The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Money
‘Why we finally decided to move out of London’
Esther Shaw feels the personal and fiscal benefits of swapping family life in the capital for rural Devon
Seeing our lives packed into around 100 large clear plastic boxes stacked neatly (for now at least) in a stable in a rental property in north Devon is at the same time both weird, and also strangely liberating.
After 21 years in London, living life to the full, we have finally made the plunge, tapped out of the rat race, and relocated to the sea.
Making this decision has not been without a huge amount of soul searching, agonising, emotion, and endless “what ifs” about leaving the place we’ve called home for as long as we can remember.
But one of the best pieces of advice given to us — of which there have been many since I first floated the idea a few months ago — has been: “You never regret something you have done, yet may always live to regret something you haven’t.”
And I like that sentiment.
For what it’s worth, I feel I’ve got my money’s worth out of my beloved London. I moved there as a trainee journalist back in 2002, aged 23, initially living with three boys I knew from university, in a four-bed house in Fulham. At the time, I was paying around £500 a month in rent.
I bought my first home, a studio flat in east Putney, a few years later, in 2005, and went on to move onto my then boyfriend’s (now husband’s) flat in Brixton in my early 30s.
We bought our first home together on Queenstown Road, Battersea, in 2012, and our daughter was born four years later.
On the day after her first birthday, we moved just a few streets away to what we naively thought would be our “forever home”. This was a three-bed, three-storey freehold terraced family property, with a garden considered “slightly big” by Battersea standards.
Our son was born in that house, two years later, in May 2019, and the four of us lived there, along with two rescue cats, until the end of last month, when we officially relocated to the West Country. Seeing our London lives summed up like that makes me realise all over again just how fortunate I’ve been when it comes to property.
An initial helping hand from the “bank of mum and dad” enabled me to get off to a great start in my mid- 20s, and rising property prices, good timing (along with a big dose of luck), have subsequently helped my husband and I climb another rung or two together.
But earlier this year, for the first time in more than two decades, we started to feel a little priced out of London. We work hard and earn well, but with income failing to keep pace with the eye-watering cost of living, being in the capital has begun to feel increasingly unviable.
We have long accepted that we’d pay a premium on many costs in London, but that in return, we’d get access to nightlife, nice restaurants, plays, gigs, and one of my biggest ( niche) loves, mixed netball — as well as loads of great opportunities for our kids.
The sad truth is, many of those things have become a lot less affordable than they once were. Buying a round of drinks at our local, or going for a meal with friends, leave a far bigger dent in the wallet than it once did. Luxuries such as theatre trips and days out have become, in some cases, prohibitive.
In recent years, we have been diligent about paying down our mortgage, something we have been very thankful for, as rocketing energy bills, food prices and petrol costs have piled pressure on our family budget. We’ve also looked hard at where our money goes each month, and done our share of cutting back.
And while we made a very conscious choice to send our children to a local private school, which has served them brilliantly, and delivered us all some lifelong friends, rising fees have reached something of a tipping point for us. Fee inflation of 8pc this year has taken them from just about affordable, to definitely not affordable.
On top of all this, for quite a while now, there’s been a voice inside me clamouring for more space. And over the last year or so, that voice has grown a whole lot louder.
A combination of working from home and growing children means our threebed terrace is beginning to creak at the seams. And I’ve been feeling more and more claustrophobic. A few years ago, we tried and failed to get planning permission for a fourth bedroom. And while we’d successfully applied to do a side return to extend our rather compact kitchen, the onset of Covid resulted in us putting those plans on hold.
Since then, we’ve never quite found the energy to deal with the upheaval of dust and builders. Or perhaps deep down, both of us knew we weren’t going to stay.
Over the years, we’ve certainly toyed with the idea of trying to buy a bigger home in London. But to remain even vaguely close in proximity to friends and lives in Battersea, would mean paying through the nose for what might ultimately buy us one extra room and a sliver more garden. Both my husband and I have long agreed that that option just doesn’t make sense for us.
Equally, what I can’t ignore amid all these financial and practical considerations are the more personal reasons. And it is perhaps these which have clinched the decision.
For me, this has been about increasingly feeling the need for change.
Life is a tricky beast and has dealt quite a tough hand to us in the past few years. And so it was, after yet another school run down the traffic- filled Queenstown Road back in March this year, that the kernel of an idea began to form. I got to thinking that with my hus
band trying to change jobs, and my role as a freelance writer giving me the freedom to work from anywhere, we weren’t actually tied to London anymore.
And we also weren’t making the most of the capital any more. The more we talked, the more we realised that moving out of London might be more than a pipe dream for both of us.
Away from the capital, I was sure there was the potential for some household expenses to be cheaper, while eating out, get ting around, and entertaining the kids would also be dramatically lower.
Plus, private school fees would almost halve. All of this would mean we could both (hopefully) slow down a little, shed some of the stress, and spend more time doing the things we love.
I was born and raised in south Devon. £900,000
Nick Jane (savills. com, Exeter Office)
More specifically, I grew up in Brixham, a quaint little fishing town on the English Riviera. My London friends may see me as a city girl but deep down I’m a country lass, and I really miss the sea.
My childhood was spent in wellies or knee- deep in rockpools. I’ve always escaped back to the coast to find my calm again.
My husband and I got married in a field just above Bantham beach in the South Hams. Given all this, moving back to south Devon might have appeared the more obvious answer. But for me, it was really important for me that this leap out of London was a new start for everyone not just me going back to my roots.
Both my husband and I know north Devon, but only a little. When we talked about possibilities, north Devon seemed to offer all of us a fresh start. Trawling the pages of Rightmove and Zoopla, I realised how much more we could get for our money in the West Country. We’d easily get a different style of property with space around us, more bedrooms, a bigger garden, as well as the possibility of outbuildings. There might even be room for some rescue animals.
Over the past few months, as the idea has slowly built into reality, we have been through many different iterations of a plan. This includes selling London and buying in north Devon, letting London and renting in north Devon, and other such variations on a theme.
As part of working out what to do, we have made multiple visits to the area, staying in different locations, both coastal, and a little further inland, to try and get more of a feel for the place. We have also viewed a myriad of properties, both to rent and to buy.
One of the biggest focal points has been finding a school. Since doing that, the plan has become more clear.
With a rural location on the edge of Exmoor, green playing fields as far as the eye can see, and a timetable which includes Forest School and after-school surf lessons, we knew, as soon as we’d set eyes on it, that we’d found the right place to send our little ones. The smiles on our children’s faces told us that they were ready to embrace the change.
Through the school’s parent network, we have been able to find a place to let from a school family on a shortterm basis, while we sell our London home.
Since the end of August, we have been renting a beautiful three-bedroom cottage, at West Ford Devon, a truly idyllic 25-plus acre estate on the outskirts of South Molton.
The children have access to a swimming pool, huge playground, and the biggest trampoline they could ever imagine. I have lanes to go running in, a wild lake to swim in – and have even tried out for a new netball team. And miles of sandy beaches a short distance away.
Given it’s still such early days, it’s hard to see how our budgets have changed. But when we put our new cost base into a spreadsheet, it certainly seems that we’re going to be a lot better off financially.
At the same time, as clichéd as it sounds, our lives already feel richer.
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