In the Times today on this:
Affluent families desperate to escape towns and cities are offering tens of thousands of pounds to the owners of country properties around Britain to find sanctuary in the coronavirus crisis.
Estate agents have reported being inundated with calls from wealthy Londoners daunted by the prospect of working from home while looking after children who are off school in a city shut by the virus. Some are said to be willing to pay up to £50,000 a month, causing resentment among people in rural locations.
Jamie Jamieson, who owns a property search company, said: “I have had calls from six families looking for homes in Suffolk and two for Norfolk in the last two days. They want homes with more space than they have in London, preferably with a garden where the kids can play. They don’t mind what it costs.”
Some have offered to pay a year’s rent up front. Guy Bradshaw of UK Sotheby’s International, said some were willing to pay £50,000 a month. The idea has not been popular with people living in the areas.
John Thompson, 74, who lives in the Lake District and says he has an immune disorder, complained on Facebook about social media posts “openly encouraging people to come to the Lakes”. He said: “I am the very type that will be facing ‘end of life’ if I contract this virus . . . I understand people losing money, I do, but we are dealing here with life and death situations.”
He added that he despaired when he “looked at the many walkers going past my front door”.
A Welsh MP has even called for a travel ban to stop owners of second homes moving to the countryside during the crisis.
Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd on the northwest Welsh coast, said the government should designate such travel plans as “non-essential” and that anyone self-isolating should do so at their main home where they were likely to be closer to support networks.
“People who have holiday homes in the area are seeing Gwynedd as being free of coronavirus and deciding to relocate here,” she said.
Joanna Cocking, head of prime and country sales for Hamptons International, said she had been asking clients wishing to sell their homes whether they would consider letting instead.
She has also asked owners of country properties with cottages or outbuildings whether they might be able to let them out, and contacting the owners of empty properties, “some of who are stuck abroad”, to see whether they would be willing to rent them to those fleeing the capital.
Eloise Duckworth, 55, who lives in a seven-bedroom house in the Cotswolds, said she had had offers from two families within the space of a few hours on Tuesday afternoon. She said they were willing to pay up to £30,000 a month to rent her home but Ms Duckworth, who has three children, chose to stay put.
“These families were desperate to get out of London as quickly as possible,” she said. “But I just thought if we all get ill, it’s better that we are all stuck here together because everyone will need their own room. It just wasn’t going to work.”
Henrietta Harwood-Smith, co-founder of the PR agency Maison, is among those struggling to find a place to rent. She wanted to leave London with her husband and four-year-old daughter to be nearer her parents in Gloucestershire, but said she had only managed to get a two-week holiday let, which she hoped to extend.
“All we could find was two weeks,” she said. “We just want to go somewhere less densely populated than London and we would like to be close to my parents. Even if we can’t visit them we can pick up shopping and be on hand to help.”
Many people are using any spare space available to put up loved ones. Ms Cocking said: “We are seeing people use property they might once have rented for family and friends. We have one couple who have a sizeable annexe but who have had their daughter and family move in with them.”