My partner and I are seriously weighing up selling our flat in SE London and relocating to Sheffield to rent, with a view to buying later. We have a son turning 4 in June and another baby due in October.
The financials broadly work: if we can sell quickly, we’d walk away with a decent cash buffer, our monthly outgoings would drop significantly, and we have enough of a network in Sheffield that we wouldn’t be starting completely from scratch. We know a handful of people there, and I think having a kid starting school and a new baby tends to open doors, though I’m under no illusion it would still be an adjustment.
The complications:
The sale isn’t guaranteed to be smooth...flats are in a crap part of the market right now. Ours is in a desirable location and fully renovated, but it’s not a straightforward sell atm. We might have to take a lower price than we’d like.
Timing is tight. We’d need to sell and be renting in Sheffield from around July (we’d likely have crossover with the sale so double outgoings for a few months) to register my son for school and get me into the maternity system there. That’s a lot of moving parts to land at once during a pregnancy (due October)
My job situation is uncertain, which is partly what’s driving this, but also makes the timing feel precarious. It could be fine when I return from mat leave (and if it is, I can work remotely with the odd trip to London), or the company could decline to the point where it’s not sustainable. If it came to that, and we stayed in London, I’d need to find something new fairly quickly (within 6-9 months of mat leave), London does have more options, though remote/local roles aren’t impossible. If we moved, we’d at least have the cash buffer to buy some breathing room. (We could use come cash for living for 12-24 months and still have a decent deposit. Partner would still be earning too and overheads are lower in Sheff)
My partner has strong professional ties to London that Sheffield can’t replicate, and would have to come up maybe once or twice a month or so (2hr train). Though, most of his day to day work is remote/freelance.
Neither of us is doing this purely out of desire, circumstance is nudging us in this direction. But we’re not sure that’s a bad thing..? But it would be a huge culture shock, we’ve lived in London for 15 years, and have a network here.
Doing it now feels like a lot, but waiting seems to create its own problems IMO. In a year’s time we’d face moving my son once he’s already settled in school, finding childcare for a baby (genuinely hard), and potentially uprooting just as I’ve started a new job. Staying put means two kids in a 2-bed flat with no realistic path to upsizing in London (don’t think we’d ever afford it and I don’t just want to really stretch ourselves just to live in a tiny house) . Sheffield is also about 2 hours from both sets of grandparents, right now we’re 4-6 hours away, and with school holidays on the horizon that proximity starts to matter a lot more.
So the question isn’t really whether to move, it’s whether now is the least-bad time.
Has anyone made a similar move, London to a northern city, young family, renting first? Did it work out? What do you wish you’d known?
What would you do?