Moving out of London

Just wondering if anybody has any thoughts or experience on moving out of London.

Short background: lived in London pretty much all my life, but getting itchy feet now. Without wanting to complain too much as I know I'm far from the worst affected, it feels like rising rents mean that even though I could afford to stay here, doing so would mean spending more and more to live further and further out. No way are salaries keeping up with rents. I'm not one to bash London, I love it here, but I don't think it's the only decent city in the UK either. And it just doesn't seem like the best value any more.

Anybody else had similar thoughts or moved away?

Where did you/would you go? Sheffield is cool and cheap, Manchester is booming, Newcastle and Birmingham seriously underrated, Glasgow has tonnes to offer, Edinburgh is beautiful and Bristol is a gateway to the countryside of the West of England and Wales...

How did/would you find it moving to a city probably 1/10th the size? Convenient and manageable or dull and provincial?

Obviously London has more jobs, but more people applying to them as well, and well you only need one job... What would it be like in your sector?

London has tonnes of cool areas, but for the price of a 1 bed or a room in a house share in somewhere like Peckham or Finsbury Park, you could live like a king in the very centre of most other cities...

Thoughts please!

Already know that our next move will be out of London. Similar story, love it here, but we want more room, a new experience, and you can always visit. Only issue is we both have quite London-centric jobs, so we're considering either commuting, or going freelance. All rather scary but fuck it, don't want to go stale!

Nottingham. I'm biased, but it's ace. Big cycling scene. New velodrome (indoor). Loads of proactive council money.
Maybe on the doorstep of the best countryside in the world (as neither the peaks nor the glories of east Notts/ Rutland are far away.
Cheap as shit to live here. Incredibly friendly people.
Good healthcare, decent schools, good transport.
Good sized city centre with a really new feel, loads of good food, bars, etc.

It's a winner. If you can find a job.
And a decent lbs.

If my wife wasn't so tied to London, we'd move up here. I'm coming back this August to London, and honestly I'm going to miss it up here something massive.

I've lived in Glasgow and Birmingham. Can't say much for the latter at all. Glasgow was ok, lived there at a bad time (winter & while the Indy ref was going on).

If I was to move anywhere in the UK outside London it would be Manchester. Bath/Oxford/Cambs look nice too but not sure how my career would do there. Manchester seems very metropolitan. They even have a Rapha!

Manchester is ace. My girlfriend lived there for the first 3 years of our relationship - I would go up every other weekend. To start with I wasn't sold on it (it rains a lot) but by the end I was very attached to it. It just takes a bit of time to figure out where everything is.

Would definitely consider moving there, or Bristol. The housing market in London is just bananas- even if you make good money and have help from family you still can't buy anywhere big enough to raise a family. Unless you want to live right out on the edge - in which case, you're missing all the 'benefits' of living in London anyway.. might as well keep going...

I'm born and raised in London, all my friends and family are here, but it's a very different city to the one I grew up in.

Get the fuck out of this dump. I'm born and raised London but there's a growing level of selfish that is happening before my very eyes; I don't like it. I think it will get much worse. I feel it's stagnated culturally and no, it's not rose tinted oakley knockoffs. There is simply less and less space for interesting things. Something good comes along, folk move in because it is seen to be cool, only to complain about noise. It feels mostly bland (to me anyway).

Problem is being used to the massive sense of choice....even though I barely dip into any of it. I spent 10 years living in Liverpool and there were many great things about it but after a while I couldn't get past the sense that I'd seen all it had to offer and that there was nothing new. Culturally, it is smaller (smaller population natch) so it can feel goldfish bowl-like. It depends on what you're after out of life.

I did spend some time in Manchester which felt a bit bigger. I guess since the BBC moved up it will feel even more cosmopolitan - a proper conurbation area, though the housing price boom will have gone up there with it. I guess you can live in greener spaces outside of London with much a much shorter distances into the city center for work.

Waterloo in merseyside is beyond lush.

I hear what you're saying, MultiGrooves - I live in the commuter belt, but don't work in London. Over the past year I've just stopped going into London apart from very specific events, and even then it's only meeting mates that will tip the balance in the favour... thing is, it's expensive to get in, expensive to stay out, and the cuntish dickhead level seems to be at an all-time high.

Yeah yeah, same old bitchin' about London stuff: but now that nobody can afford to buy a house there are a lot of folk moving out. And those folk want interesting stuff, like fancy ass bike shops and coffee that isn't Costa.

I'd look for a place far enough away from London to get it's own thing going on, but large enough to keep a lot of stuff going on. Bristol over Exeter, for instance, or Cardiff over Swansea. At some point you're going to start seeing the same people again and again, but that means that you can't expect to act like a dick and not have people pick you up on it. Shouldn't be a problem if you're not a raging dickhead after living in London for too long.

Been there, thought that but basically the idea of commuting for 3/4hrs - day with all the costs, travel pain and agg that goes with it didn't appeal to me. We moved out to the edge of London, zone 6/7...

Get into Old St on overground in 27mins or 30/35mins on a scooter, 45mins on a bike

Also got the benefit of fresh air and open spaces for the kids, woods, parks, streams, lakes, farms with pigs, sheep, cattle, stables and sumfin or nuffin....literally at the bottom of our street

Here are some things that will happen if you live outside of London:

• your landlords will be a nice older couple who leave cakes on the side when the husband comes round to fix the washing machine (the same day you reported it broken)
  
• when you buy your family home, at the age of 27, your landlords will help you move, and they'll give you a heartwarming goodbye card
  
• when you move in, your new neighbours will bring you tea and biscuits and invite you round for dinner 'since you must be tired'
  
• you can ask your friends if they want to go for a pint tonight, and more often than not they'll say yes, rather than 'No, what about September 29th between 6 and 9pm?'
  
• you can own a car, park it on your own driveway, and use it to get around if you choose to
  
• you can wheel your bikes straight into your garage, rather than carrying them up an ever-narrowing pissy stairwell
  
• you can go mountain-biking without having to get the train first
  
• when your shopping bag breaks and your oranges roll down the street, people will stop what they're doing to help retrieve them. Old ladies will dust the oranges before handing them back
  
• your commute will be less than half an hour
  

We definitely want to get out - but where, and how is the question. We'd need to change our jobs.

I considered it when buying my extortionate 1 bed flat (zone 2) just over a year ago, and do think about it when I go to nice places. But ultimately when weighing it up, I have a decent enough job with good hours and a 20 minute commute by bike. If we moved out, I am looking at 5k+ in rail fares and adding about an hour each way to my daily routine. Which also means I can't afford the type of property which would make me consider it. We sacrificed space, but as a couple with no kids we don't need more space really.

What seems to be the main driver for people is starting a family, whilst I am married kids are not on the cards, ever. So at least for another 5-10 years I think we will probably stay put. Yes it is expensive, yes there are lots of cunts, but I also think if you make the effort the sense of community is there to be found and there is so much to do on your doorstep.

All that said, I do fantasise about selling our flat and putting the money into a business somewhere.

Less brown people, less tube, less dancing, less interesting places to eat.

More money, more meeting people you know in the street, more bedrooms, more space, more free time, more spontaneous pints, more picnics, more bumping into people you've had sex with and then didn't call, more hanging out with people you love. ( London to Edinburgh as reference)

Just quit and go. My partner and I moved to the other side of the world with no jobs lined up. First six months was hard, after that it was amazing. Now we've decided we don't want our kids to grow up without grandparents, so we've done it again, in reverse.

( London to Edinburgh as reference)

Heh we're actually trying to move to Edinburgh actually. How did you manage it?

No one seems to have mentioned Leeds..?

Cos Leeds is a shit'ole and full of cunts

lol

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dSYvAMGcvb0

Leeds is like LFGSS then?

Christ, didn't even get off page one

@lae

Got a van, chucked all my shit in it and spent a day listening to radio 4.

Drop me a PM if you want local advice and a welcome beer. It's nice here man. There is loads more love for people here.

Good thread.

loved london for a long time, ended up moving to holland a few years ago as my girlfriend was dutch. took me a while to adjust, but ended up loving it, my quality of life was so much better. Anyway, relationship went pop, and due to unusual circumstances have ended up back in london again. Have been finding it really hard to settle back in (despite all of my mates being here). The weekend cycling has been the biggest loss, but really miss the beach, slower pace of life, moving around the country, living in my own place (now rent a bedroom again) and obvs the cost of living. Can see why you want to leave. When you've been away from london for a while, you forget how mental it is.

London is amazing, and it is easy to overlook the things you take for granted but i know i'll eventually leave. Don't know where else in the UK i'd go though. I'm from birmingham - don't think i'll ever move back. Went to Manchester for Uni - had a great time, but wouldn't move back there either. Honestly have no idea why people think it's so much better than birmingham, they're pretty similar.

Anyway, longer post than i anticipated - in short, move to holland.

Lived here 22 years. All my adult life and never thought i'd ever want to live anywhere else in the UK (San Francisco and Berlin being distinct possibilities for a while) but we're in the process of cashing in and opting out.

I love London but it's changed so much in the last 5 years... Don't want to moan either but i'm not sure it's the place for me anymore. And i'm sure that's not just me getting old and daddy about it. If anything it feels less exciting than it used to. Homogenised, gentrified, cleansed and with all the edge, fun and grit dialed down. It feels like the centre got turned into a dry-wipe theme park for tourists, Hackney got colonized by Clapham and the disease spread out from there.

Despite on the face of it being better off than we ever have been and more so than many, we can no longer afford to buy the space we need for our little family even in (until recently very affordable) South East zone 3.

Luckily the speed with which that absurd housing bubble blew up means that if we cash in now we can afford a fucking lovely house outside London with an easy commute and a view of the coast.

See ya!

Sounds easier than cramming it all into a suitcase, PM'ed.

I moved to Oz almost a year ago, I really miss my mates and my old haunts but wouldn't wanna move back... It's been hard but amazing so far, been doing a very different job for the last 10 months that has really altered my outlook... About to start a new design job next week for an NPO... That means I can now very comfortably buy a house, we had an offer accepted on a place a few months back but had to pull out when my gf thought she was gonna lose her teaching job...

Made loads of new friends, playing in a band, occasional DJ gig, great weather, near the beach... It's great... But I do miss getting belmed off my tits on twift at Le Reej...