Familes are letting out their London home to live in the country, while young executives abandon buying altogether in favour of a more flexible lifestyle.
Caroline McGhie, Telegraph.co.uk – 2 July 2009
Renting is the new elastic in the market, as families such as the Godwin-Browns are finding.
Paul and Fiona Godwin-Brown and their two boys Tom and Charlie are living wild and free. They have given up pressured London life and moved into a rolling Devon valley, a mile from the sea. They let their house in London and are renting in Devon for the foreseeable future. “It has been the jammiest thing. The children think they have died and gone to heaven,” says Fiona.
Theirs may be the way forward for many. Renting is the new elastic in the market. It is no longer the preserve of the can’t-haves and students, but is being favoured by families, job movers and young executives. When house sales are hard to achieve and prices static, renting is perceived as the most effective way to get a new life and hit the start of school term for the children in a new area. “It is interesting being away from London and feeling that house prices are a bit irrelevant.”
How did it happen? Paul and Fiona put their London house, between Clapham and Wandsworth commons, on the market at the beginning of 2008 at around £1 million and were quickly becalmed by the recession. By May they decided to move anyway, let the house and get the boys into good local schools in or near Torquay. Fiona gave up her high-powered job as a business planner, and Paul began applying for jobs as a primary school teacher. It all happened very quickly. Good tenants were found for the London house and Paul and Fiona fell in love with the little village of Stokeinteignhead.
The house isn’t one of the many pretty thatched cottages but it has four bedrooms, an acre and a half of garden, a zip wire, tree-house, climbing frame and hen house. “It has exactly what we need,” says Fiona. “We realise that, surrounded by this wonderful countryside, people don’t need trophy houses in the same way. It is like having a property ownership hangover which you have to get over.”
They will probably sell the London house when the market recovers, then think again about buying. For now, however, renting is more than good.
Fiona is thrilled by the charms of village life. “Stokeinteignhead is in the most gorgeous valley and we can walk to the sea,” she says. Tom, 12, is at Torquay Grammar four miles away and Charlie, nine, is at a much prized village school a walk away. They have been there nearly a year and hope to stay another year or two. The four hens – Talulah, Dilly, Scramble and Rocky – produce four fresh eggs each morning which Fiona transforms into breakfasts, soufflés, meringues and cakes. For them, renting doesn’t mean living in a state of impermanence at all.
