Food for thought.

eidand

amywoodmead said:

Sounds like a bad position to be in, I am sympathetic even if it is her own fault.  This is one of the reasons I am pushing to buy within the next five years even though it is such a huge commitment for us.  How do you survive if you don't? I can't be paying the rent I pay now on the pension I'm likely to get.

indeed. too many people think short term, when they should be thinking long term.

fatbeetle

Patrick Cox’s patience with London snapped when he was charged £3.50 for a cup of tea. For Amy Everett, it was the overcrowded commutes on trains that broke down so often she regularly worried she might never get home.

The pair are part of a rising tide of Londoners moving out of the capital, revealed in new figures suggesting the popularity of settling in or returning to northern England has more than doubled since 2014. While in 2009 only 1% of people leaving London bought or rented homes in the north, in 2019 that figure reached 13%, data from the Countrywide network of estate and lettings agents shows.

Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle upon Tyne are experiencing the fastest rises among northern cities in the number of escapees arriving from the capital, according to separate data from the Office for National Statistics, which indicates a possible shift east of the London escape route from the well-worn path to Manchester. Sheffield had a 12% rise in Londoners moving to buy or rent in 2018, followed by Newcastle and Leeds, which both recorded 5% increases.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/14/rising-tide-of-londoners-moving-to-northern-england

zagubov

London's not amazingly affordable. Most housing here is expensive to rent and even more so to buy and the quality of accommodation would leave most outsiders underwhelmed by its, lets just say modesty's a more polite word than inadequacy.