To feel slightly grumpy at people who have moved to my hometown and made the house prices shoot up

[Pollysoftheworld]

I’m not talking about immigrants.
I was born here. My grandparents grandparents met in the Victorian days in a theatre two miles from my house. Now I have to move out. I don’t recognise my local high street and I can’t afford to shop there. I don’t see how £6 sourdough is a social enterprise. I imagine it’s lovely if you’re used to much higher prices. But I miss my town the way it was.
I wonder if those moving here experienced similar in Brixton, Oxford, Cheltenham etc

The UK has its own peculiarities.

Homes bought by elderly and middle-aged individuals end up being sold to cover medical expenses, hefty bills, debts, taxes, and inheritance tax. This benefits the government, while others eagerly eye and seize these properties.

Homeowners, of course, pay taxes and bills throughout the time they own their houses; there’s nothing free for them.

Naturally, people aim to profit from selling their homes since they’ve poured significant investments into these properties. The taxes and bills are hefty, the cost of living has skyrocketed, and maintaining a decent quality of life requires substantial funds. To ensure access to proper medical care when needed, having money on hand is essential.

It's a balance isn't it, things always change and on one hand you've got £6 sourdough and a high street full of gentrified local bakers, antiques and acai bowls. On the other hand you've got my home town, prices are very reasonable, I don't recognise the high street either though, as its exclusively full of betting shops, charity shops and boarded up shops. It would absolutely love some gentrification but it's such a sh+t hole it will never get it. I'm not sure which is worse. Whilst I could live there, I don't want to. We moved to a nicer town and inevitably pushed the prices up I'm afraid.

I agree. I moved back to my hometown after decades of living all over the world. It’s long past its heyday and it would be nice to see a bit of loveliness if only to get more footfall beyond betting shops and cape shop customers.
a bookshop has recently opened. I take this as a good sign. But perhaps some would see it as gentrification

@Araminta1003trouble is, that feeds into racism and producing ghettos. I also have family in Switzerland, who were refugees and first generation, they don’t live anywhere near the white Swiss population. It’s hugely divided.

I now live in a town that has a thing against people like me moving in, because we've come from out of town and have pushed prices up.

Thing is, I couldn't afford to live in the town I grew up in, because other people moved in over the years and pushed prices up.

And my grandparents, who barley had a pot to piss in, lived in a normal working class outer London neighbourhood that you'd now need millions to move into.

So you can be pissed off, and it's certainly not fair, but it does seem to be the way it happens. Especially in the UK.

We moved from the south east 21 years ago as despite having graduate jobs and 2 incomes (low as just starting out in careers) we couldn’t afford to buy in our home town. Many of our old friends from home are still renting in their 40s but a few have bought houses and made considerable equity. That said, a 4 bed house in Hawkinge, Kent is similar to our Somerset home. House prices shot up in 2020 and aren’t as massively differently to what they used to be for 3 bed and bigger houses. One bed flats are still around £120k which is only 20k more than we paid in 2005. It’s strange.

Is that the Bruton and Newt factor at work, @TeenLifeMum ? I live further down the line in Cornwall and have watched with amazement at how an area of Somerset has become uber-cool.
I wandered through Bruton about a year ago and it was odd place, full of shops selling artisan twine and door stops! Frome is sweet tho.

What’s the alternative? We all have to stay in our home towns forever?

I can afford my home town. It’s a shit hole. i have moved to a nicer, more middle class place. I love sour dough and posh coffee

Would you prefer "slumification"? Prolific vape shops, betti g shops, bright-house rental of home appliances at extortionate interest rates? Pubs with drunken simians outside? High caffeine hyped up boy racers? Poorly maintained and weed, toy and junk strewn gardens? Cheap though.

I think there’s various factors and snobbery around but yes I think that’s part of it. Our town is slightly further (dd looked as Sexeys for 6th form as they run a bus from here as we don’t have 6th form schools just a college).

Villages always seen as the dream (I lived in one originally while is was pretty it was cut on and not ideal for teens. Here my teens can be fairly independent re walking to friends houses etc. it is always hilarious hearing people living in Sherborne put down my town. I love Sherborne but the locals are deluded. They have social housing and drugs like any other town, it’s just hidden behind pink trousers and tweed (not suggesting those wearing pink trousers and tweed are doing the drugs). It’s a lovely town but the issues are still there however much they pretend it isn’t.

It’s a problem everywhere. We’re a small island with a huge population, and more people in our capital city than somewhere like Sweden has in the entire country. Of course house prices are going to inflate in a way that pushes everyone but the very lucky out of the areas they were born in.

People in the UK are angry with second home owners (completely understandably), but in many countries with lower populations and equivalent standards of living it’s acceptable, and even lower wage families will often have a ‘summer house’, because there’s the opportunity and space for it.

The high return on investment and the relative safety of investing in property in the UK makes it a convenient place to store money and have it appreciate, both for wealthy British and for overseas investors. Round where I grew up (in what used to be a nice, not particularly up market area) loads of flats and houses are now owned by overseas investors and sit empty, or are occupied by their children while they study abroad and then left to appreciate without even bothering to rent them.

There are lots of measures the government could employ to keep prices in check, from the draconian to the sensible, but the root problem is that we have a growing population and a finite amount of land. If some of the more grim predictions for the sea level rise come to pass, we’ll have a lot less land to go around and likely significantly more people we need to house.

As far as I can see this is a problem for pretty much everyone, whether you’re someone from a big city who could never afford to buy there or you’re somewhere where those people are moving to and you’re being displaced. Very few people seem to be winning here except those who are making big ££££. Either way it helps me feel less upset to realise that lots of the people moving to where we’re based are also being forced to leave behind support networks and family and places they love by the exact same pressures.

An average experienced teacher earns around £40-45k. In the South East, a 2-bed flat costs upwards of £400k. Even a couple couldn’t afford it or get anywhere near. The world has gone mad.

In London this is totally the case, my kids can’t afford to buy near their family home, no way. And of course wherever they move to they aren’t locals. It’s a time of shifting locations, everyone has to accept it, painful though it is. London is so weird now, mind blowingly expensive.

@opencecilgee same here, I went home over the summer hols and my hometown is even worse than when I grew up there. I would hate to be trapped there and am glad I was able to move to London.

I can understand why this could be frustrating for you personally (especially if you don’t already own), but why do you have more right to be there than someone else? What about people born it shitty places? Do they have to stay where they are? Or can they move…. Just not to your town?

And then they head out here and similarplaces and price our children out having sold their London houses for loads

There is a good chance your great great grandparents didn't own a house either. Houses weren't appreciating assets in the nineteenth century and most jobs came with housing. Before the First World War half the UK population were in service and most professions (the school master, vicar, policemen, bank manager) also had employment-based housing. Widespread home ownership is very much a post second world war phenomenon.

Like a ward sister in Oldham hospital as a relative of mine does you mean? Or any of the consultants there

But then they voukdnt afford to buy the next house

There aren't enough desirable areas, because all our major cities other than London get scraps from the table in terms of funding, public transport investment etc. vs the south east (and Scotland and Wales and NI tbh), have done for years and just can't compete for businesses.

London has had more spent in building the Elizabeth line than the entire rest of the country has had in decades.

Everything is London centric, young people and foreigners ahve to move to London en-masse because it's the only place with good jobs in most industries. They then escape if they can, with some of that money, to live somewhere less pressured.

I grew up a short distance from there and my parents would make us wind the windows up when we drove through because it was a bit dodgy 😁

Supposing in your scenario there’s a cap of £500k for a 3 bed semi (in itself quite arbitrary). A young couple buy it the year before the cap for £800k.
The following year they get a job in another part of the country. They sell the house for £500k max. What do they do with their £300k worth of debt? No one is ever going to lend to them given they owe that much money.

Funny how it is always the people born in nice places who are so keen to stay where they are...

Second homes I can understand but moving around is what we humans have always done. I can't afford to live in the posh town I was born in, so I moved somewhere else.