“But if you are coming from London it doesn’t seem like that much,” says Jake Brooks, of Hunter French estate agents. “They are going into London maybe two or three days per week and working from home the rest of the time.”
Ashover is another good option for commuters and part-time office workers, who can travel to Chesterfield, eight miles away, to pick up train services to Sheffield (around 15 minutes by train), Nottingham (circa 40 minutes) or even Manchester (just over an hour and a quarter).
Those who can’t afford to pay £550,000 to £750,000 for a terraced house in the village could look at Dronfield, North East Derbyshire’s biggest town, where you can buy a four-bedroom character terrace for around £400,000. Leanne Bingley, of Staves estate agents, says Dronfield is benefitting from its own ripple of buyers out of Sheffield’s city centre.
“The schools are very good and so we get a lot of young families moving out here, second-time buyers who have a flat but need more space,” she says.
Cheshire East is famous for its upmarket footballer mansions. But Andrew Thorpe, of Savills in Wilmslow, says that in reality it is professional buyers flooding out of London and Manchester who drive its property market.
Almost a quarter of his buyers this year have been from London and the South East, specifically young families freed from full-time office duties and with family ties to the North West. “We had a big rush during Covid, then a lull in 2022 and 2023,” says Thorpe. “This year we have had a second wave of people who have perhaps taken a more measured approach to moving.” Other buyers are moving out of central Manchester.
These buyers want a home in one of Cheshire East’s smart towns – places such as Wilmslow, Alderley Edge, Prestbury, as well as Macclesfield. What they don’t want is to bury themselves in the sticks. “The country market has seen the biggest contraction in both prices and sale rates compared to two years ago,” says Thorpe.