They pictured the good life: fresh air, country walks and community spirit. But a year after a record number of people rushed to escape cities — and the pandemic — to live out their green and pleasant fantasies, the reality is kicking in: an hour’s drive to buy a cup of coffee; four-hour commutes; dark winters and cold, lonely nights. For some former city slickers, the buyer’s remorse is so acute that they are already selling and moving back to tarmacked civilisation. They just don’t want to tell anyone about the biggest, most expensive mistake of their lives.
Take Daniel and Emma, who declined to give their surname. In June 2020, feeling frazzled after lockdown with young twins in a three-bedroom terrace in south London, they sold their home in Stockwell for £800,000; craving space and fresh air, they bought a four-bedroom house in a remote village in Dorset for £780,000.
“We couldn’t think of anything lovelier than living against a backdrop of hills,” says Emma, 39, a marketing consultant. “We had fond memories of holidays in Dorset and wanted to embrace a more rural lifestyle.”
Yet, almost 18 months on, country life isn’t what Emma and Daniel, 41, who runs his own business, imagined at all.
“We feel isolated. Most of our friends are still in London, and we’re tired of long car journeys if we want to venture outside the village — even getting to the supermarket is a trek,” Emma says. “We have come to realise we don’t want to live a holiday life full-time.”
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The couple have put their house on the market for £880,000 and are planning to move back to the capital for the twins to start school in September — they are looking in Barnes, southwest London.
Daniel and Emma are not alone in having second thoughts. One Yorkshire estate agent says: “We had a chap who paid several million pounds and took 32 days from start to finish to complete the transaction. He’s stayed just six months. The first viewing for the resale of the house is planned to take place before Father Christmas arrives.” In another extreme case, the removals company Anthony Ward Thomas reportedly moved one family from Barnes to Bath last year, only to move them back eight days later.
In 2020 Londoners bought 73,950 homes outside the capital, a four-year high, according to Hamptons; in the first six months of 2021 a further 61,830 bought homes elsewhere, the largest half-year figure since the estate agency started compiling records in 2006.
“We are noticing an uptick in interest from buyers who took the leap to leave London last year, only to realise that the grass isn’t always greener,” says Marc Goldberg, the head of sales at Marsh & Parsons estate agency. “The rural idyll isn’t always as it seems; convenience is important.”
Some who fled the city now admit that they panicked and didn’t think through what relocating far away from friends, support networks and convenience would entail. “We are seeing buyer’s remorse among urbanistas who probably never even owned a pair of wellies, but lockdowns terrified them and they thought they had to get away because everyone else was,” says Joanna Cocking, the head of prime country sales at Hamptons. Other rueful rural dwellers are smarting from being caught up in the overheated market, stoked to melting point by Covid panic and the stamp-duty holiday. A recent survey by the insurer Aviva found that 94 per cent of pandemic property purchasers felt under pressure to buy quickly, while half of homebuyers who bought during the pandemic regret how much they paid.
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Bidding wars have become commonplace in the countryside — properties in the most desirable locations, such as the Cotswolds, have sold for more than £1 million over the asking price. Hamptons says that this year 46 per cent of homes in remote rural areas were the subject of bidding wars, defined as having a sale agreed after receiving an offer from three or more buyers.
“The housing market has been a bit like the recent fuel crisis — everyone thought there was a shortage and went and filled their tanks, worried they would miss out, when in reality there was no need,” says Guy Robinson, the head of residential agency at Strutt & Parker. “Some now wonder if they moved too quickly and got caught up in a hot market and paying over the odds.”
Others compromised because they couldn’t buy in their preferred location and are finding that they don’t like where they’ve moved, while some didn’t do proper due diligence. “When surveys flagged issues with a house, people didn’t reduce their offers as there was such a rush to secure a property,” says Lindsay Cuthill, the head of the country department at Savills estate agency.
Indeed, nine out of ten people who bought during the pandemic discovered issues with their properties after moving in, according to Aviva. Pearl Horner, 68, and her husband, Arnold, 77, were among them. They had to move quickly when buying their new home outside Leeds after a cash buyer made them an offer on their property in Brighouse, West Yorkshire, which had been on sale for two years.
“We had to act fast when we did find a suitable house,” Pearl says. “After we moved in we had a few issues — there were some leaks and a radiator fell off the wall. It was stressful.” For others, the problem is not their new home, but their old life — specifically, their job and the fact that they are now being called back to their workplace. “Covid changed everything, and those who discovered they could work from home made huge life decisions based on this,” says Nina Harrison, the London specialist at Haringtons buying agency.
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This meant some leapfrogged traditional London commuter areas in the home counties and moved to places such as Cornwall, Dorset, North Yorkshire and Cumbria. “When it felt like Armageddon, this seemed a sensible decision, but then the world opened up and people were expected back in the office,” Harrison says. There is even word on the grapevine of a banker who moved to Penzance because he thought he could work flexibly ad infinitum, but now has to be in the capital three days a week.
The harsh realities of a long-haul commute are what put paid to Sarah’s rural reveries. In the spring the marketing business owner, her husband and their four children relocated from Chiswick, west London, to the Herefordshire/ Wales border. “We thought we had moved out for good, but my husband is back in the office in London and a four-hour commute is just not feasible, even if only a few days a week,” says Sarah, who is in her forties and didn’t want to give her last name.
The family are now in the process of returning to Chiswick. “Thankfully, we didn’t sell our home but rented it out,” Sarah says. “A number of other friends are also boomerang-ing back to London.”
The rude awakenings often depend on where in the countryside they move to. Ben Pridden, a director at Hewetson & Johnson estate agency in North Yorkshire, says: “If someone is moving from Acton, say, to Hampshire, it’s not such a massive upheaval. But North Yorkshire is a big move. It’s darker, damper, browner — it’s the real countryside. There isn’t a Soho Farmhouse to nip to every Saturday morning, with negronis on tap.”
The social make-up is different too. “In the Cotswolds there’ll be five to ten big houses in every village and five children all at the same prep school. In North Yorkshire there might be one big house per village. You might have to go to five villages to find another family.”
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One of his clients found this out the hard way. “I had a young family who came up to North Yorkshire to start the idyllic life just over a year ago. They moved to a significant house, it looked like the dream move. But it became evident fairly quickly that the area wasn’t for them — it lacked the support network that the mother was used to in London. She said, ‘I’m having to drive a hour just to have a cup of coffee with someone.’ ”
However, those who sold up may not find returning so easy. “In August we were getting at least a call a week from buyers looking to move back to the city,” says Philip Harvey, a senior partner at the buying agency Property Vision. “But it has slowed a little and one suspects this is largely financially driven. Many will have paid a premium, and add in stamp duty and refurbishment costs and some could be 20 per cent the wrong side of break even.”
Pritten believes that there are a lot of people in this position. “There will be some who can’t swallow their pride. Do they really want to admit the whole thing’s been a catastrophic disaster? Especially as it’s going to cost them hundreds of thousands to reverse.”
And then there are those people who regret a country move but didn’t even manage to buy. Dominic Agace, the chief executive of Winkworth estate agency, knows of one couple with two children who have spent months living in two one-bedroom rental flats in Bath (with one child in each) while they try to find a house to buy in the nearby countryside.
Rural buyer’s remorse — it’s the newest pandemic property trend.
