Authors
Blog Post 1: What is the best Commute into London?
We have identified the best places to live for daily commuting into London based on a couple, both working, with two children. In this study, we work out what this couple would need to earn on a gross basis to live in a detached home one hour commute time to Piccadilly Circus in Central London.
We have a fully interactive tool which allows the user to work out how affordable locations around central London are.
For this blog, we use Potters Bar as the origin station and Hertsmere as the Local Authority to provide a worked example.
A Daily Commute
What defines a Daily Commute?
We set a time boundary of 1 hour to commute to Piccadilly Circus, including the travel time from any London terminus. The commute zones are no longer than a 15-minute travel time to the origin station. In essence, the extreme boundary should take no longer than 1.15 hours to Piccadilly circus, often this will be shorter.
We use Local Authority data for the average price of a detached home as at May 2024.
A total travel time of approximately 2 hours per day would assume that an individual could be working in an office in central London 5 days a week. The calculation is specific, taking into account the most efficient station to drive to as well as the time to travel on the fastest transport route in London to Piccadilly. This means there are certain locations, such as Peterborough, where the travel time by train is less than 1 hour. However, accounting for journey times to the station and underground to Piccadilly, this pushes Peterborough outside the daily commute boundary. It is, in fact, a 74 minute commute time one way, even if living next to the origin station.
Potters Bar
In order to illustrate the point, we have taken the station of Potters Bar in Hertfordshire to work out what gross salary is required to live there, based on our criteria.
Potters Bar is marked on the map below and is in one of two defined corridors of affluence for London commuters. These corridors are a result of train lines to the North and South-West of London. Within these corridors home prices are extremely high given the short commute times to main London terminuses. It then follows that household incomes need to be high to afford to live in these areas.
The average cost of a detached home in Hertsmere is £1.07 million. Potters Bar sits in the corridor where each person in the household would have to earn more than £81k per annum.
What Costs Are Involved?
We account for a range of non-discretionary costs including mortgage payments, season tickets, childcare costs and disposable income. We assume a 15% deposit on the family home and a 4.13% mortgage rate.
The result of this exercise is that to live in Herstmere and access Potters Bar into Central London, a combined gross household income of £162,910 per annum is required.
Mobility Model
The example of Potters Bar is one of many.
The model can help target different locations to work out what salary would support living there, what the travel time would be and what type of home is affordable (detached, semi-detached or flat).
Conclusion
The average gross salary in London and the South-East is £36k which is well below the required threshold to live in Herstmere. There are very few identifiable areas 1 hour from London that are affordable on a combined gross household income of £82k, based on the criteria used in this example.
To live in a detached home in Herstmere, both people in the couple would have to earn a gross salary in the top 10% of earners in the UK. This study puts into context the impact of house price inflation on the UK capital. This is a direct result of record low interest rates both post the Financial Crisis in 2008 and during the covid Lockdowns, leading to rampant asset price inflation.