Back when he was living in London Geoff Wright’s daily commute was a 17 minute cycle ride from his East Dulwich flat to central London.
Today the journey to the office takes him more than an hour and costs around £40-a-day.
The pay off is that by moving out to Hertfordshire he and his wife Lydia have been able to buy the kind of family home they would never have been able to afford in the capital.
“If we had all the money in the world we probably would never have left London,” says Geoff, 35, co-founder of mortgage broker Tembo.
He and Lydia, 33, a marketing manager, bought their London flat just before the pandemic. And when there were just the two of them it was perfect.
“We were on Lordship Lane so we had all the pubs, and restaurants, and shops on the doorstep, and we were in Zone 2 so it was really easy to go out in the West End,” says Geoff.
The problem was that the couple wanted a family – their son, Freddie, is now four months old, and they also have Barney, a year-old Bernedoodle dog (a cross between a Burmese mountain dog and a poodle).
They were painfully aware that they weren’t going to be able to afford a house with space for all of them in East Dulwich.
“I did look and a three-bedroom terrace was going to cost £1.2 million,” says Geoff. “It is crazy.”
Another factor to consider was the cost of moving itself.
Research by moving quotes portal reallymoving.com suggests that the average UK house move costs almost £14,000 – or just over £2,000 for first time buyers.
Expenses have more than doubled in the last decade, and will leap again in April when new stamp duty rules come into force.
Then Geoff’s mum came up with a solution. She suggested they look around at new build houses which often come with substantial incentive packages to reduce the expense of buying.
Geoff began to research locations and in 2023 he and Lydia reserved a four bedroom detached Taylor Wimpey house being built on a site just outside Hitchin in Hertfordshire.
They were able to negotiate some £40,000-worth of incentives, including a contribution towards stamp duty, assistance with paying estate agents fees for the sale of their flat, which went for £535,000, and extras like free flooring.
All this meant they could spend £695,000 on the family home which they moved into in March 2024.
“It is a proper family house,” says Geoff. “I have got a home office, there is a gym in the garage, the baby has got a room, and there is a big garden.”
Lydia, who had lived in London all her life, has found the transition to Home Counties living more challenging.
She misses her friends and the convenience of endless local amenities, but is building up a new network by joining kids’ groups with Freddie.
“The other thing is that London is actually not far away,” says Geoff. “The distance can feel like a really long way but we can get on the Thameslink and be back at our old haunts in an hour.”
