Commuters who opt to spend an hour on the train to London save almost £400,000 on house prices
07-08-2014
By Adam Uren
Commuters who choose to spend an hour on the train to London are saving themselves almost £400,000 on the price of their house by not living in the capital.
Lloyds Bank has found that homes within an hour's commute of London, such as Crawley, Brighton and Peterborough, typically cost £260,000, some £381,000 lower than the average property price in central London of £641,000.
With annual rail tickets in some of these places costing less than £5,000, Lloyds calculate it would take someone 76 years of commuting before the price difference is wiped out, provided property values and rail costs remained at the same levels.
Savings: Commuters may have a lengthy journey into work, but they reap the rewards by having better value homes to choose from.
Savings: Commuters may have a lengthy journey into work, but they reap the rewards by having better value homes to choose from.
Prices rise the closer you get to the capital, but even people living just a 15 minute train journey away in places like Borehamwood and East Croydon will still find homes some £276,000 lower than central London.
Those living a half-hour's ride away, like Woking, Hemel Hempstead and Luton, can expect to pay around £365,000 for the typical home.
But the savings can be even greater if you live somewhere further out but on a fast train line.
Peterborough, for example, is 50 minutes away from Kings Cross and has an average property price of around £160,000, although at £7,200-a-year a rail season ticket would be more expensive.
Lloyds also found that someone commuting from Wolverhampton to London could save £484,000 on the price of a property, but it would involve the prospect of spending four hours a day commuting.
Birmingham
Manchester
Inverse: Property prices in Birmingham (left) and Manchester city centres are actually cheaper than their suburbs.
For those commuting into England's second and third largest cities, Birmingham and Manchester, living further afield does not necessarily pay off financially.
Lloyds said the average Birmingham property price is £140,000, whereas Solihull, which is 15 minutes away by train, has a typical property price of almost double this, at, £274,257
The typical property value in the centre of Manchester is £134,873, which is lower than the average house price in nearby areas such as Stockport, at £192,172, Macclesfield at £231,118, Warrington, at £173,581 and Chorley, at £166,107.