Priced out of London, Rachel and John Faulkner-Willcocks decided on a safe exit strategy, swapping a “glorified bedsit” in Clapham for a family house in Reigate, Surrey.
But six years, and two children, later the couple have realised that life in the home counties isn’t quite “real” enough for their tastes. This summer the family will be packing their bags once more, and heading off to a new life in rural Devon.
When Rachel, 35, and John, 36, got married in 2016 they owned a one bedroom flat near Clapham’s old town. “It was very, very small and on a very busy road,” said Rachel. “We loved Clapham but we kind of knew we were going to want a family and we wanted more space.
“We did look at some places in Sydenham and Crystal Palace but we decided that if we were going to go somewhere that far out we might as well go another ten minutes on the train where we could buy something really nice.”
The couple selected Reigate for two key reasons. “It has a great selection of pubs, and a great selection of walks,” said Rachel, who works in fiction publishing. “It also has really good connections into London and it just felt like a really nice place.”
She and John, a tech consultant, sold their London flat for £415,000 and spent £695,000 on a four bedroom semi detached house in 2017.
The transition proved to be painless. The couple settled into Reigate easily, renovated the house, had two children – Zelda, four, and Magnus, two – and made lots of new friends with other parents.
Their Surrey idyll could have continued indefinitely, but the pandemic and its aftermath has changed their circumstances.
Both of their jobs went remote, which means that easy access to the capital is no longer a priority. And more than a year of interest rate rises means their previously-affordable mortgage payments are now a burden.
“Surrey is very expensive,” said Rachel. “Our mortgage is insane, and the cost of childcare is unbelievable. We don’t actually need to be in such an expensive area.”
They began thinking about moving west, to be closer to Rachel’s family in Dorset and John’s in Devon. “Reigate is great, if you are a townie,” said Rachel. “But we felt that it had given us a taste of the countryside but was not proper countryside. We want to try proper rural living.”
They put their house on the market last year, and have accepted an offer of £790,000. At the end of the school year they will move to Devon to live on John’s family farm in the village of Farringdon, seven miles east of Exeter.
From then they have two options. Planning permission notwithstanding they could renovate an old barn at the farm and create a family home. Or they could use the equity they have released in Reigate and buy a property nearby.
“We are going to be ten minutes from the sea, which is very exciting, and moving down makes sense because it is really hard to house hunt when you have small children and you are three hours away,” said Rachel.
