Anyone else feel like this (gentrification)

[Pricedoutafter30years]

So we bought our first family house (previous properties were 2 & 3-bed flats) in 1992 for £98,000 and paid the mortgage off just before my DH retired in 2017. The houses have increased in value ridiculously since then, with our modest 3-bed semi now worth around £835,000.
Next door recently sold for £120,000 OVER the asking price, which was slightly more than ours originally, because it has been extended to a 4-bed, and because it’s detached.
The new owner has arrived from a very upscale area which is closer to London, so presumably had been priced out of that area) and has completely remodelled the house in the last 6 weeks, a remodel which must have cost £££’s. However, most of the fixtures and fitting had already been replaced within the last 2/3 years - and the house already looked like a brand-new house when the previous owners put it on the market.
I suppose we will benefit from the gentrification of the area if and when we sell, but as more and more much richer people move in, I’m worried if there will be an impact on us: we’ve always got on well with all our neighbours, but are beginning to feel like the poor relations, since the only people that can afford to move in now are not builders and teachers as I am and my DH was before retiring. We have decided not to extend the house as most others have been, because the DC are now flown the nest, and the house in its original configuration is plenty big enough for the 2 of us!
Has anyone else found themselves feeling like this (poor relations), and did you stay, or move away?

You could pick out the "poor relations" just walking about, not even knowing exactly where they lived?? How very strange.

Yes gentrification is a pretty tragic process. I moved from Hackney to a seaside town, so I was both an agent of gentrification which you can see here with poorer families finding it harder to find somewhere to private rent and having to move away from their community, but I was also a victim of it having bought shared ownership in Hackney then no chance of fully buying the flat because it had doubled in value. I could just about of stayed but it would have meant relying on pension credit when I retire. Its been quite rubbish moving away from area I had lived in most of my adult life.

I think there’s a lot of copycat extending. I live in the poorer end of my borough but my allotment neighbour is in the more desirable end. He says he’s lost count of the number of loft/ kitchen extensions happening around him, and a banker moved in to the house next door and proceeded to rip out the kitchen which had only been replaced a few years ago by the previous owners. Why re configure your house if it meets your needs? Read “Capital” by John Lanchester it contains good satire of this kind of relentless home transformation, as well as the human cost of gentrification.

It’s reciprocal, most people who relocate to less desirable areas dont do it by choice but by necessity and would have most likely preferred to settle down in their favourite location in the first place. As perfectly illustrated by your numbers, what used to be a modest house for a regular household is now bought out by high earners who have been gentrified out themselves from desirable areas by some richer buyers up the food chain.

Interesting thread....we are in east london....prices have rocketed...a lot of our neighbours have all been here for years....like us paid very little...60k...120k etc....now houses sell for over 800k or more....we are now surrounded by skips and building work...they all seem to work with developing apps or make childrens clothes from home..a few are accountants or architects etc...all sit in the fancy cafes sipping lates etc and drone on about nannies and nurseries etc...how do they afford all this....??....we are all puzzled....must have huge mortgage and then fund all the building work also....some of my neighbours have done very well and cashed in and gone to norfolk etc....i suppose one day we will also sell up and get a massive price...we all get along with the newer people even tho a lot younger and all seem very nice....there are pockets of silly snobber tho....and we now have some foofy gift shops...socks at £80 a pair...candles for £25...but they are still open after about 3 years so some one must be buying the stuff..!!...we dont as find the stock all bland and beige...!!

Where I live there used to be lots of small 2 bedroom cottages with large gardens but they're being bought up by people who're moving out of bigger towns and cities (with much better paid jobs than our rural economy provides), then extended into 4, 5 and 6 bed whoppers. It's stripped a whole tier of fairly affordable housing out of the local economy, and ruining what were really lovely, quirky homes.

@HarrietSchulenberg exactly that has happened in our rural area too. Plus as pp stated, the bigger/more expensive housing is bought by youngish families with wfh jobs who can immediately afford to extend/renovate.

Yes it’s a hard process to live through. While I was part of the a gentrification wave in my current part of London 15 years ago, the newer wave has pushed me out (I recently sold a flat, can’t afford a house) and I’ll be an agent of it again when we move to an outer zone of London.

It’s uncomfortable to be both one of the people coming in, and one of the people being pushed out.

A very large, beautiful house a few doors down from me was recently bought by some finance people with a sizeable inheritance who were very disappointed that they could no longer afford St John’s Wood!

But I definitely found I didn’t have much in common with my neighbours when my current area became very desirable. I’m sure me and my set were annoying too when we came along though!

I don’t know what the answer is. Stop people hiding / laundering money by buying empty houses in Kensington / Hampstead / etc? Put larger taxes on owning more than one home?

The extending and remodelling seems relentless in mum's area. Her house was always the smallest in the road by a long chalk, but lots of 30 somethings have moved in and extended their homes. They all seem lovely and happy to help an old lady though.

But mum says she feels embarrassed sometimes as it's a small road with a little house now surrounded by bigger ones. Of course it doesn't matter, she's being silly. I just wonder the money is coming from. Oh, and the artificial grass people are annoying. They've had a couple of flood issues but eventually that's going to impact on the house next door.

the local tip guys in mum's area are amazed at what's being brought in - people ripping out brand new kitchens like the John Lanchester book.

My area is spiralling badly downhill so I can't help thinking it must be nicer to be in a place that is doing the opposite.

I grew up in a then roughish part of London & the vast majority of my neighbours were immigrants like my parents. But we all played together & in some ways had a very innocent childhood. It was great to mix with all different kinds of people & there was a mix of cultures, religions & economic factors.
My parents still live on that road but hardly know their neighbours and everyone is very different, predominantly white english from well off backgrounds.

But my parents paid 60k in the 80s & houses go for over 1.8m.

I moved about 15 min drive away & that area has changed a lot too. It was popular with professionals with young families due to excellent schools & we were some of the younger ones. But in recent years the maisonettes have all gone to trustafarian style kids in their 20s. I do find it weird & the schools now have spaces as young families are priced out or covid has driven them off.

We plan to move further out of London as we want more space but can't afford here.
There's very little sympathy for Londoners who are priced out & there has been lots of council tenants moved out. If you look at Brixton or Hackney it's very dramatic.

I live in West London- in a part that really was sort of 'forgotten about' and a tad cheaper because the transport links to my little Bermuda Triangle aren't great. It's a gorgeous spot and in the past decade, it's gone from a best-kept secret of longtime elderly residents, to developers flipping the hell out of the place. If it's not developers rolling up with Titanic-size skips ready to Burj Khalifa the fuck out of a modest terrace, its '2 German Whips and a Landy on the Drive' wankers types building 'eco-friendly sustainable' basements/extensions/lofts and whatever else they can tack on. Oh the irony. I have spent years breathing in their dust and carcinogens so they can 'live green'. Har bloody har.
Our road has been taken over by people who have small children and dogs, yet they all wear white clothing that remains white... all day long. I can't figure out if they are the social anomaly... or is it me, the old witch in the middle of the row whose walls and face and body all show signs of serious structural damage?
I do love where I live...my little postage stamp. But the relentless building works have really gotten to me. Honestly, I wouldn't know what the world sounds like without a pneumatic drill in it. I have the option of moving but I really don't know where I'd go. Wherever you go, someone with a rendering fetish and a huge skip is never far behind.

I live in gentrified north London and I find a few things hard but it’s more identity based.

People not having a local accent. Or everyone being white and middle class. And not knowing where anything is, like the massive park that’s been featured on tv several times. Or artisan bakery’s where Percy ingles used to be. Or people saying “I never knew this was here” about the huge nature reserve that’s right over there if you just look, and then when they do find it, it’s on Instagram as a “hidden gem”.

But these things make me grumpy and old.

I am very much a “I remember when this was all fields” person now, and so are my fellow native Londoners.

Our local leisure centre changed names about 10 years ago and you can tell the new people because they don’t call it by the old name.

same as the New Road in tottenham. Only us vintage ones (late 30’s) call it that. It’s like Chas n Dave code. The roads not even new!

I moved from zone 3 London to outer suburbia a few years ago. The young couples who could afford houses like my old one were very highly paid City people rather than the previous middle income people. The area still has a lot of the houses turned into flats which are social housing or private rented. This means there is a mix of high paid professionals along with low income families, most of them from Eastern Europe or Africa. I think this is common in London.

In n Wales we've always had retirees from the North West who pushed up prices a bit. Along came covid and cash buyers offering crazy money. Two elderly neighbours died recently so one house and one bungalow going on the market. Another bought last year is now an Airbnb We're in a cul de sac get along well. But the dynamics may well change. Pre covid big houses in pretty places fetched £500k. They're well over a million now

I am, of course, sorry for your predicament but really enjoyed reading this. I hope you write more.

Unfortunately it’s the same in vast bits of London as well

any house, every house, now has the loft converted as standard, and at least 2 bathrooms

which is fine if you want/need/can afford 4 bedrooms but I’ve had several friends who have wanted to stay local after a divorce and found that 2 and 3 bedroom houses just don’t exist any more
Or if they do, they are sold as ‘development opportunities’ and priced to reflect what they will be worth after the extension is done

the rule now seems to be if you want 2 beds, you must be in a flat, and if you want to be in a house, you have to have the budget for a 4 or 5 bed house

And now that basements are becoming more popular, that will be the next thing… all the terraces will soon be 2500+ sq ft and nothing left for anyone who wants or needs a smaller house

Echoing @DomusAurea - Great read, @TheVanguardSix but yes, that does all sound a bit hellish.

There are masses of kitchen extensions/loft conversions around here, but that’s largely because it’s a relatively very expensive area with very good schools (inc. grammars) so it’s almost always quite a bit cheaper to extend up/out/both, rather than move from a 2 to a 3 bed, or from a 3 to a 4.

I live in the southeast where my parents bought their average 3 bed for £104k 20yr ago. Houses on that road now sell for £500-600k.

Only town I’ve ever called my hometown - half of it is now air bnb, the other half is people moving down from London as near as possible to the best schools - while the locals move further away as they can’t even find a rental due to so many air bnb never mind afford to buy. My older DC lovely old nursery was bought, flattened, and turned into a row of expensive townhouses. All the houses are being gutted, extended, clad in grey. Lots of bungalows being snapped up and given a full second floor and large ground floor extension. A new estate of ‘affordable homes’ is under construction and an average 3 bed ‘starter home’ is an eye watering 500k.

When we bought a house we moved to a nearby less desirable town which is very nice, and prices even here have now also gone up so much during covid that we can’t afford to buy a bigger home as planned so we don’t have enough bedrooms. But just feeling lucky at this point to own our home and have that security.

By the time we had moved out of my hometown we did definitely feel like the poor relation and I noticed it particularly amongst the parents at my DC school and at parent baby groups etc.

It’s like the world has gone mad! But I think it is happening everywhere. Makes me sad as I loved my hometown just as it was, rough round the edges with an arcades, cheap chip shops and normal looking houses.