Best towns for London commuters revealed
High Wycombe is the best place for London commuters to live, a new comparison tool has revealed.
With London house prices going through the roof, many buyers are looking outside the capital itself - but without detailed local knowledge, it can be hard to know where to start.
Now, price comparison website TotallyMoney.com has turned its attention to commuter hotspots, and created an interactive website to help buyers decide.
It allows you to set four parameters - your disposable income, your property budget, the maximum time you're prepared to spend commuting and how much you can afford to spend on train travel - to come up with your perfect town.
Using average figures, the tool gives High Wycombe top spot. Commuting into central London takes half an hour and costs £4,180 a year, while the average house price is £346,197.
Second on the list is Woking - a slightly easier commute, but with more expensive houses - followed by Staines, Amersham and Gerrards Cross. Walton-on-Thames, Erith, Esher, Redhill and Horley round out the top ten.
Erith has the lowest average property prices, at just £238,459, but has a 44-minute commute.
The tool is likely to be popular. Last December, we reported on research by Hamptons estate agents, which revealed that the number of people selling up and moving out of London rose by two-thirds in 2015.
Londoners bought 63,000 properties outside the capital during the year, more than at any time since 2007.
And it's not hard to see why. Research from the National Housing Federation released this week shows that the average value of a house in London is now £526,000 - 16 times the average salary. Indeed, in more than half of London boroughs, you'd need an income of more than £100,000 in order to buy a home.
In contrast, according to Lloyds Bank, travelling just an hour sees house prices drop from an average of £722,000 in central London down to just £272,000.
And while commuting costs may be higher, at an average of £4,944, you'd need to travel for 91 years to lose out financially overall. Even government plans to increase the retirement age make that one a little unlikely....
