Am I mad to move up north alone?

[Rozziie]

I've been looking to buy in London for the last 6 months (taking 2-3 months off for personal reasons) and I'm just at the end of my tether. When I started looking, I didn't quite have my deposit together and wanted to get an idea of what I wanted and didn't want. Finally got the full deposit saved now and looking to buy in the next month and it seems like there's about 1/10 of the flats that were available in April/May, and those that are on the market are more expensive and less good than what I saw then! Seems like they are disappearing very quickly as well, when it was definitely a buyers' market just a few months ago.

I just feel exasperated to the point of tears. I'm 36 years old and have worked so hard to get to this point, sacrificed a lot to try to get some financial security, and I still can't afford to buy a poxy one bed flat. People keep asking me why I don't move out of London and there are reasons why I don't. It's nice to be somewhere with so much going on culturally, plenty of dating choice for women my age, etc. I've got some family here, and friends. But it's really grinding me down that I'm still renting and dealing with nonsense from landlords. I thought I'd have definitely bought somewhere by the end of this year and now it looks harder than ever.

I've had a look at places like Sheffield and I could buy a 3-bed house with a garden for cheaper than a poky flat here (although I understand there's loads of competition for these at the moment?) or a one or two-bed flat for less than half the price of one in the London surburbs, in the city centre, walkable distance to bars, restaurants, and the mainline train station. Work (London) might be a bit tricky but I could maybe try to only go in once a fortnight or so. Right now I'm paying £1300 to rent a tiny flat in London to go to the office once a week and work from home the rest of the time, which is just awful!

My main worry is that it would end up being even more isolating and lonely than living alone in London already is. I don't really know anyone there at all, and this is quite an awkward age to make new friends. I wouldn't have a workplace to go to. I don't know about the social and dating scene, but when I lived in Manchester it was really bad...most men my age had kids already and that's a dealbreaker for me, I think.

What would you do if you were me? Bite the bullet and try something new or stick to London and suck it up, living in a really far-out surburb or a not nice area?

Ouch @SaskiaRembrandt, I've just seen my glaring typo, 'their'!

But yes, probably not the most reliable source!

I’m struggling to think of any area in Sheffield with a £500k house where the next estate has huge knife crime.
S4, S2 and S9 are the worst for knife crime and there are definitely no £500k houses in any of those areas!

@TedMullins

Come to south east! I bought my one bed in south Norwood for 200k in may, and there are still loads of flats in your budget in my area. I’ve lived in two northern cities as well as London and in my experience it’s much harder to make friends up north - people were more likely to have groups they’d known since school and to settle down younger, and were less inclined to let new people into their circles. In London I’ve made more friends than I ever had previously with a much more diverse selection of people. Don’t underestimate the cost of commuting either - even once a week a sheffield-london ticket would probably set you back over £100. I was almost tempted to buy a house in my hometown (Midlands) over lockdown but the monthly season ticket alone would have been £800!

I am looking at south east but it's still mostly out of my budget! I can see South Norwood tends to be cheaper than Crystal Palace/Penge/Anerley...what's it like as an area, safety wise, etc.? I'm renting in zone 2/3 so used to a quick commute but prices have shot up in the area I'm in :(

I do think people who are failing to make fiends 'oop North' are possibly the problem, rather than the area.

I moved to a village in the Cheshire part of the Peak District last June during lockdown and have already made quite a few friends, some of them are coming over for drinks tonight. You've just got to get yourself out there, people aren't going to come to you!

@SaltySheepdog

How much do you have to spend?

Up to £300K.

With my downtime, I like to travel to the continent whenever possible (although the pandemic is making this hard/impossible now), go hiking/walking, go out to bars, restaurants, theatre shows, etc. and learn/practise languages.

I love London, it's a great city, but if your choice is the outer zones, or commuter-land versus SW Sheffield, it's an absolute no-brainer to chose Sheffield.

[quote Debetswell]@Rozziie my advice if you like Sheffield would be a flat in kelham island.
They have a fantastic community vibe, mostly your age group.
Lots going on.
Feels very safe.
You would soon have friends and everything is on your doorstep.[/quote]
Yeah, it looks really cool! Have seen some really nice flats there when browsing Rightmove. One in particular I now regret just not going to view...it was like a full on 'friends' style loft with massive roof terrace....could only dream of that in London!

I'm moving up north and I'm on my own. Looking forward to it, although I do have work and existing friends up there already so it's a little bit easier.

That said, new friends and dating are always challenging / daunting wherever you go - the location is to some degree a moot point. As @ShrikeAttack says you have to just get out there. I'm already looking at classes to sign up to and park run locations.

Have you looked at the Preston area ?
Direct train to London and Scotland.

@JaninaDuszejko

45 mins is obviously different than london-sheffield. In an emergency my parents can get here quickly. For example.

London is full of people with no family connections there, it shouldn't be a reason to not move the other way. Never living more than an hour away from your parents sounds quite parochial, we're about 3h from PIL and much further from my DP, and in 30 years there are only 2 situations that I'd consider an emergency (a premature birth and unexpected death) and friends and neighbours helped in those situations until the closest family could get there.

OP, what area of tech do you work in? There are jobs in the north but the market will feel different to London, there are fewer jobs in any location but also fewer people chasing them. But fewer jobs but living in a house you own vs lots of jobs but renting something smaller than my kitchen seems a reasonable compromise to me. Your rent is more than our mortgage for a 4 bed house in a very naice area of the NE .

You say 'we', which implies you live with a partner. Pretty big difference between that and literally being completely alone somewhere and not knowing a single person!

Yeah I've already lived and worked in the north - I will not find a comparable job there in my area. If I moved, it would have to be either fully remote work or commuting to London once a week or once a fortnight or so. The frustrating thing is most companies in London have gone remote only or mostly remote, so you're getting the worst of both worlds, really....working from a tiny flat and not getting the social aspect of the before times :(

Why hobbies do you have where you would meet people ?
Exercise classes, gym etc.

[quote onlychildhamster]@Rozziie

What about something like this?

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/108826685#/?channel=RES_BUY[/quote]
I've considered it but it doesn't really seem worth buying that far out...it's almost as expensive as what I'd get in Zone 3/4 SE London but with much more expensive transport costs and a total inability to walk or cycle to work, as I do now. I think I'd rather either stay in London proper or just move somewhere totally different. Perhaps I should be more open minded about it though...lots of nice areas SW, and handy for Heathrow. Hmmm.

@ShrikeAttack

I do think people who are failing to make fiends 'oop North' are possibly the problem, rather than the area.

I moved to a village in the Cheshire part of the Peak District last June during lockdown and have already made quite a few friends, some of them are coming over for drinks tonight. You've just got to get yourself out there, people aren't going to come to you!

Do you? I did manage to make a lot of friends when I lived in Paris, Gent and London. I have made some friends in the north west too but nowhere near the same as when I lived elsewhere. I don’t think it’s particularly useful to tell the OP, who worries about being lonely, that if she doesn’t make friends it’s because of how she is. It is just harder to break into friendship groups which were formed already in primary school, which is what I found was the case with a lot of people I have met since moving here.

@Rozziie kelham island would definitely be good for you.

Please avoid park hill or whatever they’re calling it these days. The brightly painted flats next to ponds forge. They’ve spent a lot on it but it’s a no go.
For your budget you’ll get a nice 3 bed semi in S8 if you’d like a garden.

If you work in tech have you considered Leeds. It has so many jobs in tech at both large employers or smaller companies. Sky, William hill, first direct and NHS digital probably have the biggest tech teams but ive got friends working in so many different types of businesses. I also know that some tech businesses are outsourcing as they can’t recruit staff locally (wages have risen astronomically) a friend from Brighton relocated earlier in the year and he is earning more in Leeds than he was before.
House wise you’d get a nice house/flat for £250-300k. Yorkshire dales, the moors and Peak District are on your doorstep and the train to London is really easy - I used to commute once a week.

@ShrikeAttack

Hi OP, Sheffield is a fantastic city, I'm from there and now live in the Peaks after a couple of decades of living all over.

It's a very safe city, I'm not sure where PP is getting there information from about crime! It's very friendly, has a great cultural and music scene, multicultural, beautiful green spaces, tonnes of community stuff going on. Both of my parents and one of my sisters are still there, it's a great place.

Area-wise, for your budget I'd look around Hunters Bar or Banner Cross, Nether Green, Brincliffe and parts of Nether Edge, the southwest is the most desirable area.

You could get a three bed terrace like this.

Do it!

Wow, that house is stunning! I definitely feel like I'm wasting money spending so much to live in a one-bed flat which I've hardly left anyway during the pandemic!

I will need to look into crime but I can't believe it would be worse than South London? I'm used to London having been here for years but all sorts happens here.

@ShrikeAttack you shouldn't have said anything, I hadn't noticed the typo

@Snoken

I agree with *@Subbaxeo*. I moved from abroad to London, and then up to the Manchester area about 7 years ago. Although people are very friendly it’s actually hard to make friends because most people here has never moved away and had to make new friends. The friends I have are all either expats or Brits who have returned to the UK from abroad. Most other people have their friendship groups sorted and aren’t looking to add people to it.

If I were you I would not give up on my London dream just yet, alternative move somewhere fun nearer to London, like Brighton or similar.

Yeah, definitely. I found Manchester really hard to live in and eventually just left. And I've lived literally all over the world and am used to making friends and making the effort, but there it just felt impossible!

Yeah, I've been considering Brighton/Hove the entire time too. Went down for a week to do viewings a while back, and while the prices are similar to London, you get a LOT more for your money there, I think. £280K gets you a flat that's actually nice and spacious. I feel like it's still somewhat of a commitment as in it's far enough from London that you can no longer pop in randomly, but there's plenty going on there anyway.

Have you considered Milton Keynes? Amazing rail connections

@Rozziie it’s bad at the moment, there seems to be a retaliation thing going on so there’s something every couple of days but it won’t affect the areas you’re looking at.

Certainly not london levels, I should imagine.

If you were moving north for work that would be one thing, but remote working in Sheffield while travelling into London once a fortnight feels like the worst of both worlds - no chance to make work friends in Sheffield, while it will be hard to keep up London work friendships if you're only going in occasionally and have a long journey back home.

In your position I probably would either try to get a nice flat in SE London, or move to a city in the SE (Brighton, Canterbury, Guildford, Cambridge?) which will still be expensive but less so than London, and will have lots of stuff going on, chance to make friends, and a very manageable commute into London once or twice a week.

I'd be quick, the prices in the north are creeping up!

@ComeonJulia

I’m from Sheffield, I’ve lived here most of my life. What areas are you looking in? Often the cheap houses are cheap for a reason. There are definitely places to avoid.

All of them, really. I don't really know enough to know where is good or bad. I've seen flats I like in Kelham Island and houses West/SW towards the Peaks. Bear in mind that almost everything is cheap compared to London...the one-bed flat next door to me just sold for £420K!

The making friends thing is just something you have to be active about. Join everything that connects to an interest, join clubs go to meet ups. It’s just like dating - invest but not overly and find the good ones! Sounds like you could also have lodgers if it suited you.

@GoodnightGrandma

Why hobbies do you have where you would meet people ? Exercise classes, gym etc.

Pre pandemic I did all sorts in London. Language exchange evenings, coding workshops, exercise classes, climbing, some volunteering with stuff like litter picking and food banks. Obviously have done very little of any of this over the past 18 months but that would be the usual.