The political baggage of moving house

We are currently house-hunting — please let me know if you have one going spare. We are looking for a home in the north-east of England in any constituency which was once solidly Labour and is now in the talons of a brutally right-wing Conservative MP — this is my wife’s stipulation and I find it fair enough. However, we do not want to live too near the poor people.

In truth we had been casually looking across a vast swath of Northumberland, Durham and North Yorkshire for a good half-dozen or more years, but until now there had been little urgency to the business. We marvelled at the property market up there: houses, grossly overpriced, would remain on sale for quite literally years. That’s because if there is a housing shortage in the north, it is at the top end of the market and so any building which does not look like it is from the set of Byker Grove thinks it can command a hefty price.

Also, we want a house in the countryside. And while there is an awful lot of countryside between Berwick and Scarborough, there are not many houses in it. So while those houses that fit the bill are few and far between, they still are not worth what the owners think — or rather thought — they could get. To give you an example, we found a house which was very similar to the one we are now selling in Kent: same size and architecture but with a smaller garden. One of the selling points of our house is that it is only 37 minutes from London by a very fast train. The selling point of the northern house is that it was only 45 minutes from Middlesbrough by the village bus.