who might have bought a small flat in London, but cant afford a house. Must they always live in a flat, or how many miles are they allowed to move to get a house...?

@Honeycombskl

Do you really not see that of course it is a benefit to live somewhere the the cost of living is low so that you can afford to live on a low wage. Do you think that there is no one in London on NMW? Do you think that cleaners and nurses and teachers and retail workers in London are all on massive salaries?

I'm not talking about people doing jobs within the local communities such as nurses, teachers or cleaners as you say and I wasn't even talking about people specifically from London, I was talking about people doing well-paid jobs in large cities who can now work from home online and have sold their houses in wealthy areas, to then buy homes that are cheap for them up in the Highlands but out-pricing people living and working locally (like those teachers, nurses and cleaners that you mention), earning far lower wages, whilst those moving in buying the homes are still on big city wages. The cleaners, teachers are nurses can then no longer afford to live there as they're priced out.

Ah I see, you don't specifically object to Londoners, you just object to people on good salaries.

It's a bit narrow minded and anti 'incomers', you don't own where you were born.

@Freckers

Good for you hun, it's the truth. Not all Northerner's have concern about the situation just because of the stupid Northern pride attitude. I can't stand that either.

@BuffySummersReportingforSanity

Genuine question, what do you want people whose jobs have moved to do?

Your beef surely is with your former neighbours who sold their properties to ex Londoners at inflated prices. I'm sure the Londoners would have been just as happy to pay the previous market rate.

This is so true. You can’t blame the Londoners. They were buying their houses at the going rate. Blame the sellers who sold at these inflated prices - greedy Northeners!

It's a free world OP... remember that!!

If the BBC have moved there they are providing jobs for locals too.

All those people who sold their houses to londoners for mega bucks could have sold them to local people for a reasonable amount instead. You might want to think about that. The sellor decides the price not the buyer, blame them.

The investment in spreading out the country's wealth has been screwed up anyway because it's way too concentrated on certain areas. If you aren't in Manchester (well, south Manchester) or Liverpool, get fucked basically. And nobody cares about Birmingham which is always forgotten about because it's all about "The North!".

As you can see by this thread (and others like it), the 'investment' is hardly welcome. The 'investment' is just another term for social cleansing.

I live in London, have done for 25 years originally from the North. Most people I know aren’t from here but elsewhere in the UK or overseas originally for work. Not everyone has huge salaries, myself included. Young people here generally can’t afford to buy properties unless they have very very good jobs (city type) and have huge deposits mostly from parents. Not all young people go to University and not all privileged. Many work in shops, gyms, fitness etc etc and don’t earn huge amounts. My DSs will likely never buy here, having to rent at extortionate rates so I guess one day will move away probably back north where I’m originally from. Living down here is a struggle for many people. It’s going to happen more and more people leaving London, but most were not (or parents not) from here anyway.

@thesecondnamegame

I could drive 15 minutes up the motorway and buy a house exactly like my 300k valued one for 80k.

A very, very specific bubble has been created for my town and the surrounding area and these bubbles are popping up elsewhere gradually.

So do that then. And then you can live like a rich Londoner on the proceeds. And contribute to the very specific bubble in that next town 15 mins up the motorway.

Honestly, you can’t argue with stupidity.

You can't go on about "You wanted Northern investment so here it is", when the investment is going to very specific bubbles of Manchester and Liverpool. Perhaps if some investment was put in the likes of Preston or god forbid the north east, those areas would appeal more to those moving from the south east and would take some of house price and school place pressure off the likes of south Manchester.

@KingAlex

Just because you live in London it doesn't mean you are stuck their and can never leave Lots of Londoners can't afford to buy in their hometowns either.

...so they move to somewhere they can afford, and price out the people who live there already, who have to move away in order to buy... ad infinitum until everybody ends up in the North Sea.

Unless the 1990s series ‘Cold Feet’ was a lie, I’m not really buying the idea that until recently people in Manchester have had no professional skills.

Yes, exactly. People who hold these opinions are probably the same people who in other arguments would bristle at the suggestion that northerners were less skilled/qualified than other people. But when the stereotype suits you...

Why aren't you angry at the greedy bastard locals and their estate agents, who happily fleece incomers and therefore push up the house prices? Incomers are just paying what they are being asked to pay. The people selling could decide they will not sell to anyone other than a local. But they are not, are they? So they are your problem.

All your relatives who owned and "had to leave". What sort of a killing did they make on their properties when they sold them on? Or did they only sell to locals at below market price?

What about you, OP. When you are an owner, will you only sell on to a local at what you think your house would have been worth had it not been for the nasty Londoners? Or will you sell to the highest bidder, wherever they come from?

Why have people who have already bought in the area having to leave. Surely, it is to their benefit that house prices have risen - apologies cannot do a query as the caps lock is having a silly.

Ah I see, you don't specifically object to Londoners, you just object to people on good salaries.

But before the internet, and remote working, to earn that good salary, you'd live near the job, which would be in a more expensive area. (Or you'd potentially have a house somewhere else and lodge near work I suppose, but that isn't really the point.)

If there was a place to work with lots of people on 6-figure salaries in the Highlands, then house prices would have become higher earlier. But until remote working, the wages available in that area matched the house prices. Now they don't.

I could drive 15 minutes up the motorway and buy a house exactly like my 300k valued one for 80k.

If that's what you're planning on doing then good for you. I live in the SE and would move immediately if there was such a big price difference. Living 15 minutes drive away is still local imo. You won't get the same schools as the person living in your current location but 15 minutes is still very close.

@ThisIsStartingToBoreMe

All those people who sold their houses to londoners for mega bucks could have sold them to local people for a reasonable amount instead. You might want to think about that. The sellor decides the price not the buyer, blame them.

They might have. As you well know, most of those 'Londoners' aren't Londoners. They are people from your local area and all over the UK, who moved to London (pricing out Londoners), and then moved back out. Some moved on to a completely new area. Others are returning locals.

Like I said, Jeremy Corbyn is from Dorset. If he moved out of London back to Dorset, he would be a returning local. If he moved on somewhere else, Manchester perhaps, he'd be a man from Dorset moving to Manchester.

A lot of people ‘from London’ aren’t actually from there though! People from all over the country move there for work and after university. People from (as in grew up in) Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Wales, Cornwall, etc all priced ‘born and bred’ Londoners out for rental flats and first time buyer places. I was born and grew up in East London and I cannot afford to live there. You cannot complain when they move back out later on!

The real issue is overpopulation tbh, but noone wants to talk about that or have fewer kids.

YABU!