Moving back to London

[Londonlady84]

Hello!

We are a family of 5 with three children aged 5, 3 and 7 months. We left London during the height of lockdown to be nearer family in the Midlands and are now seriously considering returning.

We miss the buzz and excitement of London, the family help we'd hoped for never really transpired and my husband is away 3 days per week working in London.

We would be trading in a beautiful 2,200 sq ft Victorian house for around 1,000 sq ft flat in a nice part of zone for more than twice the mortgage we pay now 😂 Has anyone lived comfortably in this amount space with 3 DC?

Has anyone else moved back to London with children after moving out and massively downsized? Are you glad you made the move?

Thanks!

Glad it worked out @Londonlady84 - bit of a bummer with the house sale.

Welcome back OP! I'm glad it's working out for you and glad your son is settling in.

That's really good to hear and sounds like it was definitely the right decision for all of you to move back. Good luck in selling your house and with the next steps...

@Londonlady84 Very pleased for you. Always hard to make these decisions but great to hear that it’s working out. We are 99% there too. Definitely want to move back. Just got to sort out my work and the school situation but we’re getting there. We cant wait. So excited. Wishing you all the very best.

@icantbelieveitsnotmother Can I ask about your experience in Glasgow? We've visited a few times and really loved it - it seemed like a really buzzy city with lots going on, beautiful green spaces, amazing countryside very accessible etc.

We are considering a move from London in future so I'd really like to understand the possible downsides (apart from being so far away from friends and family, which is the thing that has stopped us so far!). Sorry to hear you are not happy there.

Hello. It’s very subjective and I can only speak for myself. Many people I know like it here and I’m sure will disagree with me very strongly! Quality of life can be good (if you have means of course - same everywhere) and yes access to countryside is a big plus - we have taken advantage of that a lot but it’s not enough to keep me here. I’m a born Londoner and I miss the buzz and diversity of the city and the people, the scale of it, the choice it offers - as well as friends and family. Glasgow city centre is pretty dire in my opinion (I know I sound like an elitist Londoner - cue the hate mail). The West End is v nice (v much an exclusive enclave detached from the rest of Glasgow) and I have friends who like living in the South side but transport links south of city are not amazing. Ultimately all I can say is it’s not for me. My partner feels the same. My kid likes it but it’s not what I want for them long term and I can’t see myself growing old here. Depends what’s important to you personally. The weather is also hard to get used to. It really is as bad as they say!

Hi OP, so glad it’s worked out for you. We are looking at cities in Europe now, we haven’t decided whether to stay in the UK long term. It will definitely be a city though, not a town or village. Best of luck.

@icantbelieveitsnotmother Thanks so much for the response, really appreciate it and totally see what you mean. The West End is indeed beautiful but agree re the city centre - I told myself it was the equivalent of London's Oxford Street or Piccadilly etc which I find pretty grim. But obviously London has masses of other, nicer, central areas!

The weather is another downside definitely although we are also finding summers in London increasingly unpleasant - I would have loved to have been in Scotland during the heatwave last July.

Ultimately you are right in that it is so subjective, and it seems like you will never really be able to predict exactly how you will find living somewhere completely new, even with all the research in the world!

All the best with your next steps.

Thank you @banhmi and the same to you. We moved up here because we wanted to see if it could work. Sometimes you have to take a chance. We gave ourselves an airbag in the sense that we didn’t sell up in London so we have the option to move back. If you can find a way to try on for size and rent first I’d recommend it.

I think flats can feel bigger than a house of the same size as you can use one of the DC’s bedrooms as a playroom during the day. That’s what I did and also it’s easy to carry toys from the reception room into a bedroom to create an adult space in the evening.

Interested to find this thread! Glad you're happier OP - we moved out from London to somewhere very pretty and rural in the south west and it's a been a terrible decision (for me personally.) Left a house in an area we'd lived in happily for 8 years, for a lovely looking/larger one in a pretty looking rural village and ever since we moved I've struggled. Everything around us currently is either dogs, horses, landrovers or sport, and while I can make polite conversation etc to get on with people around us I feel utterly blank inside.

I think the root issue is we left because we thought we should, not because we wanted to, and didn't think hard enough about the realities because the pandemic made us panic about house prices. I grew up in the countryside and literally counted down the days until I could leg it at 18 - what was I thinking moving now!? 🙄

I feel like we've left it too late to go back, DS1 is coming up to secondary and I worry about uprooting them again. Also I think DH doesn't mind as much as me, so don't want to uproot everyone for purely selfish reasons. Instead trying to sell the house we're in now (great timing) to move into a smaller house in the bigger village nearby where we've have found people we do have something in common with (a lot of them city expats, weirdly,) and there is at least slightly more creativity/diversity, but also to free up some money to buy a flat in London for when the children are in uni. Hoping this will be enough hope to hang onto, but that will be 8-10 years from now..

The born and bred locals expect us to be really happy we swapped London for here, so unfortunately it's hard to find anyone to really talk to; obviously this is absolutely first world problems but VERY happy to have a cathartic moan on here if anyone else wants to!

Just wondering what the people wanting to move back to London landed on doing?
We moved to the Home Counties after living in London and I’ve massively regretted it ever since. But I feel so overwhelmed at the thought of the uprooting of going back to London. It’s the moving the kids into a new school that leaves me feeling so guilty.
Just looking for how people who have gone back to London have gotten on really!

We moved to Bath back in 2015. One reason we did so was that although it isn't cheap (less than better areas of london but still not cheap) it had enough here to keep us, bars, restaurants, music venues, bookshops , markets . It also has very good schools state and private (we were just beyond that stage) plus lovely countryside and enough places close by for days out - Wells, Cardiff, Bristol , Cheltenham, Stroud, Frome etc. Also on a very good 1hr 22 mins trainline to London (every 30 mins) - we could have got much better value elsewhere I know but think we would have ended up moving back simply through lack of 'life' - My h isn't villagey apart from the odd pub lunch and doesn't like to be somewhere where that isn't a decent 'potter' - I do think when people move away they need to think about what they enjoy doing and not just the size of house/garden etc - also whether you are happy to be constantly driving everywhere- it's easy to think it's no big deal but can become very tedious- we can still go out on a Friday evening and get a £7 taxi home easy as anything. I honestly would rather have a modest sized place somewhere I really like than a whopping place in a dead area.

Hello. I was one of the people on this thread. Moved from London to Glasgow pre pandemic. We moved home to London earlier this year and we are so glad we did. We are all very happy and our daughter has settled into her new school well so far. She has yet to find her new best friend - early days- but I can see her independence and curiosity thriving being back in London. No regrets whatsoever. Feel like a weight has lifted. Hope that helps.

@Icantbelieveitsnotmother really pleased for you x

Thanks so much for response. It fills me with some hope! I miss the mentality in London, the buzz, the diversity, the opportunities. Everything.
Can I ask what part of London you settled on and how easy it was getting a primary school place? & also is there a sense of community. Sorry for the questions just really trying to research before we even begin looking seriously. Thank you x

Ps. Also really pleased it worked out for you. That feeling of a weight being lifted must be great. X

this is 100% more how I feel. I hate the fact in the suburbs the car is used for everything. I miss being able to walk and use public transport. I would happily downsize and move back to a city.
we have a lovely large house in the suburbs but with nothing to do. I can get the train into London in 1 hour which makes it sound totally accessible but it’s a long journey to do often with kids.

@Elizabeth0712 absolutely. We looked all round those areas people are talking about and concluded it was still expensive but with not much oomph.

We have also lived in oxford and st albans - oxford was better ! I found in st albans we used to end up going into London a lot- which as it's not in zones wasn't cheap to do- actually didn't like anywhere else much locally-it was a bit like a jewel in a sea of nothing.

Personally if you want London/Home Counties suburban but similar money to the areas you mention I would go for a smaller house in Kingston/surbiton or somewhere like Guildford- they do at least have life!