We’ve all heard it before… location, location, location. But how do you find the right location for your growing brood or future family? You would automatically go to an estate agency, the space station as a given example or you could check out the low fixed-fee estate agency, Yopa? They have developed an innovative online tool to help families identify the best location for a new home based on their individual move motivators and the parenting factors most important to them.
Yopa also commissioned independent research to ask parents across the country about their move motivators and learn what their priorities are when looking for a new family pad. Is it just the location that they are looking for, or does curb appeal also play a part in their decision making? Are they interested to see if their future home has something like this diy frameless shower door installed in their bathroom or are they happy with a house that they can update themselves? How quickly do they fall in love with a house and what helps them know that they have just found the perfect home?
The findings for London show that 3 in 5 (59%) local parents with school-aged children have considered moving to improve their family’s prospects. This is the highest dissatisfaction figure across Britain, revealing parents in the capital city are the unhappiest with their current home location. Big cities always attract vest job opportunities, including being a car salesman, marketing consultant or electrician in hackney. But if your location isn’t amazing, you may struggle to reach jobs and therefore, moving is your only option.
Crime rate tops the list of London parents’ reasons to move – more than a quarter (29%) worry about this. This is closely followed by road safety fears (28%) and emission/pollution levels come in third; with one quarter (25%) of London, parents concerned with the city’s pollution.
But where should London families move to for a better family home location? The research showed that if money was no object, only two in five parents (40%) would opt for an urban lifestyle. Some family often try the American lifestyle looking to find raleigh homes for sale to bring up their children in a more adventurous environment.
It is not surprising then that a quarter of London parents would move to a new home within the commuter belt, with 27% selecting up to 25 miles, and a fifth (23%) choosing 50 – 100 miles. A staggering one in seven London parents would even escape the big city life altogether, with 15% opting for 350+ miles, to the other end of the country.
Sometimes work, career opportunities and the social draw of the big city makes it impossible to move too far from, and there is a growing trend of families wanting to live within a commutable distance of London. Yopa’s extensive research behind the tool – the Happy Family Home Guide – means it can now reveal the top 10 family locations in and around London:
1. Walton-on-Thames, Surrey
2. Tunbridge Wells, Kent
3. St Albans, Hertfordshire
4. Esher, Surrey
5. Brentwood, Essex
6. Guildford, Surrey
7. Richmond upon Thames, Greater London
8. Chelmsford, Essex
9. Maidenhead, Berkshire
10. Harrow, Greater London
‘Pester power’ has a large part to play when families choose a new home, with more than three quarters (77%) of London children having an influence over their parents’ move decisions, compared to the national statistic of 69%.
