Relocating from London to Yorkshire and East Anglia

Until two months ago, Caroline and Patrick Clark, and their two children, Lola Rose, 3, and Brody, 1, spent their evenings in a cramped two-bedroom flat in Crouch End, north London. Now they enjoy a spacious three-storey, five-bedroom townhouse with a large garden. How did they do it? By selling up in the capital and moving to York.

“We definitely got more for our money here than we would have done in London,” says Caroline, 36, a primary-school teacher, who grew up in York. She and Patrick, a 37-year-old civil servant, sold their flat for £365,000 at the end of last year. In January, they paid £493,000 for their new home, which was originally on the market for £525,000. They are delighted with the house and the resulting improvement in their lifestyle. “My husband now works part of the time from home and the rest of the time in London, which means he’s here to have tea with the family four days a week,” she adds. “Previously, he wouldn’t be home until seven each night.”

As the Clarks have discovered, now is one of the best times in years for those with property in the capital to sell up and realise that dream of starting a new life somewhere quieter – and cheaper. Research carried out by Savills estate agency for The Sunday Times shows that themarket in London has fallenless sharply than elsewhere in the country, pushing the gulf between prices in the capital and those in other parts of Britain to its highest level in a quarter of a century.

Average prices in Yorkshire, for example, are 52% of those in London, compared to a 25-year average of 57%. The same is true, to varying degrees, elsewhere in the country – even, to a limited extent, in the southeast, where prices tend to track those in the capital most closely. The biggest margin is in East Anglia, where prices stand at 59% of London levels, against the long-term average of 68%.

East Anglia is your classic example of it being as cheap as it’s ever been compared to London prices,” says Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills. “There’s enough of a differential to buy there now at a reduced price.” This margin, he believes, looks likely to widen further if, as expected, the market in the capital recovers before that in the rest of the country – but it may not pay to wait. “The regions will look cheaper later, but not significantly so,” Cook adds. “And there is more supply in the market now. Thus, even though it may be cheaper in a year, the lack of stock will mean you won’t get the house you wanted.”

Like the Clarks, a large number of those who decide to relocate out of London have young families and want the space they cannot afford in the capital. Schools often play an important part, as does the desire for a quieter way of life. “People usually move because of their children’s future or for investment purposes, rather than the commuting aspect,” says Bob Bickersteth, managing director of The London Office, which provides a shop window for 34 out-of-town estate agents.

Redundancy can also encourage people to reevaluate their lives. “There has been a growing number of people who’ve been sparked into thinking about it because they’ve lost their job in banking and don’t reckon that they will find another in the foreseeable future,” Bickersteth says. “Those who have redundancy money are now paying off their mortgage, moving their children to a new school and setting up in a different place.”

Some are attracted by the possibility of obtaining a secondary income from a new, larger country home, by setting up a small leisure business or shop, using it for holiday rentals or, in some cases, letting out fishing rights. Agents report that traditional buyers – those with small children – have been increasingly joined in the past few months by new categories of client.

“We have been getting inquiries from young couples who are selling two flats, and instead of buying their first house in London, doing it in the country,” says George Franks, head of southwest sales at Douglas & Gordon, a London estate agency. “This is mostly because a standard nice four-bedroom country cottage with an acre of garden, and commutable, is not as expensive as it once was.

“There are also the slightly older couples who have decided that if their house is going to be worth nothing following the market downturn, they would rather it was worth nothing in the country,” he says.

As a result, agents have reported that viewings across the country have picked up since the start of the year. Some have even started to see the return of competitive bidding. “People moving out of London are likely to be the most serious bidders, because if you have to be in an area by a certain time, you’ve got to get on with it,” says Mark Parkinson, a partner at Middleton Advisors, a top-end country buying agency. “But the majority are happy to rent and wait, which puts them in the strongest negotiating position.”

The clients that Parkinson has seen benefit most from the situation are those who managed to sell their London house about six months ago and have been renting since while deciding where to settle. “They would have seen a 25% reduction in prices since they sold up,” he says.

Not everyone is in such a fortunate position: this may be the best time to buy that dream home in the country, but what if you can’t find a buyer for your London property? For some, such as Richard Stacy, 45, the solution has been to let it out.

In December 2007, he put his four-bedroom house in Stockwell, south London, on the market for £925,000, intending to move to Suffolk. By June last year, it had still not sold, despite a price cut to £850,000. He and his wife, Rachel, 42, had already found a 16th-century farmhouse near where she grew up, priced at £630,000. So, keen to bring up their sons, Finn, 4, and Jake, 3, in quieter surroundings, the couple decided to move anyway, mortgaging the Stockwell home and using the proceeds from the rent to cover the payments.

“We were quite unfortunate, in that we were just a few months too late in putting the house on the market,” says Stacy, who works in public relations. “We had a lot of people express interest, but they were stuck, too, because they could not sell their old homes to pay for it.” It was easy to let out the house, however, and Stacy intends to continue doing so, although he will probably test the sales market again once things pick up.

“We found a property we liked and we are becoming used to the lifestyle here,” he says. “It is not as busy and cosmopolitan as London, and we don’t see some friends as often as we’d like, but they visit us for the weekend. That way, we spend two whole days with them, instead of an hour-long coffee.”

No doubt having an eight-acre garden instead of their old 50ft one helps them to miss the capital less, too.

Tags: relocating to London and East Yorkshire

Category: Property For Sale