A recent report from Compare My Move has shown which areas of the UK are most popular with people moving out of London to enjoy a more suburban lifestyle and lower housing costs.

The average house price in London is £701,280, which is £341,532 more expensive than the average house price in the UK as a whole. Add to this the higher cost of living in London, around £230 according to the report, and it’s easy to see why people from London continue to move out of the area to surrounding ‘commuter towns’ and sometimes further.

Where are Londoners moving?

The South East was the most popular region to move to in the last year from London, with 33.7% of all London movers ending up in the South East. Being the closest region to London this doesn't come as a surprise, similarly, the East is the second most popular place for London movers with 22.7% of Londoners moving there.

Although there has been a slight drop in people moving out of London overall (-4.6%) there has been a significant rise in areas that have a lower average house price, indicating that Londoners who are moving out of London are going to places in which they can save money. 

For example, there has been a 22.4% increase in Londoners moving to Scotland, making it the seventh most popular place and beating regions that are much closer to London such as the East Midlands and Wales. This rise in Scotland’s popularity is probably because house prices are, on average, £500,000 less than in London.

The East Midlands saw the greatest decrease in people moving there from London in the last year, down 12.3% compared with 2022, even though an average house is priced under £300,000. The East of England and the South West also saw a drop of over 10%. Regions with lower house prices have generally done a lot better in the past year than regions with higher prices among London movers.

“This means that Londoners moving out of London are looking at cheaper areas of the UK more in 2023 than they were in 2022,” said David Sayce, Founder and MD of Compare My Move. “A good reason for this could be the consistent rise of mortgage base rates and inflation throughout last year, which we are only now starting to see drop. Because of this slight drop in inflation, and the steadiness in the base rate, we can predict that the more expensive areas such as the South East, the East and the South West will see a larger year-on-year increase by the end of 2024.”

Brighton was the most popular destination for Londoners to move to in 2024 and had a positive relative change that suggests it’s going to be on the up. The average house price in Brighton is just over £500,000, but still beats the average house price in London by nearly £200,000. 

Reading had the greatest relative change when it comes to Londoners moving there in the last year, seeing a relative change from 2022 of 1.36% and coming in as the second most popular town to move to from London in the last year. 

Both of the most popular areas on this list are relatively far away from London when looking at other areas but have direct trains to the capital city. Therefore, as well as house prices, people could be looking at the cost of living in these areas. Brighton and Reading have a lower cost of living than areas with a lower commute time but similar housing prices because of their position around London.