Leaving London?

[greennotepad]

I've lived in London my entire adult life. It's all I ever wanted growing up (I grew up in a suburb not far from London so I went a lot as a child/teen and it became my sole focus in life) and now I'm 40+ and still here. My DH and I are childfree and still enjoy a lot of the advantages of living here- the buzz, the nightlife, and so on.

However, like many others, I am starting to find myself really tired of it. The things about the city that I used to love now just grind, and I find it all so stressful- it's too busy, and loud, and smelly, and all that other stuff.

My DH is from Liverpool, and we could move there tomorrow for a house 3 times the size of our poky 3 bed flat, for less money. A lot of his friends who we still see now are still there, so we'd know loads of people. I'd be leaving my family and the majority of my friends behind- they're mostly still in London.

We can't decide what to do. Has anyone left London and regret it?

(He's not really from Liverpool but a town up north- just said that to not be too identifying but realised it implies we'd swap one city for another! It's not a city that we'd be moving to at all.)

I took a job 2 hrs north of London, lived there for 6 years and then came back to London (another job). I still love London and wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Not since kids but yes have tried to leave a few times. Lived in three other places in UK and one outside, all perfectly nice with lots of positives but I ended up really homesick each time and having to move back after a couple of years. Now that I have kids I don't think I would try to move again at least until they move out as I think London has more opportunities for them.

Hi green, I left London 15 years ago (albeit not as far as Liverpool) and really regretted it. I've made the best of it, made friends etc, but if I had my time again I'd have stayed closer to home. It's great that you have friends in Liverpool but while leaving your own friends and family behind can seem ok at first, people do get used to you not being there and so move on with life themselves. We're priced out now but even if we went back, it wouldn't be the same. Also, though I've made friends here, I have never felt fully involved in their lives as they already had family and long term established friendships before I came along - so we're never connecting on a deeper level if that makes sense. It's like living in a strange limbo of not feeling completely right in the new place, but knowing you've been out of London so long that going back wouldn't feel right either. Plus, I didn't factor in my parents getting old and not seeing them as much. We're happy enough but it can be lonely and I do absolutely regret it.

We left London a decade ago - early 30s and at first I regretted it. Missed everything about London. Then I settled where I am and had kids and am happy. Life with kids is easier and much less expensive outside of London. If I had chosen to be child free, I’d have wanted to stay where the buzz and my friends are though. Or chosen to live somewhere abroad for a while.

The grind would definitely be outweighed by the positives for me, until I felt like more of a life style shift was needed.

When I got to 40, I was fed up with London. The dirt, the crowds, the noise....I was just so over it all.

I moved to Paris for 6 months with work (still dirt, crowds, noise but in French) and then I was offered a job in Hong Kong (more dirt, a lot more crowds, a lot more noise but better weather). I ended up living there for 3 years and then I moved back to London.

OMG I appreciated being back in London so much! I fell in love with London all over again. That was 8 years ago. I'm still in London and I'm still in love with it. I like to visit other places and have a break (I was just in the Australia bush for a few weeks and loved the isolation and the wildlife) but my heart is always in London. Just reading threads on MN about people wanting to move to the suburbs (zone 3 or further, argh!) makes me hyperventilate. Just awful. 😂

Can you wfh? If so could you rent out or air bnb your London home and work from other locations. Stay near Liverpool or even out in the sticks get some fresh air then return to London for a while.

If you’re child free and you have relatively flexible/ easy to obtain jobs, I’d say go for it. Nothing has to be forever! If you own in London, could you rent out your place for a couple of years and try Liverpool?

Thanks everyone for your responses.

We will be childfree forever, so don't need to consider kids at all. We own our flat and have jobs that allow us to work from anywhere.

If we did move, we'd be downsizing (another reason to go- not having to take on a bigger mortgage) so I worry once we left we wouldn't be able to come back if we wanted to.

I do think if we left I would still come down a visit a lot- my friends are spread all over London so sometimes it can take over an hour to get to where they are anyway! We don't all hang out a couple of times a week anymore like we did in our 20s as we're all older, so socialising tends to be a bit more planned anyway. It feels like it wouldn't make a huge amount of difference on that front, but maybe I'm being naive.

In 'Liverpool' we have loads of friends, so I'm not worried about the socialising that end.

If you're able to work remotely, could you rent an airbnb or short-term let for a month or two and see how 'real' life feels there?

complicated one greenpad, may be more so by the fact I have the idea that you don't like your flat.
My take on it - long-time londoner though from far outside.
By all means move if you are confident that you will take to it, but think carefully before taking the plunge.
I too have tired of London at certain times but then fallen back in love with its possibilities. So it can be a passing thing.
Always possible I suppose that under the surface there are other things/issues in your life that you think might be solved by the move?
It seems to me that the real pressures in London life come from the high costs of property and sometimes uber-stressful jobs.
If these aren't an issue I actually find that London can be very chilled and peaceful - it is also famously green.
Counter-intuitively perhaps, it can also be a very cheap place to live. Transport system is properly integrated, unlike most of the rest of the country, when you hit 60 (hot too far away?) you will get free transport bus tube rail.
You say you don't see friends as much (normal as you say when older) but don't say what else you do in downtime. There's a massive amount of free stuff in London - permanent and temporary ever changing. I know someone of a certain age who says that she can't afford to leave London - what she meant by that is that with her housing and transport sorted, so much of the rest is free. Stuff she would have to pay a bundle for outside London, even if it was available. You can be out every day in London for free,
There is also as you say the possible issue of not being able to return. May say more on this later - post long enough.
So all I would say is think carefully.

This is really helpful @innocentfun, thank you.

We don’t hate our flat but it is small- the fact is we could get a house if we moved and that is tempting when I’m cramming our bedding, power tools and Christmas decs into our one airing cupboard.

We also live in a very busy, built up area of London and right on a bustling high street. We don’t have much green where we are, if any. I’d happily move to a “nicer” and calmer area of London, but it just all costs so much.

You haven't said too much about your finances but in your shoes I'd maybe think about changing flat or area within or near London. Shake it up a bit. Maybe you'd like a nicer high street, or a park or lake nearby, or a high-rise new build or whatever else. Maybe you want to spend the summer working from Spain! My god if I wasn't constrained by school catchments and so on I'd go wild.

@innocentfun your post is spot on. This is exactly how I feel about london :)

Right so I'm a Londoner all my life, traded NW for SE and we're pretty young (34), renting a flat for 1500pcm and we know there's pretty much zero prosperity coming our way job wise in the next 10 years. We want to own our own place 'cause paying a landlord sucks and it's impossible to get on the housing ladder. Mortgage rate needs to be the same as our rental so without a significant mum & dad loan we are priced out of the city or slaves to landlords.

So Manchester is the way for us. I went to Uni there and my partner is Northern, so we have friends around and in the city. I go back once a year and have watched the city grow, so really we're trading city for city life. I don't think I'd be able to handle living outside of a city, that would drive me mad.

That being said, having left the hustle and bustle of North London, we are now in Beckenham, which is still giving me culture shock as I feel like I'm living in a small hamlet. Unless you have £400k you aren't getting a flat. £600-800k+ for a terrace/small semi.