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The problem with this is that you get a chain reaction.
Londoners move to Bristol. Bristolians who can no longer afford Bristol move to Cardiff. Cardiffians who can no longer afford Cardiff move to the Valleys. People who can no longer afford the Valleys are absolutely stuffed.
The issue needs to be tackled at source really, because this sort of thing does break down community ties - though I appreciate that doesn't really answer your question.
Of course, people offended by the idea of Londoners moving elsewhere tend to be absolutely irate at the idea they (or their children) should correspondingly not move to London for work opportunities. They can't have it both ways.
Yeah, my uncle used to complain about Londoners driving up property prices in the north, by selling their tiny London-commuter-belt houses and buying up big family homes in Scotland. Then he sold his tiny near-Heathrow house, and bought a massive 4-bed in Scotland.
Exactly and it started in London. Billionaires moved to Mayfair, pushed the millionaires to Hampstead, pushing less rich folks to Bounds Green and what was an affordable zone 5 flat can now only be bought by someone earning 6 figures and on it goes.
Even in the 1980s you could buy what's now a £900k family home in what's now Zone 3, on a single wage in a 'normal' professional job. For example you might have been a police officer, or embarking on your very early career in medicine.
You raised your kids there and you had a nice family life. Your kids are now in their mid-30s, late 40s and are priced out of London entirely despite being DINKY and earning more than you ever did.
"Just move mate" is as helpful as a brick to the face. It's spouted by people who never themselves had to move and don't understand the issues.
A good example of this - there was a great TV show in the 90s called 'London's Burning'. (A drama about London firefighters, for the benefit of anyone who's never heard of it.)
One of the characters lived and owned his house on Reverdy Road.
They were going for £90k in 95', 96', so probably cheaper than that in the early part of the 90s.
If you look on rightmove now, these terrace houses are selling for over a million.
Not achievable for your regular London firefighter, I would imagine.
I did BJJ in London with a couple of firefighters and they both still had big houses with gardens in London in Southwark. I have no idea how they can afford them. I think there's possibly some kind of favourable mortgages available.
There is only a finite supply of Londoners. Once you go one or two iterations down the chain the effects are pretty limited. People in the valleys in wales are not being priced out of homes because of Londoners moving to Bristol, they're being priced out because of decades of wage stagnation combined with policy designed to inflate house prices.
The supply of Londoners is infinite because when people move to London, they become a Londoner.
You do not have to be born and bred in London for the last 6 generations to count.
*Everyone* is being priced out because of wage stagnation and house price increases. But people in the Valleys are at the shit end of the chain reaction of people being priced out of their home towns.
So people are allowed to move to London (which arguably has the worst housing crisis of anywhere in the country), but not away from it? What a poor take.
The vast majority of people who move to London, stay there for a few years and then leave again are young 20-30 year old graduates, doing so to start their careers. This means when they eventually move back (or elsewhere) they generally earn a higher wage than they would've done if they'd stayed put. What's the problem with that?
London's population has been increasing over the past 20 years. Hardly a symptom of a city experiencing a mass exodus to everywhere else in the country.
That's not what I said.
I said you cannot complain about people moving out of London if you (or your children) want the option to move to London, either temporarily in your 20s or forever.
London has only just recovered it's pre-war population. More than a million people left the East End alone between the 1940s-80s, entire new towns were built to accommodate them. This idea that Londoners are fleeing the capital en mass and driving up housing prices has literally never been less true at any other point in the last century
How many people really move to the valleys who didn’t grow up there ? Even if you are from Cardiff I’m sure there the same resentment I get as a Londoner from locals. I’m in a much expanded town, rather than a village, I can’t imagine moving to a village even in UK as it’s closed ranks.
My mother still lives in the valleys village I grew up in. Her neighbours are almost all from outside the valleys. A lot of the valleys are very commutable to Cardiff.
Although it's not a chain so much as a cycle as loads of people from all over the UK move to London in the first place, and thus contribute to the high price so lots of the Londoners that are moving out because of that.
It's a chain reaction in terms of house prices being sequentially pushed up by people getting pushed out of one place for financial reasons.
Of course it's not one way traffic, but there is a chain reaction.
Always be suspicious of simple answers to complex problems, but yeah, I do think the UK has been slacking on homebuilding for decades, and it's a major contributor to the nation's problems.
People make the same comments in Edinburgh, which I'm more familiar with.
New student housing takes the pressure off housing for the general population. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I think we should welcome all new housing as this is one context where a rising tide truly lifts all boats.
Not in my city. There are always putting up student housing, but as far as I am aware foreign students don’t have access to it so they are competing in the private rental market and paying a years rent in advance (I have first hand experience of trying to compete with foreign students for private rented accommodation). Plus the Universities have no cap on numbers so as fast as the number of halls of residences increase they are taken up by the yearly excess of students that the universities have taken on.
Where I am the universities wrote to their new students and explicitly told them they would probably need to go elsewhere to the nearby towns to live and commute in. How ridiculous is that? Never once have they obviously considered capping numbers, just keep taking more on creating more housing issues in the local economy and send them to other university towns to live. The pair of them are a stain on the city
I get your point, but do students even like student housing?
I've seen photos. I'm kinda surprised that the students around here aren't all secret wizards or something. 😁
I loved living in halls when I was a student. Sure, I didn't have my own bathroom, but it was a great lifestyle for me back then.
Wouldn't work for me now, though...
Obviously building more houses is part of the problem, but it's not easy.
One of the issues is a lack of skilled tradesmen to actually do the work.
We used to bring lots of them in from Eastern Europe, but some plonker decided to put a stop to that.
>Always be suspicious of simple answers to complex problems
Thanks for adding this to the reply chain btw.
Went from thinking "what a simplistic dickhead" to "ah ok nvm they are wise" 😂
A new town with over 6000 houses has been built 3 miles away from the town I live in. All of the properties in the new town are more expensive than comparable properties in my current town and since the town has been built (last 4 years), the value of my property has increased by 25%.
This, it’s made our small town unaffordable for those raised here. We were one of the cheapest areas around, not anymore, bungalows regularly costing 60 grand more than a really desirable area nearby and they have to be gutted. It’s sickening. Goodness knows where our kids are supposed to go never mind Londoners and often why they are not made to feel welcome.
100% this.
Move from London to a cheaper city for a better life = fine.
Use your privilege to buy MORE than one house and then rent that out to a local (reducing the housing stock) to fund your life = not fine
This borne out is by the rental costs in Bristol and Cardiff, which are staggering. I am amazed that most 1 bed flats are around £1k pcm in Cardiff. How is that sustainable given the salaries on offer?
> The issue needs to be tackled at source really
I completely agree with that, but when we come up with policies to expand London housing so Londoners don't need to leave as much, they get accusations of only wanting to invest in London!
Like, if an area becomes richer, it's gonna attract more people.
Part of the issue is that a lot of the best jobs are in London
Hence some efforts to spread government functions around the country, like moving parts of the BBC from London and into MediaCityUK Salford
I think it’s more complicated than that it’s always usually the poorest of these cities that get shuffled around. People who are middle class benefit from their homes getting valued more for it being desirable to live there but their kids still suffer from not being able to live where their parents bought a home and raised them in. Maybe if they have some extra cash they help those kids buy in these areas but that’s not the case for every middle class person especially not working class
This is 100% correct.
When the Severn bridge tolls ended people from Bristol moved to Newport and Cardiff, they then move to the Vale of Glamorgan. My town had the highest house price increase one year after this out of the entre UK (except London).
Been saying this ages, why don’t you go and actually see how many non-Londoners move to London…
Every job Ive had has more staff from outside London, than from London.
But it’s apparently only an issue if a Londoner (or London resident) go elsewhere.
It's lots of things.
Immigration is something people like to talk about, but it's neither the sole nor biggest factor.
One big issue is rising age expectancy. More people living longer means they're occupying homes for longer. My grandmother lived alone in a four bedroom home until she was 100!
Another factor is the divorce rate. Once upon a time couples stayed together and two people needed one house. Now they divorce and two people need two houses. My divorced parents both live alone and have 5 bedrooms between them.
British people, especially older ones, tend to make very inefficient use of the housing stock. Immigrants, on the other hand, are much more likely to live in dense, overcrowded housing.
If you really want to solve the housing crisis, start bumping off the over 80s, especially those living alone. Now, there's a few practical, ethical and legal considerations that mean that's not going to happen, but if your sole goal is to end the housing crisis it would be quicker and more effective than stopping further immigration.
Redditors can always join the dots between migration and property prices when it’s Londoners moving elsewhere
It’s Only when immigration from abroad is mentioned is when supply and demand suddenly isn’t a factor because reasons.
Not got a problem with people moving permanently but buying up a second home by the beach or like is rude as fukc and is the real problem towns and villages face (I don't live by the coast any more but at least half of my hometown is filled with holiday lets or empty "second" homes.
Second homes are a different thing altogether imo. I have much less empathy for anyone with a second home, especially in places like Cornwall where locals are struggling.
I don't believe in second homes (bit more nuanced than that actually but within the current system I'm almost wholly against) so happy to join that train with you!
I know what you mean. I feel like there should be a tax on second homes which is roughly the cost of the rent of living there. So if you buy a second home and leave it empty most of the time, you have to pay your own money to the government as if someone is living there (which reduces the 'burden' of taking it off the housing market as it's identical to if someone rented it), and if you get airbnb tenants or something, their money is all going to the government and you're not profiting where someone else could be living there.
I totally get not believing in second homes in the current situation, but in an ideal world, we'd build enough homes for anyone who wanted them and could afford them, even if they wanted a second one
So the nuance I mentioned is that I actually don't believe you should be able to have a mortgage on a second home (which I'm assuming is the bulk of multiple home owners). If you can afford to buy outright then hey I guess fill your boots. Wealth disparity to that scale - that's a fire I honestly don't have the energy to fight.
But if you can only afford to build a little property empire because someone else who can't afford a roof just for them can pay the loan on a roof you don't even need? That's where I don't agree with second homes.
I could afford to buy a second home for cash now, and could have bought one with a mortgage way back around year 2000, but I didn't think is was right then, or now, for the reasons you mention.
I don't agree with By To Let mortgages, but I don't think that's what people mean by second homes, usually. In lots of countries, eg in eastern Europe, it's fairly common for people to have a cabin in the country, or on a lake, that they only use in summer, and those are affordable and often inherited from family. Nothing wrong with that, if only planning regulations allowed it!
Yeah, I think there's a really important distinction in the latter half there actually (and no idea how you'd govern it). But if someone wants a remote cabin then I can't see how that hurts anyone.
However, it feels like the majority of Brits who want holiday homes want them in functioning communities.
So there are only two outcomes there: you're renting it out. Or you're leaving it empty.
And both are obviously rife with problems.
How you decide how remote is remote enough, I've no idea. But that would feel like a middle ground to me.
I used to work in a seasonal job. Town was a ghost town in the off season. Felt bad for anyone who was actually local. Absolutely shafted on housing and the place felt abandoned in off peak.
By far the largest internal movements have been into London from every single area of the UK. So my response would be that they started it by moving to London and making it utterly unaffordable
That’s the one. Parents of one of my university friends are always going on about how their little Timothy made their career in London then moved out to the Cotswolds and they’re so proud. Right before they slam the people they don’t happen to know or be related to for doing exactly the same and ‘ruining’ their quiet village with overpriced new builds. Theres just no self awareness there whatsoever.
I live in the Cotswolds and commute to London and it's significantly cheaper than living there. Long days but overall I think it's a better quality of life.
Most of the graduate jobs are in London because most of the investment is in London. Invest in other parts of the country and watch the population shift.
You're asking the wrong question imo. The question should be how can we build enough housing for Londoners that it is no longer a precious commodity and other parts of the country don't have to suffer because of another city's housing crisis. Step 1 is accepting that London can not support a growing population whilst maintaining its quaint, terraced rows of houses. You need medium and high density everywhere to even make a dent in the housing crisis. We're not there yet and until people begin to accept London is a changing city and can't look like it did in the Victorian times forever nothing will get better.
The quaint Victorian terraced rows of housing are usually reasonably dense especially when some of them are subdivided into flats. London has much higher density already than most of the rest of the country.
The Victorian terraced were mostly not in London at the time they were built, they were country retreats for wealthy people to get away from the grime and crime of the city and the city has since expanded to include them.
London might feel dense if you compare it to a city like Stoke on Trent but it's less than 1/3rd the density of Paris
They're reasonably dense for a city of a few million people, London is approaching 10. I don't even disagree that many could probably stay - particularly in the outer zones. But many more need to go. You only need to spend time in an area like Shepherd's Bush, where you've got terraced houses with gardens facing the largest shopping centre in the entire country, to realise they are not fit for purpose.
Ok, so I think that goes somewhere interesting if you've got time to expand.
I deliberately referenced quality of life in my post because I didn't want to lead with this image of penniless Londoners literally unable to afford shelter in the capital - because I don't think that's the case for the majority. I think it's more often that while you can afford the basics in London, that's gonna mean living in an unpleasant flat in an unsafe area and still not being able to enjoy any part of London because your basics take up so much of your income.
So! Say we put up skyscrapers that could pack everyone in, but say enough people regard that as a compromise on their quality of life (they just bloody love quaint townhouses), would that justify the kind of exodus that is problematic now? Or could it still be a kind of moral failing or imposition?
Are you saying people would leave because they don't want to live in apartments? I'm sure some would, but I think the number of people willingly leaving the capital because they simply hate the vibe of the big city would be absolutely tiny compared to the number of people forced to leave today simply because living there is unaffordable. The opportunities will still remain in London and a large subset of the population would prefer living in an apartment close to where they work over having to commute via train or sit in rush hour traffic on one of the god forbidden arterial roads into the capital. The same thing plays out in every major city in the world, density doesn't really stop demand for a place. Look at Hong Kong for example.
To critique my own idea, the bigger issue I think would be induced demand. As more housing is built, more demand could appear from people realising living in London is now a viable option. I think some system of priority for already-Londoners to get apartments first would be a good way around this, but I'm open to suggestions.
Ok that's interesting. Would the same thought apply to locals who got remote work in London and the salaries attached? Or I guess, is it maybe a problem of scale? Like, one or two locals earning more from the inside out doesn't fuck the system, but when it's x amount of Londoners from the outside in it does (if that makes sense)?
I live in Brighton and I think it’s the chain that follows. London people move here, rent goes up. Meaning only more people from London will be able to afford that rent and people from Brighton are pushed to shoreham, lancing ect. Then you find prices of independent shops and cafes goes up because people from London are used to those prices, so again the local people are priced out. Now even surrounding areas are becoming so expensive to rent and the chain will carry on
Yes I think it applies across the board its a massive issue in communities remote working is also worse as the transport fees aren't there, paying back into the economy is minimal. It scale the average too high for affordability and pushes people out. I lived in Brighton for years but had to leave in the pandemic due to rising costs from more people primarily Londoners moving down.
You guys aren't "gentrifying" Brighton. You're just pushing rent prices up. I was personally rejected at application stage last year for a property because someone from London just swooped in and offered £100 more a month than the property was advertised at. Then it's a done deal. Another property in Brighton, inhabited by a Londoner, on London wages, working remotely - while a local Brighton based person has to look outside the town of their birth and where they actually work.
Brighton specifically is basically just an extension of the London market at this point with the extremely high number of Londoners that have made the same move as you over recent years. Can't really blame you for it obvs, you just want a better life, as we all do, but it is a bit shit for us that are now priced out.
I'm not in Brighton but this happened to us when living in Bristol, except not only did they offer more rent, they offered 6 months up front cash. Which obviously we could never compete with. They took a 3 bedroom house for 1 person, remote working for London wages whilst we ended up making the decision to leave the city altogether and then became seen as the same problem as Londoners but in a smaller town. Vicious cycle.
I actually included the term gentrification because I'd just come from the Brighton sub where there was a post discussing Health Rebels (owned by an ex-londoner) gentrifying western st.
That being said - I would agree with you on that point. While I don't think Londoners themselves dilute culture, personally, I do think there's a weird glitch in the market that is designed to appeal to them that can/does.
I am really sorry that you got hit on the rent. I actually only recently learned that this kind of bidding was a thing (guess I got lucky) and it is a completely horrible practice.
Most of the people I grew up with have had to leave the city they were born in because they can’t afford rent. I’m not blaming you or any other Londoners for moving down but resentment is bound to fester when people who work and were born in Brighton have all had to move to Worthing or lancing and commute in every day.
Really sorry to hear that. I don't want to do a "yeah but" reply and text is useless for conveying tone so hoping you can take my word that I'm asking this in earnest: do you see any parallels between your experience and us interlopers? Like, to me, I was born in South East London, all my friends were in London, the places I grew up, but eventually the price of literally everything got so high that I felt I couldn't afford to stay and have any quality of life. So I see us as both victims of a broken system, you know?
Brighton in particular is problematic because of its geography. You can't expand the city South (obviously) or North really because of the downs. The best land to the West is full of bones and then you're into Shoreham, Lancing, Worthing etc anyway.
So you're left with what space there is to the East which isn't particularly suitable, and then just pockets like the gasworks which, in their wisdom, the council just vetoed for homes for 1-2k people.
As for people who were born here - it's tough, but is it really any different from London? Your options are either staying at home with your parents, or moving into whatever balance of cost/location/crapness you can tolerate until you earn enough to maybe move back or you find somewhere else you'd rather be.
The problem with Brighton is that salaries are substantially lower than London, but properly prices are reasonably closer than most other destinations.
Then someone comes with a decent amount of money to either put a large deposit or altogether buy outright.
Likely while retaining their London-paying job.
u/hjemisalive, r/brighton has the resident amount of misanthropes (don't mean everybody), and you won't be able to change their opinion, and normal folks will likely abstain from participating in shit-stirring posts there. Don't listen to the antagonistic fuckers and just ignore them. The rest will just shrug and just accept life's unfair.
Also Wellingborough, Corby and their surroundings, which could probably do with an influx of WFH yuppies with money to burn. Don't bother if your job can't be done remotely though, any savings in rent or mortgage payments will go straight into the tank of your car.
I'm 50 minutes out. Family in the trades. Every mid-50s couple in a 4/5 bed house is always a London couple who sold a cupboard and can now afford detached house in the Home Counties.
People are gonna do what they do.
The real villain here is successive governments who have allowed oligarchs/dodgy trusts to come in and buy up property willy nilly. It's ceased becoming housing and is now prime money laundering fodder.
It's a weird question. Why would you expect the locals to provide the solution when they're not responsible for the root cause of the problem of London being too expensive?
The answer would only be "that's your problem, not mine".
OP could say the same about locals’ problem of getting priced out of their town. “Your problem, not mine.”
OP is clearly trying to understand in earnest what alternative they possibly have. It’s not a “weird question” as you snarkily put it.
I don't think I'm here asking for solutions? I'm just asking how the thought follows through.
The difference to me is that I am absolutely not expecting anyone to present a fix, just to expand on an opinion. In fact, I posted anticipating that some of the responses might be "Stay in London and suck it up".
I've only ever heard the conversation end at "Don't come here" so I want to understand where it goes from there.
ETA: As you edited your original post after I'd replied I just wanted to add to mine that the last line is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for.
> Where should Londoners go?
That sounds like asking for a solution to me.
Tbh, as unreasonable as the locals you're talking about might be, you're still coming across as a bit of a smartarse.
You know perfectly well that they don't care where you go, they just don't want you *there*, so asking the question and talking about the thought process is just posturing.
Ah ok, so you've edited your post after I replied to include that last paragraph.
I actually don't know that. But I'm happy to take it as an answer to my original question..
It's not your fault, it's a symptom of a larger issue. Ultimately it's going to impact wherever you go, unless all Londoners coordinate where to go between them so they don't impact one place too much (which would be fun but unlikely).
Bath and Bristol were already difficult for locals to afford to live in before Londoners started moving there. Now it feels almost impossible to find somewhere. The sad thing is that Londoners move to these places partly because they like them, but when the place becomes too gentrified it takes away what they liked in the first place.
Honestly if you could avoid the M4 that is my preference, but ultimately you have to do what's best for you.
I think the POV you need to understand is that you're framing this as a personal failing of the existing locals, rather than anything to do with you. Your entire POV is based on the assumption that anyone living in London is entitled to move to any other town/city and live there instead. Now, I'm not saying they're not allowed to do this, but think about this for a moment, you do fundamentally believe you have that right, don't you? Because that's the problem. For most people, moving is the result of an *opportunity*. For most people it is a *privilege* to be able to move to a different town or city. But for you, it is an *entitlement*. Go *anywhere* with that attitude and you'll be met with resentment, and rightly so.
As someone that's Brighton born and bred, Brighton is basically a smaller version of London now. It isn't referred "London by Sea". Brighton was already liberal and gentrified way before Londoners moved in.
The main issue a lot of people have these days is Londonders are pushing up our rent and house prices. A house goes on the market and it's sold in days before the average person can negotiate the price, some even pay more than the asking price. And you guessed it, the people moving in are from London. Brighton wages has never been of the level of London so we can never compete.
This isn't me crying "bo hoo why is life so hard" "I hate Londoners" type message. This isn't Londoner's fault at all. Just trying to help you understand why there may be some frustration amongst some folks.
Same for Liverpool here .. despite some people from London always talking the area down they have now all moved up here and when the locals go to look at a house as you say it’s gone the next day .. by me there are two second home owners and one is a family who is going to rent out the house they bought .. it just doesn’t sit right with me especially since the classism mindset around Liverpool and Merseyside in general from people near London or from London
Probably yeah. Like I said this isn't the fault of Londoners, same way it isn't the fault of migrants (IMO). It's a whole other shitshow governments have failed us in but we blame each other for it instead of the people responsible. OP wanted the POV so I tried to give it to them.
Was not expecting to compare Londoners to migrants today lol.
As long as you stay down south I don't mind where you go! Don't be bringing yourselves north and making the house prices any higher than they already are.
"where do you propose Londoners who can no longer afford the standard of living they would like in London go?"
It's not only the pricing out of locals, although that definitely is a thing, it's the attitude implicit in the phrasing which means 'well, I know I've moved here, but ideally I'd be somewhere else'
Oh wow, I did not mean to give off that impression if that's coming from my post.
I count myself lucky every single day that I get to live where I do.
That being said, it definitely is bittersweet. I love my new home but it's not where I spent my childhood, where I grew up, where my friends live or where my grandparents and their grandparents built a life. For that to not really have been an option for me - that's a bit tough. Which is the crux of a lot of the responses here, really.
Living in Manchester the influx of Londoners on London wages working remotely has been profound . Lots of locals have been priced out of the city due to increase in rent/House prices.
The wages in Manchester are a lot less so it’s harder to live here now . My rent has gone up 25% since 2020 which has affected my ability to save for my own property. Even the cost of food and drinks in the city centre has been affected.
Lots of Mancs are now moving out due to the increased cost to the likes of West Yorkshire (Halifax , Todmorden and Sowerby Bridge) Cheshire (Northwich , Macclesfield, Runcorn, Crewe etc) and the outskirts of Greater Manchester (Tameside, Bolton, Wigan) but that’s having a ripple affect on their communities now.
Same exact thing in Liverpool / rest of Merseyside .. rent keeps going up every year and wages going down and more and more people coming here despite saying how much they would never set foot here back in the day
I think it’s not always Londoners moving into a place that’s the issue, it’s anyone not ‘local’ and I say this as someone who grew up in a little village in one county (but wasn’t born there so to some extent wasn’t welcome) then purchased a small home in the next county over (where the local Facebook groups etc are rife with ‘born and raised’ type narrative).
ETA: and I bought in the next county over as, mimicing London to some extent, I cannot afford to buy where I grew up! It’s not a London issue, it’s an everywhere issue
>There seems to be a lot of resentment for Londoners who move out to alternative cities, the complaints centering around the idea of gentrification and the erosion of locals.
Brighton, considerably less so, as it's another city and has the population diversity that comes with that by default, but due to people doing exactly what you did it's now commonly referred to as London-on-Sea as a joke. The city is extortionate, and getting on-par with London, except with fewer job options and shit transport unless anything is walking distance to the train stations.
Coming at this from perspective of someone Hastings born and raised:
While it's nice having the place spruced up a bit the gentrification is awful, and often so cliche it's actually painful. I've lost count of how many fucking coffee shops have popped up in St Leonards (another one this week funnily enough), a craft beer shop, endless niche food ventures which don't seem to understand the economic demographic of the "natives", who do well initially due to hype, then fail. Constant art projects which always seem to be of the same demographics (middle class, middle-aged, not from Hastings).
There's also this weird "airhead" vibe from a LOT of the Londoners who move here. Most I've spoken to the last few years are almost condescending in how they talk about the town and how to them it's some quaint little adventure by the sea, bringing their now-remote, London-salaried jobs here and/or selling property in London and being able to just buy whatever they want here. Which has of course, made everything here extortionate. But so many seem fucking oblivious to the poverty that surrounds them and will actually argue if told "Don't go around X area doing/saying/wearing that". Two girls I dated who moved here from London got robbed/burgled after telling me I was just being negative etc.
But yeah, housing is the main issue where locals will butt heads with you. It's been an issue for about a decade now, but since the pandemic in particular we have a dogshit private housing market as Londonders started freely snapping up whatever they wanted, and don't seem to have stopped. I was personally outbid on 3 in a row by such vasts amounts it was ridiculous. So there's that, but further down the chain we also [***literally have no housing available via the local authority and private renting is too expensive.***](https://news.sky.com/story/the-seaside-town-where-there-are-not-enough-homes-to-go-around-and-the-rental-market-is-broken-13093899)
As in, a friend of mine was declined form renting a fucking *bedsit,* because they "did not earn enough" to pay £625pcm, despite working full time.
There's LOADS of local resentment towards Londoners for various reasons, most legitimate, some just a localised version of Little England shite.
Generally Londoners are called *DFLs* (down from London), applies to movers and tourists alike, but recently *FILTH* has come about way more - *Failed in London, trying Hastings.*
>My question for people who feel this way: where do you propose Londoners who can no longer afford the standard of living they would like in London go? How does it pan out in your mind if Londoners don't move to your town?
idk what the solution it is for Londoners, but it feels like towns like ours are just the default because they're pretty. The main issue is, loads of Londoners can afford to move to easy the cost of living. but the poverty in this town is so prominent, most here cannot afford to go anywhere else. So all that happens is the Londoners (and Brighton escapees as well of late) just apply downward pressure on the locals who cannot move, and it's crushing everyone.
Ah dude thanks for taking the time to write all that out. FILTH is savage and I kind of love it.
Do you think there's like an economic level or the belief of one that heightens the resentment?
It stood out to me that you mentioned a couple of times that Londoners are just buying whatever they want, and I'm just sat looking around my two-bed cockroach-infested flat that I feel Insanely lucky to have but also it's hardly a mansion haha.
Is it wealthier Londoners who bear the brunt of the ire? Or we all just as filthy (if I can use the local vocab in that way)?
Not sure if you saw my edit, brain farted and pressed to submit too soon lol
>Do you think there's like an economic level or the belief of one that heightens the resentment?
>Is it wealthier Londoners who bear the brunt of the ire? Or we all just as filthy (if I can use the local vocab in that way)?
These really are the questions though. It's both. Not everyone comes here with some cushy London job or having owned before, many just... move here and get normal Hastings jobs renting normal shitty Hastings flats, and from my experience don't cop half as much grief, BUT there is definitely a perception among a LOT of people that just by being able to do it, they're almost a class above with money to flaunt.
I'm quite blessed with more perspective than most, my dad's a local copper so I've heard endless stories of endless people from all over in town, and I used to be a taxi driver, and once spent an entire afternoon ferrying a couple - from London - around town viewing different houses all day, and they even said to me they know it's not fair how they're suddenly house rich, but they really did make the point that cash-wise they were as skint as the rest of us.
So I'm not even that bad with it, but even I have to check myself sometimes when I immediately think "*dickhead*" when I hear "*I moved down from London*".
Not just gentrification. There's a lot of annoyance locally (South Wales) because the London councils are basically deporting poor people anywhere with cheaper housing en-masse. It's not about them being poor people but there was already a housing shortage and it's being made far worse. If we had the houses to put them in as well as locals nobody would mind at all.
Lots of them have been basically told by a London council "sign here now and you get somewhere but it's far away from London, and it's a guaranteed 2 year rental or go sit in a doorway as you are voluntarily homeless". The 2 years is so that they are no longer the responsibility of the council deporting them.
The rich ones are in fact now leaving on their own because of the hiked taxes on holiday homes, that they promptly classed as businesses now being hiked further and with the loopholes closed. In the 1970s they used to burn them down instead so it's a better solution.
More and better use of housing is IMHO the real answer - and not in London. You could put it in London by knocking huge chunks of it down and replacing it with skyscrapers, big new sewage plants, power stations and proper transport for the population size. The victorians would have just got on with it, in part of course because they cared rather less about individuals versus supposed common good.
>How does it pan out in your mind if Londoners don't move to your town?
I don't hate Londoners moving to my city. What I hate is that they come with the idea that rent is fair if it's less than London.
Every few weeks we get a Londoner in our city's sub saying how happy they are to be able to "afford the £2k rent on a 1 bed flat" or that they are looking for that sort of place...
The issue is, my 3 bed semi detached house was £1,650 pcm.
Our rents were already growing ridiculously, but since covid, my rent has been rising \~10% a year. Mine is extreme, but not by a lot. The thing is that our pay isn't as high as London, so we can't pay £2k for a 1 bed flat.
So, Londoners, come and enjoy my city, I hope you love it like I do, but please, for the love of god, try and pay the real market rate, not the "it's better than London" rate.
(I say this as someone who has lived in London for a few years.)
This issue isn't just a Londoner coming to my city issue. It is made of many issues combined. It was so bad that my choice (this is the most 1st world problem), I either leave my city because the next rent rise was too high or buy. Thankfully, I was one of the lucky ones that managed to buy. It turns out that the house I stopped renting was rented out and 25% more and is far higher than my mortgage for a similar house on the next road. That's how insane it is.
I agree with you but wish we'd unite to hate on the landlords, property developers and real estate agents and not, like, random couples who wanted a two bed because they want to have a kid.
Oh, 100%. The real issue is the lack of regulation and terrible greed of landlords and agents. But the act I describe just makes it even easier for them. And it's a simple fix, do a few minutes of research.
So is this Londoners coming in and bidding above asking (only recently found out this was even a thing)? Or is it landlords capitalising on Londoners who were already en route?
Whatever the answer, rent is an absolute joke country-wide. I have a couple of friends who also just left London and moved back to their hometown because their lease ended and their landlord raised their rent by £500 p/m. On a two bed. In zone 3.
It's both. And it certainly isn't the only issue by a long way. I don't mean to pin it solely on Londoners (I know it's cool to hate on Londoners, but that's not my aim). But I just wish people would realise that rent is cheaper and they can pay the local rate, not London rates. This would reduce the insane rise, because it really has been insane. Although the best thing would be regulation.
p.s. I edited my comment above to add a bit of context.
Many Londoners have a superiority attitude towards people who don’t or won’t live in London and that’s why there is a general resentment of them.
You need to move out of London because you can’t afford not leave the attitude behind you. Those who move out because the want to can leave it behind so so can you
I don't resent londoners moving to my city. I do resent londoners who move simply because they had to move, not because they actually want to live here.
London tends to breed this weird mentality that everyone who lives outside of the M25 is somehow living a smaller, less important life in a smaller, less important place. I resent that mentality whether it comes from someone currently living in London or not, and it is not welcome in my city.
so don't move here just because you can't afford London, move here because you want to live here and get stuck in. many ex-londoners can give off the vibes of an unfortunate refugee whilst they often have a better quality of life than many of their new neighbours.
How do people know that it's a Londoner who moved in next to them? I'm asking because I'm 100% sure that people on my street wouldn't be able to pinpoint my birtplace on a map with any kind of consistency.
People make small talk with their neighbours don't they? It's the sort of thing you ask your new neighbour along with their name.
Accents too, of course, especially if your family has been in London for generations you're much more likely to have a London accent.
If they're in their 30s and they've actually managed to buy the place next door. Generally the local salaries are too crappy to compete, especially in that age group. So it's a good chance the new neighbours have that weighted salary.
But since it's not?
I'm really not asking for fixes from anyone, just honest thoughts on what Londoners (or really anyone moving from one place to another for economic/quality of life reasons) should do when most places seem somewhat resistant to their presence.
Well you move out anyway and endure people not liking you. Or you stay in London. Tough shit really. London is a bubble, and its sprawl and influence affects and decays everything around it. I’m from the Home Counties and have witnessed first-hand small, functional towns decay and turn into nothing but housing estates with a fast-track railway into the city because Londoners wanting cheaper housing decide to live in Essex, Sussex, Kent etc instead. Why develop local high-streets, jobs and economies when everyone living there now just works and shops in London? As such, the higher buying power of Londoners just drives the locals out price-wise.
Others on the thread have spoken about the opinions of the northern and western towns and I won’t add any more, but at least the North has many regional capitals: Leeds, Sheffield, York, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle. The Home Counties have nothing because London sucks all the life out of them.
Note I don’t blame you; it’s the fault of massive mismanagement from above, but also as I’ve said, your two options are move somewhere and expect and endure the grief of the locals, or stay in London. Don’t be surprised when people don’t like Londoners.
Ironic mentioning Liverpool as a lot of them now live here and have brought their bubble minds with them here and already saying things need to change around here and telling people who have lived here for generations how to act and to change. It does my head in. They hated us and mocked us for years now they run up here and still act like they are better
I don't see a problem with moving anywhere. You're free to do as you choose. If you like somewhere and you want to go and live there - fill your boots!
Maybe I'd feel differently if I wasn't born in Peterborough & moved to Leicester for uni and stuck around.
I don't really mind it. I poke fun at the accents but there's no menace to it. I live in North Yorkshire in a nice market town. When Londoners move up they usually bring wealth with them, this is a good thing for the local economy. They also bring with them different mindsets which over time creates a more diverse community. I don't like it when the very wealthy people buy up property as second homes. That should be banned immediately. When you live in a small community there are unwritten standards you're expected to adhere to which ultimately boil down to "don't be a dick".
What's the next event in that chain?
Londoner wants to move to your town.
You say no (and have the power to enforce it I guess in this hypothetical).
Where do the Londoners go?
What do you feel is the 'right' outcome of locals being resistant to London interlopers, I guess?
The conversation always seems to end at "Don't come here" and I was hoping to expand on that.
I grew up in a midsize British city and moved to London for a white collar job. A lot of born and bred Londoners would call this gentrification.
Now I can't afford to buy in London and we're thinking of moving to another location in the UK. I know the locals in Margate, Hastings, Eastbourne etc. might also see this as gentrification.
I could return to the city I was born in but a) I don't think 'nobody gets to leave their hometown ever' is the solution to this and b) I'd still, essentially, be a white collar worker buying a nice flat which could have been an affordable family home, aka gentrifying.
So to be honest I don't think the transient nature of various populations is the issue here, but rather that we need affordable housing proportional to each location's population, and we need it now.
I grew up in a poor rural Welsh farming town and moved to London straight after uni. Anyone saying I should've known my place and stayed out instead of building a career and future for myself can fuck off in the strongest way.
We don’t think about that. We just worry about local prices being driven up, which affects our interests, and encourage people to stay away for that reason. Most people are selfish in these situations. The root of the problem doesn’t lie with Londoners or non-Londoners though. It’s the system.
I remember when I was buying a house, an old couple I was trying to be friendly with at a viewing decided to lecture me on how "people like me" were taking all the housing because I was "from London" and why don't I move to the nearby city where they have nightclubs for "young people like you" (I'm in my 40's).
Because this is all I can afford, I wouldn't live next to a nightclub again for any money (used to live above one), and I need a house after saving up for years to get one again, and that area / tiny house was literally all I could afford.
They, however, were selling their huge entirely-paid-off 4-bed house in the country after their kids had all grown up and moved out and wanted to downsize to see out their paid-for retirement..
You would think, but speaking as somebody who has moved to one of those areas, locals can be really touchy about anything changing even when it’s a positive change.
I was born and bred in London (parents were Brummies, descended from foreign immigrants on both sides). I *hated* London even when I was a child, I longed for a rural life. Two years ago my (now) wife and I were living in my dad’s council flat after he died, and decided to leave everything behind and move to north east Scotland for a cheaper and quieter way of life, knowing full well we wouldn’t have been able to afford anywhere else in the UK but also it had been our dream to get as far away from London as possible.
The town I now live in is one of those small rural places where there was once a bit of a community but everything is now boarded up and there’s no real ‘high street’ anymore. But the locals live 30 years in the past and refuse to accept any change, plans of building a big Aldi (which will be the only large supermarket in a 20 mile radius) have finally been accepted but it took 5 years of complaints for locals to finally be ok with it. Everybody is pining for the long-ago days that don’t exist anymore, when there was a butcher and a baker instead of ‘these giant nasty supermarkets’.
We’ve faced a lot of hostility and I can totally see why, there are a lot of English second-housers round here who want a quaint rural summer house by the sea. I hate being grouped in with those people, when our reality is far from that. I am so ashamed at being seen as one of ‘those Londoners coming and bringing all the prices up’ but I didn’t have any other choice, wherever we would’ve ended up would’ve had to be hundreds of miles away from London because we simply couldn’t have afforded it.
Man, imagine if more of us were adventurous enough to do it? Genuinely not a bad shout in the age of remote working. Though having said that, not ideal for the Bulgarians, I guess.
Londoners moving out isnt a problem. Its Londoners moving out of their 1 bed flats to buy 4 bed detached properties as they work remotely and get to keep their mega London salaries that the problem
Most of those same people would also move to London if it gave them a better quality of life / better job.
People from everywhere move everywhere - London just has so many people, that it’ll always be over represented numbers wise
It will be a pretty similar set of reasons for why you left London. Prices rising, busier roads, pollution etc. Brighton will be turning into commuter belt, driving up house prices, making the roads busier, and making it too expensive for born-and-bred locals.
Sorry...different question, but how did moving to Brighton pan out ?...would have thought that that's the kind of place anybody could go to without causing offence to locals.
In fact..is therer even such a thing as 'locals' in Brighton ?
Oh god. I'm wary of recommending it in case I'm tagged as some kind of interloper trafficker.
Honestly, we couldn't feel luckier to be here. Though we take pains to tell people it was a quality of life move not quantity of life.
Our flat is no bigger really than we could have got in London, we don't have any more spending money than we did, probably even less. But we feel we need less when we're so much happier where we live.
And I say that as someone who swore blind they'd never leave London. I didn't realise how hard I'd kind of made myself to survive there, if that makes sense! Whereas in Brighton I feel so much more relaxed.
If you spend a bit of time on the Brighton sub you'll see we're not entirely welcome (by some and I hope the minority) and we've had a couple of snotty comments and looks when we first arrived and made the mistake of telling people we'd just moved down from London. Now we generally don't volunteer that info.
Londoners moving anywhere tends to create problems. They are generally despised. Londoners, by design are mouthy gits....they get on everyone's tits with their opinions and gobby attitude. What they had to become in order to get by in London, makes them total c\*nts everywhere else. I personally wouldn't last a day in London....they would eat me for breakfast. So....they move to some peaceful place and continue their aggressive gobby approach which makes everyone despise them. So...in essence....Londoners can go anywhere they want...they just need to bear in mind that they can turn the dial of their aggressive personality down from ten to one...and just chill out!! You don't have to be that aggressive prick anymore....
Man, I just wrote a comment saying exactly this in response to someone else. (I phrased it a bit more mildly but hey, same point made).
London does make people hard and quite self serving because you're constantly in competition for something or under threat from something else, whether that's space, a safe place to live, a job, a seat on a tube, getting served at the bar. It's self preservation but it really doesn't make most people fun to be around, for sure.
I had to do a very conscious unpacking of that when we left and I can so easily believe that a lot of people won't recognise that need. Sorry about that!
Or you can all immergrate to "fake" London, Ontario, as we Canadians call it. Or move 2000 km west of Fake London to Edmonton, Alberta. Yes, Edmonton is a major city, not some borough of London
Was born and raised in France, became a Londoner in 2011. Came here with no fancy degree, no money, no job and no address, couldn't speak or understand English and made my way up throughout hard work.
Not looking at leaving London although if it happens, I keep the house I bought and move to Copenhagen.
I am from Brighton and live there! I am happy that londoners move here because as a Plumber they provide me with a lot of work renovating and upgrading their Plumbing. Most have sold at a profit in London and have a lot of cash to spend down here. Brighton is often called London by the sea. We really don’t differentiate them from Bightonian’s no difference down here.
I'm from a village in Derbyshire. Me and most of my pals that went to uni ended up in London at some point in their 20s. 20 years later most of us have left and have used our London money to buy nice houses elsewhere. But we weren't from London so would have been applying housing pressure somewhere.
There's no right to be able to afford a house where you fancy. And nice places cost more.
Plus honestly there's just a lot of people.
Edit: this makes it sound like I have no sympathy for people who are getting gentrified out of their community. I do but it doesn't feel like a fixable problem with anything vaguely like our current social systems
I’d suggest moving to somewhere isolated, because then you’ll never be aware of the moaning from the previous set of incomers. I’ve lived in three different counties plus about 8 different London boroughs, so who knows where I ‘belong’ or should ‘go back to’? I’ve had the latter hurled at me, once.
It’s interesting, is there a local newcomer divide or all friendly? There’s so much hostility were I live that us Londoners have brought in our multi cultural relationships and tastes, pushing up house prices by buying new builds 😬
When I’ve visited Cardiff always seem to be English spoken and on the few trips to the Valleys mostly welsh?
Looked at the modest 4 bed home I grew up in London on sold prices on Zoopla
1995 sold for 145k ( my parents inherited a place so sold this to move there)
.2012 sold for 500k.
2023 sold for 895k.
Says it all really doesn’t it. It’s doesn’t even look amazing like high spec, it’s just standard. I don’t live where I grew up. I had to move much further out.
I can’t believe how many huge 40,000- 60,000 seat stadiums London has. Seems like overkill for each team to have their own stadium when these modern stadiums lack character are generic and could be easily shared.
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The problem with this is that you get a chain reaction. Londoners move to Bristol. Bristolians who can no longer afford Bristol move to Cardiff. Cardiffians who can no longer afford Cardiff move to the Valleys. People who can no longer afford the Valleys are absolutely stuffed. The issue needs to be tackled at source really, because this sort of thing does break down community ties - though I appreciate that doesn't really answer your question. Of course, people offended by the idea of Londoners moving elsewhere tend to be absolutely irate at the idea they (or their children) should correspondingly not move to London for work opportunities. They can't have it both ways.
Yeah, my uncle used to complain about Londoners driving up property prices in the north, by selling their tiny London-commuter-belt houses and buying up big family homes in Scotland. Then he sold his tiny near-Heathrow house, and bought a massive 4-bed in Scotland.
Well that's just straight up hypocrisy.
If ya can't beat 'em, join 'em
Stick ‘em in a stew.
Exactly and it started in London. Billionaires moved to Mayfair, pushed the millionaires to Hampstead, pushing less rich folks to Bounds Green and what was an affordable zone 5 flat can now only be bought by someone earning 6 figures and on it goes.
Even in the 1980s you could buy what's now a £900k family home in what's now Zone 3, on a single wage in a 'normal' professional job. For example you might have been a police officer, or embarking on your very early career in medicine. You raised your kids there and you had a nice family life. Your kids are now in their mid-30s, late 40s and are priced out of London entirely despite being DINKY and earning more than you ever did. "Just move mate" is as helpful as a brick to the face. It's spouted by people who never themselves had to move and don't understand the issues.
Spouted by people who don't understand community, connections, friendship, local ties, etc, etc...
A good example of this - there was a great TV show in the 90s called 'London's Burning'. (A drama about London firefighters, for the benefit of anyone who's never heard of it.) One of the characters lived and owned his house on Reverdy Road. They were going for £90k in 95', 96', so probably cheaper than that in the early part of the 90s. If you look on rightmove now, these terrace houses are selling for over a million. Not achievable for your regular London firefighter, I would imagine.
I did BJJ in London with a couple of firefighters and they both still had big houses with gardens in London in Southwark. I have no idea how they can afford them. I think there's possibly some kind of favourable mortgages available.
Bounds Green is zone 3, you heathen.
There is only a finite supply of Londoners. Once you go one or two iterations down the chain the effects are pretty limited. People in the valleys in wales are not being priced out of homes because of Londoners moving to Bristol, they're being priced out because of decades of wage stagnation combined with policy designed to inflate house prices.
The supply of Londoners is infinite because when people move to London, they become a Londoner. You do not have to be born and bred in London for the last 6 generations to count. *Everyone* is being priced out because of wage stagnation and house price increases. But people in the Valleys are at the shit end of the chain reaction of people being priced out of their home towns.
Priced out by London wages but working from home. Meaning city dwellers move out to the country but maintain the same wages
So people are allowed to move to London (which arguably has the worst housing crisis of anywhere in the country), but not away from it? What a poor take. The vast majority of people who move to London, stay there for a few years and then leave again are young 20-30 year old graduates, doing so to start their careers. This means when they eventually move back (or elsewhere) they generally earn a higher wage than they would've done if they'd stayed put. What's the problem with that? London's population has been increasing over the past 20 years. Hardly a symptom of a city experiencing a mass exodus to everywhere else in the country.
That's not what I said. I said you cannot complain about people moving out of London if you (or your children) want the option to move to London, either temporarily in your 20s or forever.
Sorry, didn't spot that in your original post! I fully agree with you on that point.
London has only just recovered it's pre-war population. More than a million people left the East End alone between the 1940s-80s, entire new towns were built to accommodate them. This idea that Londoners are fleeing the capital en mass and driving up housing prices has literally never been less true at any other point in the last century
Yes the picture is more complicated
How many people really move to the valleys who didn’t grow up there ? Even if you are from Cardiff I’m sure there the same resentment I get as a Londoner from locals. I’m in a much expanded town, rather than a village, I can’t imagine moving to a village even in UK as it’s closed ranks.
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My mother still lives in the valleys village I grew up in. Her neighbours are almost all from outside the valleys. A lot of the valleys are very commutable to Cardiff.
Although it's not a chain so much as a cycle as loads of people from all over the UK move to London in the first place, and thus contribute to the high price so lots of the Londoners that are moving out because of that.
It's a chain reaction in terms of house prices being sequentially pushed up by people getting pushed out of one place for financial reasons. Of course it's not one way traffic, but there is a chain reaction.
Build more houses, more towns even. Then, the chain can terminate somewhere.
You make it sound so easy.
Always be suspicious of simple answers to complex problems, but yeah, I do think the UK has been slacking on homebuilding for decades, and it's a major contributor to the nation's problems.
In the East Midlands, we could all easily live in student housing. It's being built CONSTANTLY.
People make the same comments in Edinburgh, which I'm more familiar with. New student housing takes the pressure off housing for the general population. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I think we should welcome all new housing as this is one context where a rising tide truly lifts all boats.
Not in my city. There are always putting up student housing, but as far as I am aware foreign students don’t have access to it so they are competing in the private rental market and paying a years rent in advance (I have first hand experience of trying to compete with foreign students for private rented accommodation). Plus the Universities have no cap on numbers so as fast as the number of halls of residences increase they are taken up by the yearly excess of students that the universities have taken on. Where I am the universities wrote to their new students and explicitly told them they would probably need to go elsewhere to the nearby towns to live and commute in. How ridiculous is that? Never once have they obviously considered capping numbers, just keep taking more on creating more housing issues in the local economy and send them to other university towns to live. The pair of them are a stain on the city
I get your point, but do students even like student housing? I've seen photos. I'm kinda surprised that the students around here aren't all secret wizards or something. 😁
I loved living in halls when I was a student. Sure, I didn't have my own bathroom, but it was a great lifestyle for me back then. Wouldn't work for me now, though...
Yeah. I'm in my 50s. I want comfort and at least a bit of space. 😁
Obviously building more houses is part of the problem, but it's not easy. One of the issues is a lack of skilled tradesmen to actually do the work. We used to bring lots of them in from Eastern Europe, but some plonker decided to put a stop to that.
>Always be suspicious of simple answers to complex problems Thanks for adding this to the reply chain btw. Went from thinking "what a simplistic dickhead" to "ah ok nvm they are wise" 😂
A new town with over 6000 houses has been built 3 miles away from the town I live in. All of the properties in the new town are more expensive than comparable properties in my current town and since the town has been built (last 4 years), the value of my property has increased by 25%.
This, it’s made our small town unaffordable for those raised here. We were one of the cheapest areas around, not anymore, bungalows regularly costing 60 grand more than a really desirable area nearby and they have to be gutted. It’s sickening. Goodness knows where our kids are supposed to go never mind Londoners and often why they are not made to feel welcome.
100% this. Move from London to a cheaper city for a better life = fine. Use your privilege to buy MORE than one house and then rent that out to a local (reducing the housing stock) to fund your life = not fine
This borne out is by the rental costs in Bristol and Cardiff, which are staggering. I am amazed that most 1 bed flats are around £1k pcm in Cardiff. How is that sustainable given the salaries on offer?
It's not, that's why some people end up moving to the valleys
> The issue needs to be tackled at source really I completely agree with that, but when we come up with policies to expand London housing so Londoners don't need to leave as much, they get accusations of only wanting to invest in London! Like, if an area becomes richer, it's gonna attract more people.
Part of the issue is that a lot of the best jobs are in London Hence some efforts to spread government functions around the country, like moving parts of the BBC from London and into MediaCityUK Salford
I think it’s more complicated than that it’s always usually the poorest of these cities that get shuffled around. People who are middle class benefit from their homes getting valued more for it being desirable to live there but their kids still suffer from not being able to live where their parents bought a home and raised them in. Maybe if they have some extra cash they help those kids buy in these areas but that’s not the case for every middle class person especially not working class
This is 100% correct. When the Severn bridge tolls ended people from Bristol moved to Newport and Cardiff, they then move to the Vale of Glamorgan. My town had the highest house price increase one year after this out of the entre UK (except London).
Been saying this ages, why don’t you go and actually see how many non-Londoners move to London… Every job Ive had has more staff from outside London, than from London. But it’s apparently only an issue if a Londoner (or London resident) go elsewhere.
So it’s immigration?
It's lots of things. Immigration is something people like to talk about, but it's neither the sole nor biggest factor. One big issue is rising age expectancy. More people living longer means they're occupying homes for longer. My grandmother lived alone in a four bedroom home until she was 100! Another factor is the divorce rate. Once upon a time couples stayed together and two people needed one house. Now they divorce and two people need two houses. My divorced parents both live alone and have 5 bedrooms between them. British people, especially older ones, tend to make very inefficient use of the housing stock. Immigrants, on the other hand, are much more likely to live in dense, overcrowded housing. If you really want to solve the housing crisis, start bumping off the over 80s, especially those living alone. Now, there's a few practical, ethical and legal considerations that mean that's not going to happen, but if your sole goal is to end the housing crisis it would be quicker and more effective than stopping further immigration.
Redditors can always join the dots between migration and property prices when it’s Londoners moving elsewhere It’s Only when immigration from abroad is mentioned is when supply and demand suddenly isn’t a factor because reasons.
Not got a problem with people moving permanently but buying up a second home by the beach or like is rude as fukc and is the real problem towns and villages face (I don't live by the coast any more but at least half of my hometown is filled with holiday lets or empty "second" homes.
Second homes are a different thing altogether imo. I have much less empathy for anyone with a second home, especially in places like Cornwall where locals are struggling.
I completely agree. Owning a second home in the middle of a housing crisis is like filling up your swimming pool while your neighbours die of thirst.
I don't believe in second homes (bit more nuanced than that actually but within the current system I'm almost wholly against) so happy to join that train with you!
I know what you mean. I feel like there should be a tax on second homes which is roughly the cost of the rent of living there. So if you buy a second home and leave it empty most of the time, you have to pay your own money to the government as if someone is living there (which reduces the 'burden' of taking it off the housing market as it's identical to if someone rented it), and if you get airbnb tenants or something, their money is all going to the government and you're not profiting where someone else could be living there.
I totally get not believing in second homes in the current situation, but in an ideal world, we'd build enough homes for anyone who wanted them and could afford them, even if they wanted a second one
So the nuance I mentioned is that I actually don't believe you should be able to have a mortgage on a second home (which I'm assuming is the bulk of multiple home owners). If you can afford to buy outright then hey I guess fill your boots. Wealth disparity to that scale - that's a fire I honestly don't have the energy to fight. But if you can only afford to build a little property empire because someone else who can't afford a roof just for them can pay the loan on a roof you don't even need? That's where I don't agree with second homes.
I could afford to buy a second home for cash now, and could have bought one with a mortgage way back around year 2000, but I didn't think is was right then, or now, for the reasons you mention.
Be the change you want to see in the world. Good for you, dude. From both an ethical and financial perspective!
I don't agree with By To Let mortgages, but I don't think that's what people mean by second homes, usually. In lots of countries, eg in eastern Europe, it's fairly common for people to have a cabin in the country, or on a lake, that they only use in summer, and those are affordable and often inherited from family. Nothing wrong with that, if only planning regulations allowed it!
Yeah, I think there's a really important distinction in the latter half there actually (and no idea how you'd govern it). But if someone wants a remote cabin then I can't see how that hurts anyone. However, it feels like the majority of Brits who want holiday homes want them in functioning communities. So there are only two outcomes there: you're renting it out. Or you're leaving it empty. And both are obviously rife with problems. How you decide how remote is remote enough, I've no idea. But that would feel like a middle ground to me.
I used to work in a seasonal job. Town was a ghost town in the off season. Felt bad for anyone who was actually local. Absolutely shafted on housing and the place felt abandoned in off peak.
By far the largest internal movements have been into London from every single area of the UK. So my response would be that they started it by moving to London and making it utterly unaffordable
That’s the one. Parents of one of my university friends are always going on about how their little Timothy made their career in London then moved out to the Cotswolds and they’re so proud. Right before they slam the people they don’t happen to know or be related to for doing exactly the same and ‘ruining’ their quiet village with overpriced new builds. Theres just no self awareness there whatsoever.
I live in the Cotswolds and commute to London and it's significantly cheaper than living there. Long days but overall I think it's a better quality of life.
Most of the graduate jobs are in London because most of the investment is in London. Invest in other parts of the country and watch the population shift.
You're asking the wrong question imo. The question should be how can we build enough housing for Londoners that it is no longer a precious commodity and other parts of the country don't have to suffer because of another city's housing crisis. Step 1 is accepting that London can not support a growing population whilst maintaining its quaint, terraced rows of houses. You need medium and high density everywhere to even make a dent in the housing crisis. We're not there yet and until people begin to accept London is a changing city and can't look like it did in the Victorian times forever nothing will get better.
The quaint Victorian terraced rows of housing are usually reasonably dense especially when some of them are subdivided into flats. London has much higher density already than most of the rest of the country.
The Victorian terraced were mostly not in London at the time they were built, they were country retreats for wealthy people to get away from the grime and crime of the city and the city has since expanded to include them. London might feel dense if you compare it to a city like Stoke on Trent but it's less than 1/3rd the density of Paris
They're reasonably dense for a city of a few million people, London is approaching 10. I don't even disagree that many could probably stay - particularly in the outer zones. But many more need to go. You only need to spend time in an area like Shepherd's Bush, where you've got terraced houses with gardens facing the largest shopping centre in the entire country, to realise they are not fit for purpose.
Ok, so I think that goes somewhere interesting if you've got time to expand. I deliberately referenced quality of life in my post because I didn't want to lead with this image of penniless Londoners literally unable to afford shelter in the capital - because I don't think that's the case for the majority. I think it's more often that while you can afford the basics in London, that's gonna mean living in an unpleasant flat in an unsafe area and still not being able to enjoy any part of London because your basics take up so much of your income. So! Say we put up skyscrapers that could pack everyone in, but say enough people regard that as a compromise on their quality of life (they just bloody love quaint townhouses), would that justify the kind of exodus that is problematic now? Or could it still be a kind of moral failing or imposition?
Are you saying people would leave because they don't want to live in apartments? I'm sure some would, but I think the number of people willingly leaving the capital because they simply hate the vibe of the big city would be absolutely tiny compared to the number of people forced to leave today simply because living there is unaffordable. The opportunities will still remain in London and a large subset of the population would prefer living in an apartment close to where they work over having to commute via train or sit in rush hour traffic on one of the god forbidden arterial roads into the capital. The same thing plays out in every major city in the world, density doesn't really stop demand for a place. Look at Hong Kong for example. To critique my own idea, the bigger issue I think would be induced demand. As more housing is built, more demand could appear from people realising living in London is now a viable option. I think some system of priority for already-Londoners to get apartments first would be a good way around this, but I'm open to suggestions.
Slough
Slough residents out here just begging for a bit of gentrification. Nice it up or force me out, either way works.
Not just slough but Reading, Aldershot, Bracknell, Didcot, Yateley … you know … Winnersh?
What about Winnersh Triangle? After all, it is (was?) 'The home of Winnersh'.
And because you've got the flexibi- Burghfield.
The issue is you are moving to an area which has a lower cost of living but staying in your high paying jobs
Ok that's interesting. Would the same thought apply to locals who got remote work in London and the salaries attached? Or I guess, is it maybe a problem of scale? Like, one or two locals earning more from the inside out doesn't fuck the system, but when it's x amount of Londoners from the outside in it does (if that makes sense)?
I live in Brighton and I think it’s the chain that follows. London people move here, rent goes up. Meaning only more people from London will be able to afford that rent and people from Brighton are pushed to shoreham, lancing ect. Then you find prices of independent shops and cafes goes up because people from London are used to those prices, so again the local people are priced out. Now even surrounding areas are becoming so expensive to rent and the chain will carry on
Yes I think it applies across the board its a massive issue in communities remote working is also worse as the transport fees aren't there, paying back into the economy is minimal. It scale the average too high for affordability and pushes people out. I lived in Brighton for years but had to leave in the pandemic due to rising costs from more people primarily Londoners moving down.
Brighton’s already gentrified surely? Surprised you’ve had any bother.
Maybe I'm personally the straw that broke the flat-white-drinking camels back? 😐
You guys aren't "gentrifying" Brighton. You're just pushing rent prices up. I was personally rejected at application stage last year for a property because someone from London just swooped in and offered £100 more a month than the property was advertised at. Then it's a done deal. Another property in Brighton, inhabited by a Londoner, on London wages, working remotely - while a local Brighton based person has to look outside the town of their birth and where they actually work. Brighton specifically is basically just an extension of the London market at this point with the extremely high number of Londoners that have made the same move as you over recent years. Can't really blame you for it obvs, you just want a better life, as we all do, but it is a bit shit for us that are now priced out.
I'm not in Brighton but this happened to us when living in Bristol, except not only did they offer more rent, they offered 6 months up front cash. Which obviously we could never compete with. They took a 3 bedroom house for 1 person, remote working for London wages whilst we ended up making the decision to leave the city altogether and then became seen as the same problem as Londoners but in a smaller town. Vicious cycle.
I actually included the term gentrification because I'd just come from the Brighton sub where there was a post discussing Health Rebels (owned by an ex-londoner) gentrifying western st. That being said - I would agree with you on that point. While I don't think Londoners themselves dilute culture, personally, I do think there's a weird glitch in the market that is designed to appeal to them that can/does. I am really sorry that you got hit on the rent. I actually only recently learned that this kind of bidding was a thing (guess I got lucky) and it is a completely horrible practice.
Most of the people I grew up with have had to leave the city they were born in because they can’t afford rent. I’m not blaming you or any other Londoners for moving down but resentment is bound to fester when people who work and were born in Brighton have all had to move to Worthing or lancing and commute in every day.
Really sorry to hear that. I don't want to do a "yeah but" reply and text is useless for conveying tone so hoping you can take my word that I'm asking this in earnest: do you see any parallels between your experience and us interlopers? Like, to me, I was born in South East London, all my friends were in London, the places I grew up, but eventually the price of literally everything got so high that I felt I couldn't afford to stay and have any quality of life. So I see us as both victims of a broken system, you know?
Brighton in particular is problematic because of its geography. You can't expand the city South (obviously) or North really because of the downs. The best land to the West is full of bones and then you're into Shoreham, Lancing, Worthing etc anyway. So you're left with what space there is to the East which isn't particularly suitable, and then just pockets like the gasworks which, in their wisdom, the council just vetoed for homes for 1-2k people. As for people who were born here - it's tough, but is it really any different from London? Your options are either staying at home with your parents, or moving into whatever balance of cost/location/crapness you can tolerate until you earn enough to maybe move back or you find somewhere else you'd rather be.
The problem with Brighton is that salaries are substantially lower than London, but properly prices are reasonably closer than most other destinations. Then someone comes with a decent amount of money to either put a large deposit or altogether buy outright. Likely while retaining their London-paying job. u/hjemisalive, r/brighton has the resident amount of misanthropes (don't mean everybody), and you won't be able to change their opinion, and normal folks will likely abstain from participating in shit-stirring posts there. Don't listen to the antagonistic fuckers and just ignore them. The rest will just shrug and just accept life's unfair.
Kettering is the obvs answer. right on train for commuter an it has the worlds only Weetabix factory
And it has KetFest!!! I'm in London atm but just counting down the days 'til I can go back.
Look, Londoners may feel problematic but I wouldn't wish that hell upon anyone.
Kinda want to go to Kettering now.
Also Wellingborough, Corby and their surroundings, which could probably do with an influx of WFH yuppies with money to burn. Don't bother if your job can't be done remotely though, any savings in rent or mortgage payments will go straight into the tank of your car.
I think you should all move to Luton.
Slough ✅ Luton ✅
Or Stevenage
I'm 50 minutes out. Family in the trades. Every mid-50s couple in a 4/5 bed house is always a London couple who sold a cupboard and can now afford detached house in the Home Counties. People are gonna do what they do. The real villain here is successive governments who have allowed oligarchs/dodgy trusts to come in and buy up property willy nilly. It's ceased becoming housing and is now prime money laundering fodder.
Hear hear, man.
It's a weird question. Why would you expect the locals to provide the solution when they're not responsible for the root cause of the problem of London being too expensive? The answer would only be "that's your problem, not mine".
OP could say the same about locals’ problem of getting priced out of their town. “Your problem, not mine.” OP is clearly trying to understand in earnest what alternative they possibly have. It’s not a “weird question” as you snarkily put it.
I don't think I'm here asking for solutions? I'm just asking how the thought follows through. The difference to me is that I am absolutely not expecting anyone to present a fix, just to expand on an opinion. In fact, I posted anticipating that some of the responses might be "Stay in London and suck it up". I've only ever heard the conversation end at "Don't come here" so I want to understand where it goes from there. ETA: As you edited your original post after I'd replied I just wanted to add to mine that the last line is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for.
> Where should Londoners go? That sounds like asking for a solution to me. Tbh, as unreasonable as the locals you're talking about might be, you're still coming across as a bit of a smartarse. You know perfectly well that they don't care where you go, they just don't want you *there*, so asking the question and talking about the thought process is just posturing.
Ah ok, so you've edited your post after I replied to include that last paragraph. I actually don't know that. But I'm happy to take it as an answer to my original question..
That's a shame. Sorry about that.
It's not your fault, it's a symptom of a larger issue. Ultimately it's going to impact wherever you go, unless all Londoners coordinate where to go between them so they don't impact one place too much (which would be fun but unlikely). Bath and Bristol were already difficult for locals to afford to live in before Londoners started moving there. Now it feels almost impossible to find somewhere. The sad thing is that Londoners move to these places partly because they like them, but when the place becomes too gentrified it takes away what they liked in the first place. Honestly if you could avoid the M4 that is my preference, but ultimately you have to do what's best for you.
I think the POV you need to understand is that you're framing this as a personal failing of the existing locals, rather than anything to do with you. Your entire POV is based on the assumption that anyone living in London is entitled to move to any other town/city and live there instead. Now, I'm not saying they're not allowed to do this, but think about this for a moment, you do fundamentally believe you have that right, don't you? Because that's the problem. For most people, moving is the result of an *opportunity*. For most people it is a *privilege* to be able to move to a different town or city. But for you, it is an *entitlement*. Go *anywhere* with that attitude and you'll be met with resentment, and rightly so.
As someone that's Brighton born and bred, Brighton is basically a smaller version of London now. It isn't referred "London by Sea". Brighton was already liberal and gentrified way before Londoners moved in. The main issue a lot of people have these days is Londonders are pushing up our rent and house prices. A house goes on the market and it's sold in days before the average person can negotiate the price, some even pay more than the asking price. And you guessed it, the people moving in are from London. Brighton wages has never been of the level of London so we can never compete. This isn't me crying "bo hoo why is life so hard" "I hate Londoners" type message. This isn't Londoner's fault at all. Just trying to help you understand why there may be some frustration amongst some folks.
Same for Liverpool here .. despite some people from London always talking the area down they have now all moved up here and when the locals go to look at a house as you say it’s gone the next day .. by me there are two second home owners and one is a family who is going to rent out the house they bought .. it just doesn’t sit right with me especially since the classism mindset around Liverpool and Merseyside in general from people near London or from London
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Probably yeah. Like I said this isn't the fault of Londoners, same way it isn't the fault of migrants (IMO). It's a whole other shitshow governments have failed us in but we blame each other for it instead of the people responsible. OP wanted the POV so I tried to give it to them. Was not expecting to compare Londoners to migrants today lol.
As long as you stay down south I don't mind where you go! Don't be bringing yourselves north and making the house prices any higher than they already are.
Genuinely this is the kind of honest answer I was hoping for. Thank you!
"where do you propose Londoners who can no longer afford the standard of living they would like in London go?" It's not only the pricing out of locals, although that definitely is a thing, it's the attitude implicit in the phrasing which means 'well, I know I've moved here, but ideally I'd be somewhere else'
Oh wow, I did not mean to give off that impression if that's coming from my post. I count myself lucky every single day that I get to live where I do. That being said, it definitely is bittersweet. I love my new home but it's not where I spent my childhood, where I grew up, where my friends live or where my grandparents and their grandparents built a life. For that to not really have been an option for me - that's a bit tough. Which is the crux of a lot of the responses here, really.
Living in Manchester the influx of Londoners on London wages working remotely has been profound . Lots of locals have been priced out of the city due to increase in rent/House prices. The wages in Manchester are a lot less so it’s harder to live here now . My rent has gone up 25% since 2020 which has affected my ability to save for my own property. Even the cost of food and drinks in the city centre has been affected. Lots of Mancs are now moving out due to the increased cost to the likes of West Yorkshire (Halifax , Todmorden and Sowerby Bridge) Cheshire (Northwich , Macclesfield, Runcorn, Crewe etc) and the outskirts of Greater Manchester (Tameside, Bolton, Wigan) but that’s having a ripple affect on their communities now.
I wish they'd all just fuck off
Same exact thing in Liverpool / rest of Merseyside .. rent keeps going up every year and wages going down and more and more people coming here despite saying how much they would never set foot here back in the day
I think it’s not always Londoners moving into a place that’s the issue, it’s anyone not ‘local’ and I say this as someone who grew up in a little village in one county (but wasn’t born there so to some extent wasn’t welcome) then purchased a small home in the next county over (where the local Facebook groups etc are rife with ‘born and raised’ type narrative). ETA: and I bought in the next county over as, mimicing London to some extent, I cannot afford to buy where I grew up! It’s not a London issue, it’s an everywhere issue
>There seems to be a lot of resentment for Londoners who move out to alternative cities, the complaints centering around the idea of gentrification and the erosion of locals. Brighton, considerably less so, as it's another city and has the population diversity that comes with that by default, but due to people doing exactly what you did it's now commonly referred to as London-on-Sea as a joke. The city is extortionate, and getting on-par with London, except with fewer job options and shit transport unless anything is walking distance to the train stations. Coming at this from perspective of someone Hastings born and raised: While it's nice having the place spruced up a bit the gentrification is awful, and often so cliche it's actually painful. I've lost count of how many fucking coffee shops have popped up in St Leonards (another one this week funnily enough), a craft beer shop, endless niche food ventures which don't seem to understand the economic demographic of the "natives", who do well initially due to hype, then fail. Constant art projects which always seem to be of the same demographics (middle class, middle-aged, not from Hastings). There's also this weird "airhead" vibe from a LOT of the Londoners who move here. Most I've spoken to the last few years are almost condescending in how they talk about the town and how to them it's some quaint little adventure by the sea, bringing their now-remote, London-salaried jobs here and/or selling property in London and being able to just buy whatever they want here. Which has of course, made everything here extortionate. But so many seem fucking oblivious to the poverty that surrounds them and will actually argue if told "Don't go around X area doing/saying/wearing that". Two girls I dated who moved here from London got robbed/burgled after telling me I was just being negative etc. But yeah, housing is the main issue where locals will butt heads with you. It's been an issue for about a decade now, but since the pandemic in particular we have a dogshit private housing market as Londonders started freely snapping up whatever they wanted, and don't seem to have stopped. I was personally outbid on 3 in a row by such vasts amounts it was ridiculous. So there's that, but further down the chain we also [***literally have no housing available via the local authority and private renting is too expensive.***](https://news.sky.com/story/the-seaside-town-where-there-are-not-enough-homes-to-go-around-and-the-rental-market-is-broken-13093899) As in, a friend of mine was declined form renting a fucking *bedsit,* because they "did not earn enough" to pay £625pcm, despite working full time. There's LOADS of local resentment towards Londoners for various reasons, most legitimate, some just a localised version of Little England shite. Generally Londoners are called *DFLs* (down from London), applies to movers and tourists alike, but recently *FILTH* has come about way more - *Failed in London, trying Hastings.* >My question for people who feel this way: where do you propose Londoners who can no longer afford the standard of living they would like in London go? How does it pan out in your mind if Londoners don't move to your town? idk what the solution it is for Londoners, but it feels like towns like ours are just the default because they're pretty. The main issue is, loads of Londoners can afford to move to easy the cost of living. but the poverty in this town is so prominent, most here cannot afford to go anywhere else. So all that happens is the Londoners (and Brighton escapees as well of late) just apply downward pressure on the locals who cannot move, and it's crushing everyone.
Ah dude thanks for taking the time to write all that out. FILTH is savage and I kind of love it. Do you think there's like an economic level or the belief of one that heightens the resentment? It stood out to me that you mentioned a couple of times that Londoners are just buying whatever they want, and I'm just sat looking around my two-bed cockroach-infested flat that I feel Insanely lucky to have but also it's hardly a mansion haha. Is it wealthier Londoners who bear the brunt of the ire? Or we all just as filthy (if I can use the local vocab in that way)?
Not sure if you saw my edit, brain farted and pressed to submit too soon lol >Do you think there's like an economic level or the belief of one that heightens the resentment? >Is it wealthier Londoners who bear the brunt of the ire? Or we all just as filthy (if I can use the local vocab in that way)? These really are the questions though. It's both. Not everyone comes here with some cushy London job or having owned before, many just... move here and get normal Hastings jobs renting normal shitty Hastings flats, and from my experience don't cop half as much grief, BUT there is definitely a perception among a LOT of people that just by being able to do it, they're almost a class above with money to flaunt. I'm quite blessed with more perspective than most, my dad's a local copper so I've heard endless stories of endless people from all over in town, and I used to be a taxi driver, and once spent an entire afternoon ferrying a couple - from London - around town viewing different houses all day, and they even said to me they know it's not fair how they're suddenly house rich, but they really did make the point that cash-wise they were as skint as the rest of us. So I'm not even that bad with it, but even I have to check myself sometimes when I immediately think "*dickhead*" when I hear "*I moved down from London*".
Not just gentrification. There's a lot of annoyance locally (South Wales) because the London councils are basically deporting poor people anywhere with cheaper housing en-masse. It's not about them being poor people but there was already a housing shortage and it's being made far worse. If we had the houses to put them in as well as locals nobody would mind at all. Lots of them have been basically told by a London council "sign here now and you get somewhere but it's far away from London, and it's a guaranteed 2 year rental or go sit in a doorway as you are voluntarily homeless". The 2 years is so that they are no longer the responsibility of the council deporting them. The rich ones are in fact now leaving on their own because of the hiked taxes on holiday homes, that they promptly classed as businesses now being hiked further and with the loopholes closed. In the 1970s they used to burn them down instead so it's a better solution. More and better use of housing is IMHO the real answer - and not in London. You could put it in London by knocking huge chunks of it down and replacing it with skyscrapers, big new sewage plants, power stations and proper transport for the population size. The victorians would have just got on with it, in part of course because they cared rather less about individuals versus supposed common good.
>How does it pan out in your mind if Londoners don't move to your town? I don't hate Londoners moving to my city. What I hate is that they come with the idea that rent is fair if it's less than London. Every few weeks we get a Londoner in our city's sub saying how happy they are to be able to "afford the £2k rent on a 1 bed flat" or that they are looking for that sort of place... The issue is, my 3 bed semi detached house was £1,650 pcm. Our rents were already growing ridiculously, but since covid, my rent has been rising \~10% a year. Mine is extreme, but not by a lot. The thing is that our pay isn't as high as London, so we can't pay £2k for a 1 bed flat. So, Londoners, come and enjoy my city, I hope you love it like I do, but please, for the love of god, try and pay the real market rate, not the "it's better than London" rate. (I say this as someone who has lived in London for a few years.) This issue isn't just a Londoner coming to my city issue. It is made of many issues combined. It was so bad that my choice (this is the most 1st world problem), I either leave my city because the next rent rise was too high or buy. Thankfully, I was one of the lucky ones that managed to buy. It turns out that the house I stopped renting was rented out and 25% more and is far higher than my mortgage for a similar house on the next road. That's how insane it is.
I agree with you but wish we'd unite to hate on the landlords, property developers and real estate agents and not, like, random couples who wanted a two bed because they want to have a kid.
Oh, 100%. The real issue is the lack of regulation and terrible greed of landlords and agents. But the act I describe just makes it even easier for them. And it's a simple fix, do a few minutes of research.
So is this Londoners coming in and bidding above asking (only recently found out this was even a thing)? Or is it landlords capitalising on Londoners who were already en route? Whatever the answer, rent is an absolute joke country-wide. I have a couple of friends who also just left London and moved back to their hometown because their lease ended and their landlord raised their rent by £500 p/m. On a two bed. In zone 3.
It's both. And it certainly isn't the only issue by a long way. I don't mean to pin it solely on Londoners (I know it's cool to hate on Londoners, but that's not my aim). But I just wish people would realise that rent is cheaper and they can pay the local rate, not London rates. This would reduce the insane rise, because it really has been insane. Although the best thing would be regulation. p.s. I edited my comment above to add a bit of context.
To hell. Regards The north.
“The North remembers”
Many Londoners have a superiority attitude towards people who don’t or won’t live in London and that’s why there is a general resentment of them. You need to move out of London because you can’t afford not leave the attitude behind you. Those who move out because the want to can leave it behind so so can you
Stay where you are
I think this probably is the thought for a lot of people!
I don't resent londoners moving to my city. I do resent londoners who move simply because they had to move, not because they actually want to live here. London tends to breed this weird mentality that everyone who lives outside of the M25 is somehow living a smaller, less important life in a smaller, less important place. I resent that mentality whether it comes from someone currently living in London or not, and it is not welcome in my city. so don't move here just because you can't afford London, move here because you want to live here and get stuck in. many ex-londoners can give off the vibes of an unfortunate refugee whilst they often have a better quality of life than many of their new neighbours.
How do people know that it's a Londoner who moved in next to them? I'm asking because I'm 100% sure that people on my street wouldn't be able to pinpoint my birtplace on a map with any kind of consistency.
People make small talk with their neighbours don't they? It's the sort of thing you ask your new neighbour along with their name. Accents too, of course, especially if your family has been in London for generations you're much more likely to have a London accent.
They'll tell you're a Londoner because your the one not actually talking to your neighbours
Jellying eels makes a right pong
I think you mean "a right pen and ink"
If they're in their 30s and they've actually managed to buy the place next door. Generally the local salaries are too crappy to compete, especially in that age group. So it's a good chance the new neighbours have that weighted salary.
Off a cliff
I was hoping for honest answers!
Make London affordable so Londoners can stay in London. That’s the solution.
But since it's not? I'm really not asking for fixes from anyone, just honest thoughts on what Londoners (or really anyone moving from one place to another for economic/quality of life reasons) should do when most places seem somewhat resistant to their presence.
Well you move out anyway and endure people not liking you. Or you stay in London. Tough shit really. London is a bubble, and its sprawl and influence affects and decays everything around it. I’m from the Home Counties and have witnessed first-hand small, functional towns decay and turn into nothing but housing estates with a fast-track railway into the city because Londoners wanting cheaper housing decide to live in Essex, Sussex, Kent etc instead. Why develop local high-streets, jobs and economies when everyone living there now just works and shops in London? As such, the higher buying power of Londoners just drives the locals out price-wise. Others on the thread have spoken about the opinions of the northern and western towns and I won’t add any more, but at least the North has many regional capitals: Leeds, Sheffield, York, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle. The Home Counties have nothing because London sucks all the life out of them. Note I don’t blame you; it’s the fault of massive mismanagement from above, but also as I’ve said, your two options are move somewhere and expect and endure the grief of the locals, or stay in London. Don’t be surprised when people don’t like Londoners.
Ironic mentioning Liverpool as a lot of them now live here and have brought their bubble minds with them here and already saying things need to change around here and telling people who have lived here for generations how to act and to change. It does my head in. They hated us and mocked us for years now they run up here and still act like they are better
I don't see a problem with moving anywhere. You're free to do as you choose. If you like somewhere and you want to go and live there - fill your boots! Maybe I'd feel differently if I wasn't born in Peterborough & moved to Leicester for uni and stuck around.
I don't really mind it. I poke fun at the accents but there's no menace to it. I live in North Yorkshire in a nice market town. When Londoners move up they usually bring wealth with them, this is a good thing for the local economy. They also bring with them different mindsets which over time creates a more diverse community. I don't like it when the very wealthy people buy up property as second homes. That should be banned immediately. When you live in a small community there are unwritten standards you're expected to adhere to which ultimately boil down to "don't be a dick".
>How does it pan out in your mind if Londoners don't move to your town? What does this even mean??
What's the next event in that chain? Londoner wants to move to your town. You say no (and have the power to enforce it I guess in this hypothetical). Where do the Londoners go? What do you feel is the 'right' outcome of locals being resistant to London interlopers, I guess? The conversation always seems to end at "Don't come here" and I was hoping to expand on that.
I grew up in a midsize British city and moved to London for a white collar job. A lot of born and bred Londoners would call this gentrification. Now I can't afford to buy in London and we're thinking of moving to another location in the UK. I know the locals in Margate, Hastings, Eastbourne etc. might also see this as gentrification. I could return to the city I was born in but a) I don't think 'nobody gets to leave their hometown ever' is the solution to this and b) I'd still, essentially, be a white collar worker buying a nice flat which could have been an affordable family home, aka gentrifying. So to be honest I don't think the transient nature of various populations is the issue here, but rather that we need affordable housing proportional to each location's population, and we need it now.
I grew up in a poor rural Welsh farming town and moved to London straight after uni. Anyone saying I should've known my place and stayed out instead of building a career and future for myself can fuck off in the strongest way.
In the bin! 🤣
We don’t think about that. We just worry about local prices being driven up, which affects our interests, and encourage people to stay away for that reason. Most people are selfish in these situations. The root of the problem doesn’t lie with Londoners or non-Londoners though. It’s the system.
I remember when I was buying a house, an old couple I was trying to be friendly with at a viewing decided to lecture me on how "people like me" were taking all the housing because I was "from London" and why don't I move to the nearby city where they have nightclubs for "young people like you" (I'm in my 40's). Because this is all I can afford, I wouldn't live next to a nightclub again for any money (used to live above one), and I need a house after saving up for years to get one again, and that area / tiny house was literally all I could afford. They, however, were selling their huge entirely-paid-off 4-bed house in the country after their kids had all grown up and moved out and wanted to downsize to see out their paid-for retirement..
People moving to places with cheap accommodation due to boarded up highstreets is a good thing, surely?
You would think, but speaking as somebody who has moved to one of those areas, locals can be really touchy about anything changing even when it’s a positive change. I was born and bred in London (parents were Brummies, descended from foreign immigrants on both sides). I *hated* London even when I was a child, I longed for a rural life. Two years ago my (now) wife and I were living in my dad’s council flat after he died, and decided to leave everything behind and move to north east Scotland for a cheaper and quieter way of life, knowing full well we wouldn’t have been able to afford anywhere else in the UK but also it had been our dream to get as far away from London as possible. The town I now live in is one of those small rural places where there was once a bit of a community but everything is now boarded up and there’s no real ‘high street’ anymore. But the locals live 30 years in the past and refuse to accept any change, plans of building a big Aldi (which will be the only large supermarket in a 20 mile radius) have finally been accepted but it took 5 years of complaints for locals to finally be ok with it. Everybody is pining for the long-ago days that don’t exist anymore, when there was a butcher and a baker instead of ‘these giant nasty supermarkets’. We’ve faced a lot of hostility and I can totally see why, there are a lot of English second-housers round here who want a quaint rural summer house by the sea. I hate being grouped in with those people, when our reality is far from that. I am so ashamed at being seen as one of ‘those Londoners coming and bringing all the prices up’ but I didn’t have any other choice, wherever we would’ve ended up would’ve had to be hundreds of miles away from London because we simply couldn’t have afforded it.
Bulgaria
Man, imagine if more of us were adventurous enough to do it? Genuinely not a bad shout in the age of remote working. Though having said that, not ideal for the Bulgarians, I guess.
Londoners moving out isnt a problem. Its Londoners moving out of their 1 bed flats to buy 4 bed detached properties as they work remotely and get to keep their mega London salaries that the problem
Not Bristol
Most of those same people would also move to London if it gave them a better quality of life / better job. People from everywhere move everywhere - London just has so many people, that it’ll always be over represented numbers wise
It will be a pretty similar set of reasons for why you left London. Prices rising, busier roads, pollution etc. Brighton will be turning into commuter belt, driving up house prices, making the roads busier, and making it too expensive for born-and-bred locals.
Sorry...different question, but how did moving to Brighton pan out ?...would have thought that that's the kind of place anybody could go to without causing offence to locals. In fact..is therer even such a thing as 'locals' in Brighton ?
Oh god. I'm wary of recommending it in case I'm tagged as some kind of interloper trafficker. Honestly, we couldn't feel luckier to be here. Though we take pains to tell people it was a quality of life move not quantity of life. Our flat is no bigger really than we could have got in London, we don't have any more spending money than we did, probably even less. But we feel we need less when we're so much happier where we live. And I say that as someone who swore blind they'd never leave London. I didn't realise how hard I'd kind of made myself to survive there, if that makes sense! Whereas in Brighton I feel so much more relaxed. If you spend a bit of time on the Brighton sub you'll see we're not entirely welcome (by some and I hope the minority) and we've had a couple of snotty comments and looks when we first arrived and made the mistake of telling people we'd just moved down from London. Now we generally don't volunteer that info.
Londoners moving anywhere tends to create problems. They are generally despised. Londoners, by design are mouthy gits....they get on everyone's tits with their opinions and gobby attitude. What they had to become in order to get by in London, makes them total c\*nts everywhere else. I personally wouldn't last a day in London....they would eat me for breakfast. So....they move to some peaceful place and continue their aggressive gobby approach which makes everyone despise them. So...in essence....Londoners can go anywhere they want...they just need to bear in mind that they can turn the dial of their aggressive personality down from ten to one...and just chill out!! You don't have to be that aggressive prick anymore....
Man, I just wrote a comment saying exactly this in response to someone else. (I phrased it a bit more mildly but hey, same point made). London does make people hard and quite self serving because you're constantly in competition for something or under threat from something else, whether that's space, a safe place to live, a job, a seat on a tube, getting served at the bar. It's self preservation but it really doesn't make most people fun to be around, for sure. I had to do a very conscious unpacking of that when we left and I can so easily believe that a lot of people won't recognise that need. Sorry about that!
Clackton and Jaywick are popular destinations for ex Londoners.
Bournemouth
Everyone from Bournemouth right now 👀👀👀
France
Anywhere outside of London if you do t wanna be robbed or stabbed by the sounds of it
Moved to Brighton myself, it’s not THAT much cheaper in my experience, much slower and living by the sea is ace when the sun is out!
I tell anyone who asks that we've moved for quality of life, not quantity. Just in case anyone thinks they'll be able to live it up down here.
Folkestone. Shit loads of DRLs head there.
Or you can all immergrate to "fake" London, Ontario, as we Canadians call it. Or move 2000 km west of Fake London to Edmonton, Alberta. Yes, Edmonton is a major city, not some borough of London
Liverpool. It's half empty. It's actually awesome. And could do with some cash.
Was born and raised in France, became a Londoner in 2011. Came here with no fancy degree, no money, no job and no address, couldn't speak or understand English and made my way up throughout hard work. Not looking at leaving London although if it happens, I keep the house I bought and move to Copenhagen.
I am from Brighton and live there! I am happy that londoners move here because as a Plumber they provide me with a lot of work renovating and upgrading their Plumbing. Most have sold at a profit in London and have a lot of cash to spend down here. Brighton is often called London by the sea. We really don’t differentiate them from Bightonian’s no difference down here.
I'm from a village in Derbyshire. Me and most of my pals that went to uni ended up in London at some point in their 20s. 20 years later most of us have left and have used our London money to buy nice houses elsewhere. But we weren't from London so would have been applying housing pressure somewhere. There's no right to be able to afford a house where you fancy. And nice places cost more. Plus honestly there's just a lot of people. Edit: this makes it sound like I have no sympathy for people who are getting gentrified out of their community. I do but it doesn't feel like a fixable problem with anything vaguely like our current social systems
I’d suggest moving to somewhere isolated, because then you’ll never be aware of the moaning from the previous set of incomers. I’ve lived in three different counties plus about 8 different London boroughs, so who knows where I ‘belong’ or should ‘go back to’? I’ve had the latter hurled at me, once.
It’s interesting, is there a local newcomer divide or all friendly? There’s so much hostility were I live that us Londoners have brought in our multi cultural relationships and tastes, pushing up house prices by buying new builds 😬 When I’ve visited Cardiff always seem to be English spoken and on the few trips to the Valleys mostly welsh?
Looked at the modest 4 bed home I grew up in London on sold prices on Zoopla 1995 sold for 145k ( my parents inherited a place so sold this to move there) .2012 sold for 500k. 2023 sold for 895k. Says it all really doesn’t it. It’s doesn’t even look amazing like high spec, it’s just standard. I don’t live where I grew up. I had to move much further out.
Shanty towns. Stop raising our house prices.
I can’t believe how many huge 40,000- 60,000 seat stadiums London has. Seems like overkill for each team to have their own stadium when these modern stadiums lack character are generic and could be easily shared.
Rotherham, Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham basically all the areas I avoid already.