For Joanna Webster, who gave up her job as a City lawyer after the birth of her daughter, Georgia, the urge to leave London grew stronger each day she spent in her local park, “reading the graffiti in a sea of middle-class mothers”.
“It was a huge shock going from enjoying work to being a mum, and I was bored witless,” says Webster, 38. She yearned instead to re-create her Surrey childhood, “falling out of the back door into fields, climbing trees and having ponies”.
Webster and her husband, Keith, also 38 and a City lawyer, studied train routes and settled on West Sussex. They sold their four-bedroom semi in Wimbledon for £500,000 in 2006 and bought a 1950s house near Haywards Heath for £710,000. They nicknamed it “the Fridge” (“It was white and freezing inside”), but the setting was spectacular, with nearly four acres of garden overlooking the South Downs. The couple pulled down the property and, in its place, built Peters Brae, a five-bedroom, 5,700 sq ft family home with a traditional facade and a modern interior, including a wood-pellet-burning central-heating system.
Prime houses in London are at or close to the peak, while regional markets are offering buyers increasing value “Our lives have changed drastically since we moved here,” Webster says. They now have four children: Georgia, 9, Toby, 7, Sam, 4, and Jamie, 1. “The children don’t have any computer games. They pick strawberries, play in sandpits and have proper space to be kids. It’s so much healthier.”
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The Websters are not the only stressed-out urbanites to have dreamt of a new life in the countryside — of somewhere bigger, prettier, greener and, best of all, cheaper. The Office for National Statistics estimates that, in the past decade, hundreds of thousands of Londoners have left the capital for one of England’s market towns or for splendid isolation in the countryside. This drove up prices, in some cases by as much as two-fold, narrowing the differential with the capital.
Over the past five years, however, the process has gone into reverse, according to research carried out by Savills estate agency. It found that average prices in London in May were 113% higher than in the rest of England and Wales, the biggest margin since November 2001. It’s a reflection not just of the continued strength of the capital’s economy, but of the foreign money pouring into the swankiest parts of town.
Another study, published last week, showed that there are more properties for sale in the capital at more than £1m than there are for less than £200,000. “Prime London houses are at or close to the peak, while regional markets are offering buyers increasing value,” says Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills. “In some regions, values remain 24% below peak.”
At the same time, fewer families than at any time in the past five years are contemplating the move: the number of Londoners looking to buy in the “inner commuter zone” (places just outside the M25, such as Amersham, Reigate and Sevenoaks) has fallen by 31% in the past year, and in the “outer commuter zone” (including Haywards Heath, Newbury and Oxford), that figure has dropped by 32%. In these difficult times, many people want to remain in the capital. “Leaving London is a huge lifestyle choice, and people are reluctant if there is uncertainty in the economy or the housing market,” Cook says.
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All of which means it could be the ideal time to go against the flow and head out of town. But how much more will you be able to get for your money? In the past five years, property prices in London have risen by an average of 49% — compared with 6%-10% in the commuter zones, according to Savills. In the same period, prices in what it describes as “lifestyle relocation” towns, such as Bath and Cirencester, have fallen by 9%.
As an example, the agency compared the average price — £1.3m — of a four-bedroom 2,000 sq ft house in “prime” London (excluding the far more expensive central areas) with that for the same type of property elsewhere. The differences are striking (see map, below).
In the inner commuter zone, the average price of a similar-sized house is £810,000. Head further out, to Cambridge, Newbury or Winchester, and you will pay about £770,000. A Grade II-listed Tudor lodge, in Stroud Green, near Newbury, for example, is on sale for £745,000 (01635 582111, hamptons.co.uk). It has six bedrooms, four receptions and a garage.
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If a daily commute to London isn’t necessary, the average price in “lifestyle relocation” markets is about £570,000. Strutt & Parker’s Cirencester office is marketing Jackaments Lodge, two miles from Kemble train station, with three bedrooms, a large open-plan kitchen and an orchard, for £595,000 (01285 653101, struttandparker.co.uk).
If you have deeper pockets, then for £875,000 you can buy a 4,200 sq ft thatched four-bedroom farmhouse near Chippenham, with a tennis court and a paddock (01672 516256, hamptons.co.uk).
Not every Londoner has a £1.3m house to sell but there are plenty of properties for those with a home valued close to the capital’s average For the greatest price differential, head to Norfolk, where you can find a Grade II-listed Elizabethan thatched farmhouse in Bacton, with four bedrooms and a walled garden backing onto farmland, for £515,000 (01603 229229, savills.co.uk).
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While not every Londoner has a £1.3m house to sell, there are also plenty of attractive properties available for those with a home valued close to the capital’s average, £425,669. In Canterbury, you can pick up a four-bedroom Edwardian semi with four receptions and a large garden for £460,000 (01227 456645, couttsbyers.com). And £350,000 will buy a three-bedroom cottage in Micheldever, seven miles from Winchester, which is about an hour by train from London Waterloo (01962 850333, knightfrank.co.uk).
The disparity between the quick-fire London market and the hesitant scene in the shires, where properties can take more than a year to sell, is changing the rules. The age-old advice was to find a buyer for your house before putting in an offer on another one, but Strutt & Parker is seeing growing numbers of purchasers secure a country house before they put their London home on the market, such is their confidence that they will be able to sell it quickly.
“This way, you don’t end up renting while trying to find the perfect country house,” says Ivor Campbell-Davys, head of the agency’s Fulham office. “It is also a way of protecting the value of your London home. The longer it’s on the market — if a country sale drags on or falls through — the less you’ll get for it.”
Jaye and Tom Cowle decided to go ahead with their relocation from southwest London to northern Cornwall last summer. Their two-bedroom Victorian cottage in Barnes, southwest London, wasn’t suited to family life.
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“If our parents came to stay, they had to sleep on the sofa,” says Jaye, 32. They sold their house for £390,000 and bought a new four-bedroom house in the market town of St Columb Major for £310,000, a big step up in terms of space.
Rather than playing in crowded little parks, their sons, Owain and Toby, have the run of huge, empty beaches.
The only thing missing for Jaye was a job; but, a week after starting her search, with “a combination of luck and a London CV”, she was taken on as a sales and marketing manager. Tom works as a PR consultant near Newquay.
The Websters, meanwhile, like many self-builders, are on the move again. Now their Haywards Heath home is complete and on sale for offers in excess of £2m (01444 419140, hamptons.co.uk), they want to head “deeper into Sussex, where you get even more value for money every step you take further away from London”, Joanna says. “Hopefully, with this next move, we’ll get away from London completely.”