Alison Gaughan and Terance Puna loved living in central London – but the price they paid for easy access to theatres and galleries, great restaurants and a thrumming nightlife was simply too high.
Their rented two-bedroom garden flat in Shepherd’s Bush was a tight fit with two children, Rían, now 10, and Lonán, seven. And its £1,850 per month rent took a huge chunk out of their income.
“It really was beyond our means,” said Puna, general manager of removal firms Gentleman & A Van and Burke and Wills. “We were always living on our credit cards.”
When the Stamp Duty holiday was announced in the summer of 2020 it seemed like too good an opportunity for them to miss. Firmly priced out of London, the couple began looking for a family house in the Home Counties.
In 2021 they joined the rising tide of priced-out first-time buyers who are skipping over the M25 in search of an affordable home. Their modern three-bedroom detached house, in the southern Winchester suburb of Badger Farm, cost £383,000.
According to recent research by estate agent Hamptons, 30pc of Londoners buying a property outside the capital last year were first-time buyers, as high interest rates crunched what buyers could afford. Ten years ago, they accounted for 12pc of such sales.
While some of these pioneers are looking for a complete change of lifestyle alongside a comparatively affordable home, others are reluctant London leavers who want a decent commute back into town, value for money, and at least some of the mod cons of city life.
Those moving out – not because they are tired of city life but because they can’t afford it – have some appealing urban options within two hours’ commute of central London.