Londoners moving out to towns - AIBU

[Disgruntledtownie]

I have lived in the same town all my life - great community feel, independent shops etc.

During COVID, we had an absolute influx of people moving out from London which massively drove up prices so locals have had to move away and it’s really changed the whole town.

A lot of the Londoners were campaigning about getting a Pure Gym in the town - one opened, and now our local leisure centre has had to go into liquidation. This is where all the school kids learn to swim, all the teens hang out after school etc and it’s just gone.

An independent family owned shop that has been in our town for over 130 years has had to close as business has dropped.

In the last two years, Gails and a Joe & Juice have opened right next to independent coffee shops - there’s been massive queues outside Gail’s and everyone saying how good it is they can still get their Gail’s fix out of London. But it’s meant the independents have struggled and a few have had to shut.

I totally appreciate that times are tough and spiralling costs and overheads will have impacted these businesses but AIBU to think if you move out of London, you embrace the local shops etc and don’t just change the town into a mini London ??!! It’s just such a shame to see our local community disintegrating around us.

Gail’s is the emperor’s new clothes of cafes. It’s overpriced and average. My poor well-meaning husband did go out at seven to buy my Mother’s Day breakfast from there so I had to look grateful.

I am not sure there is any such thing as a ‘Londoner’. Nine million people from literally everywhere in the world.

In my group of friends, over half of us originally come from northern towns. Are we hated Londoners or noble northerners?!

I am glad new people move into London and the diversity they bring. Other than possibly the oligarchs who buy up lucrative property then leave houses empty. Such a waste.

London-dwellers are criticised for living in London and also for leaving it. Amusing!

I used to think that Gail's was a posh scam until I tried their cinnamon buns 😚

I agree that they don't do the tangiest sourdough loaves but I am convinced that my local cafe is passing off sliced white as sourdough because it does not even have the texture let alone the flavour and is around the same price.

Had a look at Gail's on social media. It doesn't look very healthy. I'd presumed it would be 😂

It's the London mentality that is the problem. People who move to London should stay there. They made their bed and now they should lie in it.

Fascinating. Please do expand on how nine million people from all over the planet, few (if any) of whom you have ever met, share the same identical 'mentality'?

And do describe it to us while you're at it - I'm waiting for the washer to finish and I could use the entertainment.

Sounds like bullshit to me. Just how many thousands of Londoners moved into your town to push the housing market sky high (and why did the locals sell to them I wonder)? And how did they manage to outvote the locals when it came to the gym and leisure centre? Surely if all the locals boycotted the Pure Gym and carried on using the leisure centre nothing would have changed?

If this is sevenoaks that's being discussed it's been a London commuter satellite for the 35+ years I've lived in the UK.

it's current woes are nothing to do with any recent arrivals

We are all the same.

The Russian oligarch
The barista from Bolivia travelling round the world stopping in London for six months
The mentally unwell man living in a hotel for asylum seekers
The banker living in a £7m house in Hampstead
The nurse living in social housing in Leytonstone
The Turkish dry cleaner
The Indian teacher living in Barnet
The elderly English couple who have lived in Tulse Hill all their lives.

(A few random examples I have met in London, other than the oligarch)

We all have exactly the same mentality ;-)

This is the same discrimination that ethnic minorities had. Not wanting to sell to a group of people. People from London can buy their new homes wherever they want. If the local gym closed it is probably because it was rubbish, why shouldn't they go to the nicer gyms?!! If local coffee shops are closing then they are not good as the ones that are doing well obviously. You dont like change that's all. Also, you come across as ill educated.

So if people whose family have lived in a village or town for generations are suddenly priced out of their own area by incomers, that's their own fault for not having moved to London to make money?

Maybe these stories need to be prefaced by, ‘’greedy unscrupulous locals sell home to highest bidder from London, thus outpricing their neighbours’.

It’s Sevenoaks which is has been a very affluent commuter town for well over 30 years. Prices have always been extortionate here, just like everywhere house prices have gone up in recent years. Leisure centre was run by a non for profit organisation & was always heading this way into liquidation (council would not have invested in it)… it will be taken over by GLL most likely. Everyone thinks it’s suddenly disappearing. The shoe shop she mentioned, unfortunately consumerism has moved away from 100+ years ago when the shoe shop first opened. I got my first shoes there, also first job at leisure centre. It’s sad but the world evolves. I grew up here, lived in London, moved back. Not apologetic for that

But that would mean the non-Londoners might be responsible, and that couldn't possibly be the case, could it?

Property sellers in some backwater inflating the prices to take advantage of property buyers they think they can get more money out of because of where they're from says a fair bit about the local 'mentality', don't you think @Florenz ?

How do people complain about how expensive housing is and then say how wonderful it is that Londoners are moving into towns and rural areas and bringing their money and city ways with them, and not realise that it's all the same thing?

I can't tell whether you're deliberately being obtuse or whether you genuinely don't understand why the houses are expensive?

It is because your lovely blameless locals are a greedy, vindictive set of fuckers who deliberately set out to take advantage of people they perceived as being more wealthy, having decided that such people deserved to pay more for the same thing than others, despite despite knowing nothing about their personal circumstances.

I give up. It's like trying to explain the Large Hadron Collider to a paving slab.

But they wouldn't be able to sell their houses at inflated prices were it not for the Londoners with money to buy them at such a high price. So it's a circular argument.

If they put it on the market at a reasonable price, their neighbours’ sons and daughters could purchase in the area. They are not compelled to wait for rich Londoners to offer more. And even if they got a higher offer, why don’t they make the moral decision to sell to a local? You do know they aren’t forced to sell to a Londoner?

I'm surprised this is about Sevenoaks. It's 25 minutes by train to London Bridge and has always been a very affluent commuter belt town hasn't it?

Put a tax on people buying houses in different areas. The tax could be based on the wealth of the area they are moving from.

Gails is fine. Nothing’s that popular without doing something right.

HMRC: lol, like we don’t have enough work to do.

Plenty of people who move to Sevenoaks from London actually grew up in Sevenoaks. They live in London in their early twenties but choose to move back to Sevenoaks once they have children.

Maybe a standard clause should be added in the sale contract ehen selling houses to escaping Londoners. "You must buy a pot of tea and a butterfly cake from my auntie's bakery in the high street at least twice a week and boycott any chains familiar to you from your London life erm forever? "

Londoners absolutely shouldn't be allowed to move to other places - it's their fault for choosing to live in London in the first place. But since it probably can't be prevented by law, towns should be allowed to put up "Londoners not welcome" signs and "No Londoners" notices on their community websites and social media.

Londoners absolutely shouldn't be allowed to move to other places - it's their fault for choosing to live in London in the first place. But since it probably can't be prevented by law, towns should be allowed to put up "Londoners not welcome" signs and "No Londoners" notices on their community websites and social media.

Replace 'Londoners' with 'Black People' and read it back to yourself.