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The number of Londoners swapping the capital for a home in the countryside is the lowest it has been in more than 10 years after a decade of rising house prices across the UK.
Londoners bought 5.7 per cent – or 57,020 – of homes sold outside the capital this year, the lowest share since 2013 and almost half the Covid-era peak in 2021, according to research by estate agency Hamptons.
House prices rose 26 percent in London over the past decade, compared to 39 percent elsewhere in the country, according to Hamptons, which analyzed data from 650 real estate agents nationwide.
“Many homeowners have not had the housing market on their side in recent years,” said Aneisha Beveridge, head of research for the Hamptons, adding that with “home correspondence falling within reach” many “have chosen to stay put”.
In addition to the high cost of property in other parts of the UK, Marc von Grundherr, a director at the real estate agency Benham & Reeves, said that the return to work after the pandemic has kept Londoners in the capital.
Londoners are leaving small urban homes in 2020 to find more space in the countryside, hoping that working-from-home arrangements will become permanent. But the end of the epidemic led many companies calling employees back to the office.
First-time buyers were “from abroad”, Beveridge said, counting 31 per cent of Londoners buying homes outside the capital this year – more than double 2013.
The average London house cost £520,000 in October, according to the Office for National Statistics, although the capital had the lowest annual house price increase in the country at 0.2 percent.
Beveridge noted that “the high income and savings bar required to buy a home in London has pushed aspiring homeowners to look beyond the capital”.
The most popular destinations for first time buyers from London were commuter towns with good transport links. Just under half of all buyers in Brentwood in Essex were from London this year, up from 23 per cent in 2019.
Property prices in central London have fallen over the past decade, although the capital remains the most expensive part of the country.
Between 2013 and 2024, prices in South Kensington and Chelsea fell by 11 percent and 4 percent respectively, according to property analyst LonRes. In Knightsbridge and Belgravia, prices this year were unchanged from 2013.
Neal Hudson, founder of housing consultancy BuiltPlace, said the rate hikes from 2014 onwards had “hit the London market hard”.
“The turnover is very low and prices are low or negative,” he said, adding that the outlook for the high-end property market was “far from pre-2014 levels”.
Von Grundherr, a real estate agent, said many of the home buyers he worked with were Londoners returning to the capital after traveling during the pandemic.
By 2021 Londoners will spend a record £55bn on housing outside the capital. But von Grundherr said his clients were taking advantage of stagnant house prices to return, drawn by the short commute to the office and the capital's cultural attractions.
“We have a couple who sold their house in London four years ago and moved to Hampshire,” he said. “But they came back in 2023 and bought a house on the back road (where they used to live). They paid almost the same price as when they were selling in 2020. “