Move nearer to London

Prishan

Hi
Every one! I'm Prishan.I'm staying in wales like 15 years. I've two children, they have grown and moved way in London and Nottingham.my hubby feels like to take retirement and move somewhere near to our children. So we thought a lot and decided to move nearer to London.
But I'm feeling a little bit confused right now, how I can start the procedure of moving.
list of confusion:
1) How can I choose an area would be nearer to both of my children?
2)How can I find a place which would be affordable, safe to live?
3) we have to buy a house or sell it first one where we are living right now?
4)is this moving procedure would be too much hectic for our age ( my hubby is 60+)?

it would be highly appreciated if you could give me some advice to start my journey of moving.

thank you so much in advance for your precious time.

kind regards

agrinnall

1) Look at a map, choose places between London and Nottingham - easy by road if you are not far from the M1 or A1.
2) For safety (in terms of crime levels) use this website https://www.police.uk/
3) In most cases your house will at least need to be under offer before you can make an offer on a new one.
4) Probably not, many people move after they turn 60. Ask your children to help with the physical bits if that's a problem.


If you will need a mortgage to buy the new house then that could be an issue which you should address before doing anything else.

hazyjo

I'd prob think about moving near to Nottingham then. Easy to get a train into London (prob quicker and easier than driving!) and prob easier for them to visit you. They might not stay in London once they start a family (presuming they haven't already). Are they in North or South London? I'd say prob best being nearer one than inbetween both (although check the one in Notts has no immediate plans to move!). (Lots of 'probablys' in there - we can only guess at this stage without knowing you all!)


Generally, prices will go up the nearer to London you get (not gospel, there are some awful parts still, but generally).


60 isn't old I'm in my 40s and always get the removal company to pack for me and move it. I unpack it.


Good luck.

AdrianC

If you don't know where you want to be, then consider renting for a while.

[Deleted User]

Most people when they retire are wanting to get out of London not move to it!

letitbe90

https://where.rightmove.co.uk/ use this to get a rough idea of areas you could live based on distance to your children, budget and property requirements. Add all your children as places, then add a time/mode of transport and fill in the housing criteria. It is a pretty brilliant tool!

After it narrows down your areas, look into those to see which takes your fancy .

Lokolo

You may want to reconsider once you seen how much property prices are. Depending where in Wales and where you want to move to, you could find yourselves moving to a much smaller place.

zagubov

Another vote for moving near to Nottingham. Property in London is appallingly poor value for money compared with the midlands, plus there's fewer big supermarkets and chains like B&M and HomeBargains to buy necessities at reasonable prices.
Plus, importantly more some complain there is less of a community spirit between neighbours.

AlexMac

agrinnall wrote: »

1) 1. Look at a map, choose places between London and Nottingham - easy by road if you are not far from the M1 or A1....
4. If you will need a mortgage to buy the new house then that could be an issue which you should address before doing anything else.

Re 1. Good advice from agrinnal, but also worth looking at train travel and assessing where the semi-fast (1 hr 45minute) London Notts train stops (e.g St Pancras, Luton Airport Parkway, Bedford, Wellingborough, Kettering, Market Harborough, Leicester, Loughborough, Beeston, Notts; more options on Trainline) as there may be a time you don'y fancy driving. Although there will be a price premium on places within an hour's commute of London.

4. is becoming less of a problem - Nationwide offer mortgages later in life (I'm hoping to extend mine to well past 80!); https://www.nationwide.co.uk/products/mortgages/borrowing-in-later-life

I also echo the point about renting for 6months to a year or more to really get a feel for the area you choose; difficult to assess from afar and that will let you suss what's important (peace and quiet, rural/village/small town/ city... , walk to local shops, public transport, leisure facilities...?)

BUT... and it's a big but, do you want to build your future around where the kids live NOW? Friends of ours did just that; choosing somewhere midway between kids who were about to settledown a comparable distance apart from your London- Notts axis. They sold up... whereupon kid1 and their family moved 200 miles!

Caused real strife

OldMusicGuy

We are doing the reverse, moving away from London to the country. Our son has moved out and works in London but we need to realise some equity from our house so we are moving away from the South East (we are in Berkshire) to Somerset.

We spent the last year preparing for this before putting our house on the market. Here's what we did:

- Identified the areas that took our fancy. We started pretty broad and decided to focus on the Cotswolds and Somerset.

- Decided our budget. That's the most important thing because that will have a huge impact on where you can afford to live.

- Made a list of our priorities in a property. How many bedrooms, what other accommodation, where did we want to be (town, village, countryside etc.). Did we need to be near a station to make it easy for our son to visit?

- Once you've done that you can start to search on Rightmove and see the type of thing that comes up. You can search quite wide areas, for example you might put in "Bedfordshire" (which is between Nottingham and London with good road and rail links. Put in your price range and other criteria and see what comes up. If they are nice houses in what look like nice areas, then those towns/areas go on your "long list". If you get small poky houses in areas you don't like the look of, you can rule them out.

- Through this process we identified a number of areas/towns that we wanted to focus on. We visited every one of them to drive around and get a feel for what they were like. We spent the last year doing this (obviously not every day but every couple of weeks or so). This enabled us to narrow it down to five towns we wanted to focus on. We registered with every estate agent in all those areas about three months before we put our house on the market so we knew what was available.

- The plan was to put our house on the market and when it was under offer spend one week staying away and viewing every property in all of those areas we already knew were available that we liked, and also seeing what the agents had coming to market. The plan was to make an offer on something within that week.

However, we actually found a small, new development in one of our target towns and we were able to put a holding deposit on that property before we even put our house on the market.

This worked for us. It avoided having to go and rent somewhere just to find out what places were like. But it's quite a lot of work....

PS we are both 61. No issues there. However, you need to think about your next move. How long will you stay in this house? Until your 80s? Forever? We plan to stay in this house for 20 to 25 years and that impacted out choices because 85 year old us will have different needs to 61 year old us.

Prishan

Thank you so much! Yours a full plan saves our time indeed!
So kind of you for giving your time.
Cheers