Demand for homes in the countryside suggests the exodus from UK towns and cities is real – but I’m not so sure

It’s clear there will be some movement away from cities to the countryside, just as there will be some increase in working from home, writes Hamish McRae. The question is how radical the shift will be

It is clear there will be some movement away from towns to the country (Getty)

Do you really want to move to the countryside? Or despite all the new possibilities of working from home, will cities retain their magnetic force?

UK housing demand says we do want to move out from towns. The Nationwide’s new stunning data on house prices say we do. House prices overall are up by 13.4 per cent on the year, but with London showing the lowest rise in England at 7.3 per cent, while Northern Ireland and Wales top the league table. (Price growth in Scotland is slightly lower than London but that is probably because it stopped the stamp duty holiday at the end of March.)

This seems to be the pattern across Europe. The Berlin-based Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications has just published a study that people very much want to move to the countryside. Market researchers Kantar interviewed 15,000 people in 15 European countries including the UK, and found that nearly half of the people living in cities with a population of more than 500,000 said that the pandemic had made them rethink their attitude to the countryside. More than half would “definitely” or “maybe” move in the next couple of years. This result was much the same for all the countries, and the top reason given – healthy lifestyle – was the same too.