If you’re here, then you’ve been considering moving to Manchester from London, and we’re here to tell you that that’s not a bad idea! And this may come as a surprise if you’ve never lived in Manchester, but this wonderful city has frequently trumped London as the most liveable city in the UK. You might wonder what makes living in Manchester better, we’ll cover this in more detail later, but for now, we’ll tempt you with lower costs of living, housing affordability, a less complicated life, and the fact London is only 2 hours away if you need to scratch that itch.
Cost of Accommodation
Let’s start with one of the bigger perks that you’ll see when moving from London to Manchester, and likely the first since you’ll need to find somewhere to live before moving!
If you’re looking to rent, it’ll come as no surprise that Manchester is the most affordable city of the two. On average, rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in the city centre of Manchester is £890 versus £1,750 for London. Naturally, this will vary depending on where you live and how tiny a space you can find in London. If you’re looking for something bigger, on average a 3-bedroom house in Manchester is £1,560, while it’s £3,400 in London. If that hasn’t made you think of moving to Manchester, then maybe what comes next will!
If homeownership is an aspiration of yours, that is definitely more of a possibility should you be moving from London to Manchester. According to Zoopla, the average sale price of a house in London is £715,000. That’s quite a lot! However, it’s an average and it does include some beautiful and central properties. To compare, the average house price for Manchester is £235,000, which is also an average that includes prime locations and splendid houses, much like London.
Honestly, housing on its own is a pretty strong reason to move to Manchester, as you’ll most likely be able to actually buy a house or not spend all your money on rent. In our books, that’s already a strong excuse to move from London to Manchester. But you better act fast, house prices in Manchester have been going up, granted they’ll be unlikely to reach London level expensive.
Cost of Living
While housing is often the largest expense, a day-to-day factor that really affects your quality of life is the cost of living. Again, it should come as no surprise, but should you move from London to Manchester, you’ll find yourself saving money on nearly all the daily costs of living. A great example of this is a regular cappuccino which goes from an average cost of £3.20 in London to £2.90 in Manchester. This might seem like a small saving, but you’ll find that it adds up!
If the price of cappuccinos isn’t enough to convince you, here are some other (perhaps more compelling) costs on which you’ll save money as well:
Metric
- Basic Utilities
- Monthly transport pass
- Fitness club for 1 month
- Cinema ticket
- Beer (1 pint)
- Bottle of wine
London
- £200
- £155
- £45
- £14
- £5
- £8
Manchester
- £160
- £70
- £27
- £9
- £4
- £7
We could continue and list even further cost differences in groceries, but we think at this point you probably see the pattern that things in Manchester are just cheaper than in London. So, if you go ahead with moving from London to Manchester, you too could also benefit from these savings that you could either then safeguard until retirement or spend frivolously on things that bring you joy in life!
Work and Salary
There is one difference that might give you cause for pause; salaries in Manchester are lower than in London. It can hurt to even consider taking a pay cut when trying to decide if removals from London to Manchester are worth it. Just remember the points above, Manchester is quite a bit cheaper than London. Therefore, while you might earn less, what you earn will actually go further.
Also, if you find a nice work-from-home job in London, you can easily just live in Manchester, and you might only have to take the 2-hour commute to London once in a while. Win-win for everyone.
Removals London to Manchester
Of course, it’s all fine and dandy to want to move from London to Manchester, but if you’ve made a home in London filled with nice belongings, you won’t want to leave them behind. Naturally, in that case, you’ll be in need of a removal company for a London to Manchester move. Before you run off elsewhere to figure out the cost of moving, we came prepared. If you want to move a 3-bedroom house from London to Manchester, it costs between £1,100 to £1,400. Not too bad, right?
Of course, there’s a little more to uprooting your life when moving from London to Manchester. Fortunately, it’s already been covered very well and you can find out more in Sirelo’s moving to Manchester guide, which covers the costs better with its calculator, the best areas to live in, and even helps you find a removal company for a London to Manchester move.
With all this new information, you probably will need to take some time to think about whether you should you’ll be moving from London to Manchester or not. It can be hard to choose, and we know we’ve mainly made an economic argument as to why you should move to Manchester, but any other argument would just be simply pointing out the trade-offs between a large city and a medium city and they both offer a lot of the same things to different degrees.
Truthfully, we wouldn’t be surprised if you made the decision of moving from London to Manchester, why else would you be reading this if it wasn’t already something you planned to do? On that note, good luck with your move to Manchester!
