People looking to buy a house can save £3,000 for every minute they are prepared to travel out of London, new figures reveal.
A survey carried out by the estate agents Savills found potential buyers were likely to pay more than £3,000 for every minute they could shave off their commute by train. The poll looked at house prices near 433 railway stations and compared them to the length of time it took for people to travel from the property into the centre of London.
The report claimed the priciest place to live with a daily commute of less than 40 minutes was Oxshott in Surrey. People looking to move to Oxshott can expect to pay an average of £1,475,775 for a property and face a 35-minute journey into the capital.
Meanwhile homes in Shiplake, Oxfordshire, are a 41-minute train ride away from London and cost an average of £1,065,945.
In contrast, homes in Kent’s Dover Priory typically sell for an average of £142,851 but commuters will have to spend 64 minutes on the train to reach central London.
The conclusion of the survey by Savills was that house prices fall by an average of £3,342 for every minute added to the journey time into London.
However, there are a lot more factors involved in house prices than simply the distance from London. Properties in Foxton, Cambridgeshire are worth an average of £580,017 but those working in London face a long commute of 69 minutes.
Frances Clacy, who works for Savills as a research analyst, said: “First-time buyers and young families looking for more space often look to make a move out of London. They probably start their search by working out which London station they need to commute into and how long a commute they're ready for and that defines their search destination.”
She added: “You obviously have to factor in the extra cost of a season tickets, but house price savings can be significant. For example, a 27 minute commute from Waterloo to Woking means average house prices over £420,000, whereas a 47 minute journey from Waterloo to Aldershot comes with average house prices of £160,000, a saving per minute of around £7,890.”
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