DH wants to move to London as soon as DC go to uni

[GoutFine]

DH is from London and we moved to the Home Counties when DC were small for schools/ quality of life. I have always loved it and he has loved it but always missed London. We met in London but I was from another area of the UK originally so don't have the same emotional ties.

Now the DC are older and youngest l due to start uni next year DH has said very strongly he is desperate to move back to central London. He wants to sell our lovely family home and buy a "lovely" flat in zone 1, with spare rooms for the children.

We have lived where we are for 18 years and built up a great network of friends and I'm so emotionally attached to this area as this is all our children have ever known. If it were up to me I'd stay here and the DC would still have their family home to return to. In all likelihood they'd be living with us for a while after uni and we are within easy commuting distance to London (25 minutes into Marylebone and we are a short walk from the station).

He says I'm being unfair as he has lived here for so long and he belongs in London and wants to live back there. I feel my life is here end don't see why he must live in London when we are so close anyway. I mainly feel sad for the children I don't want them to lose their family home and the friendships and connections they have here.

WIBU to refuse to move? He is desperate to.

I agree with you that it's not helpful to make this about London Vs the home counties

As to what I would do: I would try and find some sort of middle ground.

I think the obvious one - though it would be a real faff would be to buy a pied a terre in central London which you could Airbnb when you weren't using it. You would need to pay someone to manage it for you but it would probably pay for itself. Or a variation on that would be to buy a 2 bed flat in London, get a Monday to Friday lodger to help pay for it but you would then have it to yourselves at the weekend.

I think the other compromise option is splitting your time by renting for long stretches a flat in London but retaining your family home as well.

A left field suggestion - there are private member's clubs in central London which have a sort of home from home feel which might work for your DH, to feel like he has a "base" in central London. I mean the old school ones. Might totally not appeal

1 million wound get a decent 1 bed flat in central London and a decent 2 bed house in Home Counties

best of both worlds

I know people keep saying to Airbnb but you really can’t do that in central London

99 day lkmit and then any ex La. (Sone are very nice Victorian) or many private blocks have a minimum of a 3 month let and so no Airbnb at all

@CentralLondonLife the cheapest two bed cottage within walking distance of our station is now marketed at £695k. Would £300k be enough for a decent flat in London?

Nope. £300k isn't going to get you a decent flat in zone 1, not even with the market downturn for flats.

Agreed

Nowhere near. I don’t live in London anymore but I used to have a one bedroom flat in zone 4 and I noticed even this would cost £450k these days.

That's what I thought so I know we couldn't afford two properties (and the running and upkeep of two).

There are a few 1 bed flats in central London around £300-350k but they all seem to have short leases (or don't mention the lease length which usually means it's short and they have a bad estate agent).

Had a quick browse and only place I found with a non-short lease (115 years) is this tiny studio for £270k:

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/127257464#/?channel=RES_BUY

The market had dropped significantly so you could probably find a reasonable 1 bed for £350-400k in zone 2 (at the near zone 1 end) but that sort of negates the point of living in central London. You might as well stick with a 25 min train journey rather than make a huge compromise and still only be in zone 2.

It sounds like you live in Beaconsfield or Gerrards Cross, in which case YANBU. Can you rent your house out and rent somewhere in London for a year as a trial?

No but £500k would be

Well, pockets are very different. I often wonder what the flats are like that overlook Postman's Park, for example. Bits of Southwark seem lovely. I don't like London any more but even I think some pockets are just lovely.

but..if you are not wanting to do London that much yourself, would you be okay in a nice pocket?

Bottom line is that your DH made a sacrifice to move away from his city for the well-being of his family and now he wants to go home. So yes I think you would be completely unreasonable not to move.

However, my compromise would be not zone 1: if you live somewhere like Wimbledon, Richmond, Putney, Barnes you don’t have to feel hemmed in at all.

Absolutely! There are some bargains right now. For me the downside is that unfortunately the fall in the London flat prices has affected my flat too.

But in the OP's situation, financially it's a great time to sell up and move to central London as she would gain from the post-Covid risen market in the commuter belt AND the fallen London flat market. Definitely more bang for her buck than she would have got in "normal times". But she doesn't want to move so...

@HungryandIknowit this is exactly what I would do. Tell him you will look at renting for a year and let yours out. I would make that my compromise, and reassess after a year.

You would get a 3 bed apartment in a nice area for around £2800 and if your house is a decent sized family house will probably cover that off .

I would though be fussy about areas and put that in the compromise too - when he says zone 1- where's he thinking ?? because Marylebone, Mayfair , Chelsea ,Battersea riverside etc are probably out of budget- and I'm not sure if Southwark or Lambeth would be very 'you' -- if I was you I would go to Belzize/Hampstead/gospel oak/parliament Hill/st johns wood kind of areas, that way you get leafiness and space but 15 mins into west end and all night tube and nice community stuff to meet others on hand. They are older areas too- less transient than many other areas . My son shares with his friend in Belsize village- they have a great period 2 bedder and 2 baths-£1700 and in lovely order too. He's got 3 tubes within 6 minutes walk.

I think this way it leaves your former life open to drop back into if it doesn't suit but he can't say you haven't given it a bash- think of it as an extended break and have your friends to stay etc!!

Not in zone 1, but in zone 3 or 4 yes. Are there no flats in your town for less than 695k?

We lived in the Home Counties for a lot of DDs childhood. I really tried to like it but I just couldn’t settle there.

In the end we left for a Canadian city when DD was 14. DH was keen to move in the end but DD less so. Fortunately it has worked out really well for us so far (and we are now close to family which is lovely) but it was a huge gamble.

I don’t think you should make yourself do something you really hate the idea of but I do understand why your husband feels a pull away from the Home Counties. They really work for some people but I really struggled there.

I think the obvious one - though it would be a real faff would be to buy a pied a terre in central London which you could Airbnb when you weren't using it.

@Tomorrowisalatterday it might be obvious to you but boroughs like Westminster have got there before you and restricted AirBnBs to 90 days a year which makes it unworkable. Bloody good job. AirBnB makes life more than a faff - it wrecks neighbourhoods and those of us who live here full time like the neighbourhood the way it is. You can't do it on the sly because the neighbours will dob you in.

I think the idea of renting out your home and renting in London for a year is pretty good, if renting your house would net you enough to rent in London.
Good idea to actually do the hard arithmetic on it before writing the idea off.

We are doing this. But need to make sure we have salaries that can afford it.

Exciting!

I checked today and £1m buys a 3 bed in SW London. There is fixer upper in Richmond for £900k with a garden. Some black cabs stop at Chiswick but Uber don’t.
I discussed with my husband the scenario, he said home is where the heart is. He would go if I wanted to (he is a midlands boy) however we both like museums, classical music, sporting games and shopping. We are also mixed heritage so to walk down a street without being stared at would be good. I still think try it first.

Interesting thread and I agree that the best solution would be renting in London for a year. I live in London and a friend of mine's DH wanted to buy a 'dream wreck' in the West Country now their kids are all at university. She desperately didn't want to leave London, but instead of taking a position or getting involved in a stand-off decided to at least pretend to be completely open minded about the idea. They spent lots of weekends driving off to view houses (and ended up having quite a lot of fun together doing it), but in the end he realised it was a pipe dream - the houses they could afford were all so derelict they would have cost a fortune to renovate and many weren't even on mains utilities like sewage but had septic tanks or were too remote or had something else wrong with them. So her DH went off the whole idea but he'd 'scratched the itch' by looking and it didn't become an issue or a source of tension between them.

Maybe rent out your family home - DO NOT sell it - and rent a flat for yourselves in London for a year or two to see how you like it.

Sounds like he’s trying to relive his lost youth. I think you’d be miserable, and unless you are millionaires you’ll struggle to buy a spacious flat in zone 1!

After living in a decent sized home I wouldn’t want to go back to a flat in central London with no garden. It sounds like a fantasy for your husband. It would be cruel to say no outright, but I really don’t see how you can both be happy while wanting such different things.

My friends parents did this except they let out their house and rented an apartment in the city.
They lasted two years before they were bored and tired of the fast life 😂 ended up back to the family home (happily)