Live and work from anywhere
Why buy a home where you have to when you could live where you want to?
We all agree that, as a society, we've had a weird couple of years. Untold stresses about how or if businesses will survive. Will you keep your job role, or will you be made redundant? Will you have to close down your business?
But, what most of us have seen is that, after the initial stress and panic, life is not bad.
We all got to spend time at home without family—quality time without many of life's distractions. We could reassess what we were doing and what we wanted from life. Take our foot off the gas for a bit.
And now, a remarkable outcome of the past few years of craziness is the uptake in remote working.
Businesses had to adapt to stay functional, and almost everyone adopted a working-from-home policy. Embracing technology allowed teams to collaborate and work well but away from the office. And many businesses realised that productivity went up, sick days went down, and collaboration continued in the same positive way that it always had.
And with this new remote working phenomenon, many senior employees and business owners realise that they are no longer required in the office daily. Perhaps now, they're only commuting once or twice a month for in-person meetings.
Senior executives have a new opportunity and a whole new outlook on where they choose to live. Previously a daily commute would dictate the location to minimise the travelling time as much as possible.
Next, there would be constraints on budget and school options for your children. They would likely have no choice but to purchase a home in or around London, or at least within the commuter belt.
But now, the whole of the UK is a potential home for these senior executives. With a commute only now and then, rather than every day, as long as the property has a strong wifi connection, they can choose anywhere to call home.
Imagine if they wanted to move to York, for example. A beautiful city steeped in history. And it is on the East Coast mainline, so you could be at Kings Cross in around 2 hours. Not bad. Especially when you only have to do that once or twice a month.
Then consider that you are selling your London home for £ 1 million. What could you buy in York for that budget?
As I'm sure you are already aware, properties up North are significantly cheaper than in central London! A £ 1 million budget could buy you a simple apartment in London. Still, in York, you could have a five-bedroom Detached home, with a double garage in an exclusive development, within a few miles of the station.
Or a city centre penthouse apartment with three bedrooms, a balcony overlooking the river, and secure underground parking.
Or even a period townhouse in a private residential area with six bedrooms, soaring ceilings and windows filling the home with natural light and providing views across the city rooftops.
The newly acquired mobility in the housing market, where home searchers are free to choose anywhere in the country to call home, has created a problem in how we search for property.
It's no longer good enough to type in a postcode or region and search within that area. If you could live anywhere, how can you search for property anywhere? How could you possibly narrow that down?
Try going onto Rightmove and searching for a property above £ 1 million anywhere in the UK. It doesn't work. Rightmove will come back saying that you need to narrow down your search.
And you can't narrow down enough to specify that you must be a 2-hour train journey from Kings Cross. That could be anywhere from York and Manchester in the North to the South coast and everywhere in between.
And what if the perfect house for you is 2 hours 15 on the train? Would you discount it? Or would you want to know about that too? I'm sure you'd consider an extra few minutes each way for the right house.
Property searching has to change to keep up with the times and the new flexibility buyers have.
This is why By Design agents use a connected database.
Simply inform By Design of your requirements, and they will be able to show you any properties with any By Design agent across the UK, not just with each branch.
Property websites and agents don't have this capability, and you, as the buyer, must try and figure this out unassisted. You could end up registering with agents' mailing lists from all over the country. You'll be inundated with emails filled with properties that will likely not meet your requirements. Before long, those emails will become white noise, and you'll stop checking them.
Imagine if you could control the requirements you're searching for, updating as you refine your property needs and budget and perhaps location. Log in and change it yourself without contacting every single agent covering the whole country! That is a full-time job on its own; frankly, you've got better things to do.
Want to know more about searching the entire country for the perfect home for you and your family? Look no further; click here to register your details for our comprehensive, connected property search.
