A record number of Londoners are leaving the capital to buy cheaper property in the north and Midlands.
Research by agents Hamptons International has found that the number of people leaving London for northern cities has tripled since 2010.
“With affordability stretched, more Londoners are moving out of the capital to find their new home,” said Aneisha Beveridge, a research analyst at Hamptons.
“More people are making a bigger move and buying a larger home sooner to avoid having to pay stamp duty on additional moves as they trade up. For many, this means heading further north.”
The average property in London is currently £424,610, which will buy a two-bed flat above a shop in east London. This is compared to what the same cost will buy elsewhere, including a large detached house in a good suburb of Birmingham.
Other areas that Londoners are buying houses include east Dorset, Hastings and Leicester. In Dorset, 25 percent of homes were sold those leaving the capital and in Leicester, one in 10 homes were sold to Londoners during the first half of this year.
Elsewhere in the UK, house prices are struggling to reach seen at the height of the financial crisis. For example, house prices in Liverpool are one percent below where they were ten years ago, similarly seen in Glasgow.
In contrast, house prices have surged in Cambridge. The city has seen prices soar by 70 percent on average, to £432,410.
“The fact house prices in some of our biggest cities are still recovering from the financial crisis shows how big an impact it had on the UK’s regional housing markets,” said Richard Donnell of Hometrack.
“While 2008 was the year when house prices fell at their fastest rate, they continued to fall for a further three to four years in the weaker performing markets as the impact of the recession and restricted credit availability hit the value of people’s homes.”