To want to move back to London from Manchester?

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Don't know if I am just having wobble but recently I have felt a strong urge to move back to London from Manchester. We moved here 5 years ago with DC1 (age just 1 at the time) for a better quality of life. Have since upgraded to a decent size house and made rooms in a nice city suburb. Buuuut....

I miss London so much. I am a southerner and feel at home there, its an hour from my family instead of 4. My career prospects are SO much better in London and pay is 20% more. I love the feel of London, the bustle and access to all the museums etc. I would move in a heartbeat if we could afford our home in London but of course it would be way out of our price range. DH also loves London, works there sometimes and always gets pangs of homesickness when he is there. Manchester has a weird feel at the moment- so much litter around and feels scruffy (no offence- I do love the city!!)

Are we mad? Kids now 6 and 2.5. Our budget would be around 600K if we moved back, have previously lived in Wimbledon, Clapham, Crystal Palace but unlikely to afford a decent house in any of those areas but would be open to other areas if nice and family friendly.

It's tricky isn't it?

I grew up in Manchester but I don't actually like a lot of it! I left London and came back, partly because I didn't want to raise children there (and DM was up here) and partly because I very rarely actually went in!

My social life was in Battersea / Putney / Richmond where we all lived rather than London itself, but there was a massive premium on house prices for the honour of it being nearby. So we switched a London suburb for a Manchester one and were able to buy a house.

I went to London for a weekend with DD a couple of years ago and it was great. It was buzzing, lots of different shops and all of the history! There is nowhere in the UK like it.

I'd love my DC to live there for the or 20s like I did, but I wouldn't want to go back, (we couldn't afford it even if we did want to. My old maisonette would cost the same as my 4 bed semi in a nice Manchester suburb. And I wouldn't want to move to somewhere less nice than I used to live).

Sixteen mins from Wimbledon to Waterloo is a slog?

It’s 20 mins if I were to leave now (just checked) but Waterloo isn’t an end point, add on at least another 10 mins to get to the final destination and usually involves a change or a walk.

For example, to get to my office in The City it is about 45 mins from Wimbledon station to my office, not factoring in walking to Wimbledon station.

Compared to my Manchester commute which is 30 mins door to door to my office from a nice suburb.

I know written down that c. 15 - 30 min difference seems trivial, but I just find London feels like it takes longer, all the traipsing up and down stairs, changing lines. Compared to Manchester, get on the tram, sit down, get off.

Can’t argue that Manchester city centre has suffered massively- presumably a combination of budget cuts, lockdown and cost of living crisis. It isn’t appealing at all at the moment and I very rarely bother going in. Of course, if we all feel like that it isn’t going to help. It was like that before, when I first moved here in the mid 90s, but was completely transformed by the amount of investment it got after the bomb. I hope it will change again, but I’m not sure where the money will come from.

Not HS fucking 2, that’s for sure.