The Crossrail effect: Where to live and commute in Berkshire
Moving to a new house can often be a challenging and stressful process, even for those who are seasoned ‘movers’. Uprooting your family or moving to an entirely new area is quite often the most challenging of life changes.
When moving out of London to the home counties, one of the biggest hurdles you have to overcome is the commute. Recently, more often than not, I hear potential buyers saying, “I really want to move out of London, but I don’t want to spend all my life on the train”.
Typically, there has always been a trade-off between a larger property in a rural setting against the length of time it takes to get to work. With the arrival of Crossrail, however, this could be about to change for some. Traditionally the journey time from Reading station into Canary Wharf is about 1 ½ hours with a train and 2 tube lines.
When Crossrail is fully open this will be a direct journey taking 67-minutes; from Maidenhead, it is 55-minutes, meaning that all the charming villages and market towns of Berkshire will fast become a property hotspot.
In fact, areas along the aforementioned routes have already seen a 49% increase in values since 2009 and this strong performance is predicted to continue long after the line is complete in 2019.
While the area has always attracted families moving out of London for the excellent schools (such as Holyport College, Reading School and the Kendrick School) and lifestyle, it is now also appealing to first time buyers with many new build developments offering affordable starter homes. Especially those first time buyers who are London workers and want value for money outsider London, but a reasonable commute into ‘the smoke’.
These improvements to the transport infrastructure will make the Berkshire region and its surrounding areas, a more likely choice for the London commute and it is fair to predict higher house prices will follow suit as demand ramps up.
If you would like to get ahead of the crowd and move out to Berkshire before property prices start to increase in response to the Crossrail arrival, please get in touch.
