TheChek News Flow

Fewer Londoners leave for the country as pandemic-era exodus eases

The capital regains its appeal to homebuyers as more people return to the office

Fewer Londoners are searching for homes in the countryside, according to property industry data that suggests more people are opting to stay in the capital as employers encourage staff back to the office.

The proportion of London-based house-hunters looking to move out of the city has returned to the pre-Covid average of about a third, against a peak of almost half in August 2021, according to analysis by property website Rightmove.

“We can see a resurgence in London back to pre-pandemic levels, and a general increase in the popularity of cities among buyers,” said Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s director of property data.

The analysis, based on hundreds of thousands of inquiries made on the property search platform, comes alongside figures showing house prices in London are firming up. This suggests the UK capital is regaining its appeal to homebuyers, boosted by an increasing return to in-person work. 

Separate analysis by estate agent Hamptons also found that the proportion of Londoners searching for homes elsewhere in the country had returned to the pre-pandemic average level this year. 

Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons, said the “return to the office trend” was probably contributing to London’s increased popularity. She also pointed to the trend of families bringing forward their long-term plans to move out of London during Covid, meaning fewer were moving now. 

Matt Thompson, head of sales at Chestertons, said London had seen a “steady return of house-hunters”, adding that “the increasing number of motivated buyers” was “giving sellers the upper hand during price negotiations”.

After the housing market reopened in 2020, Londoners flocked to escape small urban homes in search of space, leading to intense demand for properties in the countryside and smaller communities.

Some buyers anticipated that working from home would become permanent and looked for houses with more space, larger gardens and better access to nature. 

But with more workplaces calling employees back to the office, and London attractions such as restaurants and entertainment fully reopened, the wave of increased departures has come to an end.

“Some industries continue to embrace hybrid or full homeworking, while others, notably financial services, continue to push to get their people back into the office,” said Bannister.

He added that post-pandemic trends in flexible working were still shaping some buyers’ housing searches. “We are still seeing people search further away and across a greater spread of areas compared to before the pandemic,” he said. 

The UK housing market is finding its feet this year after a dismal 2023, when high and unpredictable mortgage rates put off buyers and contributed to falling house prices.

Buyer confidence has recovered as interest rates have stabilised, with the number of sales up 12 per cent year on year in April, according to online property site Zoopla, the fourth month of annual gains. 

Mortgage approvals hit an 18-month high in March, the Bank of England reported last week, in a further sign of buyers returning to the market. 

Asking price for homes in London began to recover from last year’s declines earlier than properties in the surrounding regions, and have seen a bigger bounce, Rightmove said.

In April, Hamptons reported that homes in London were more likely to sell above asking price than properties elsewhere in England and Wales for the first time since 2016. 

Plane maker informed aviation safety regulator last month that required tests were not performed

US aviation safety regulators have opened their second investigation into Boeing this year, after the company revealed falsified inspection records for some of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s probe will add to scrutiny of the aerospace manufacturer after one of its 737 Max planes lost a door panel in mid-air at the start of 2024.

The agency in January said it was investigating Boeing’s manufacturing and quality inspection processes after that incident, while the US Department of Justice is looking into whether it violated a deferred prosecution agreement that followed two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.

The FAA on Monday said Boeing informed the agency last month that it may not have completed inspections “to confirm adequate bonding and grounding” where the wings of the 787 Dreamliner meet the fuselage.

A Boeing worker at the company’s South Carolina plant flagged a testing “irregularity” to his manager, according to a memo that Scott Stocker, the head of the company’s 787 programme, sent to workers at the plant on April 29.

The company found that “several people had been violating company policies by not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed”, the memo said.

The company voluntarily told the FAA, Stocker said, and is taking “serious corrective action” with “multiple” workers. Stocker said the issue does not make the planes immediately unsafe.

The company’s stock fell as much as 2.8 per cent after the Wall Street Journal first reported news of the investigation before closing down 0.8 per cent.

“Fortunately, our engineering team has assessed that this misconduct did not create an immediate safety of flight issue,” Stocker said. “But it will impact our customers and factory teammates, because the test now needs to be conducted out of sequence on airplanes in the build process. I know this frustrates all of you as much as it frustrates me.”

Manufacturing work that is performed out of order, typically called “travelled work”, can increase the likelihood of manufacturing errors. Chief executive Dave Calhoun told investors last month the company was reducing travelled work in its 737 Max factory in Renton, Washington.

Boeing is reinspecting all the 787s and must create a plan to address planes currently in service, the FAA said. The company did not share further comment beyond Stocker’s memo to workers.

Lawyers for Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour, a whistleblower who has raised safety concerns about the 787, said the manufacturer had “zero credibility”.

“Boeing acknowledges that a tremendous breach in engineering protocol occurred, but takes no responsibility for the culture it created that led its workers to falsify records. Rather, by reporting an employee’s concerns to the FAA, Boeing is now congratulating itself for doing the bare minimum to respond,” the lawyers said.

Jennifer Clark, author of "Mondo Agnelli," on Tuesday will release her nonfiction book looking at the members of the iconic Agnellis, the family behind Fiat and Ferrari.

MILAN — The Agnelli family, which built Fiat and owns Ferrari, is the Italian version of Camelot if there ever was one — complete with the grit, glamour, tragedy and decades of incredible fashion.

Author Jennifer Clark, who published “Mondo Agnelli (Agnelli World): Fiat, Chrysler, and the Power of a Dynasty” in 2011 about their industrial prowess, will release a new book on Tuesday, “L’Ultima Dinastia,” or “The Last Dynasty” in English, published by Solferino Libri, which is a more intimate look at the family’s triumphs and tribulations.

The nonfiction book traces the family’s roots back to its formidable family patriarch, Giovanni Agnelli, a senator who was one of the founders of Fiat in 1899 and who Clark describes as the “Henry Ford of Italy.” After the untimely deaths of both his son, Edoardo, and eventually his daughter-in-law, the half-American aristocrat Virginia Bourbon del Monte, his grandson Gianni would take the reins in 1966 and see the company through Italy’s terrorism of the 1970s and massive expansion during the 1980s.

Clark digs deep into the archives and interviews with family members to depict a more human look at the legendary Gianni Agnelli’s life. Born in 1921, he also married a half-American aristocrat. Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto, Clark wrote, became pregnant with his child and therefore issued him an ultimatum for marriage. The beautiful Marella’s poise and grace led to her rise in international circles and she was among Truman Capote’s famed “Swans.”

In addition to his own marital issues, Gianni struggled with his brother Giorgio’s schizophrenia in the ’60s and later with his son Edoardo’s drug problems. Starting with Edoardo’s tragic death when he jumped off a bridge in 2000, Clark propels the story into the 21st century with an in-depth portrait of the inheritance battle over Gianni’s estate, which continues to evolve between his daughter Margherita and her three children from her first marriage. Her first three children are filmmaker Ginevra Elkann; Lapo Elkann, the founder of Italia Independent, and Gianni’s chosen heir John Elkann, who is now the chairman of Stellantis, of which the Agnelli family is the main shareholder and which owns 14 automobile brands including Fiat, Chrysler, Alfa Romeo and Citroën. John Elkann also oversees the family holding company Exor, which acquired a stake in Christian Louboutin.

“I put together the pieces of the inheritance battle over Gianni’s estate between his daughter Margherita and her mother Marella Agnelli with new information, in a way that explains the questions that we are seeing today about why the fight has continued for 20 years,” Clark told WWD, adding that the narrative also explains why the three Elkann children grew so close to their grandparents after their mother Margherita married conservative Orthodox Russian aristocrat Serge de Pahlen, who she wrote made their home life difficult.

Clark said the current family leader John Elkann, who oversaw the Fiat merger with Chrysler in 2014 to form Stellantis, gave her input as she wrote the book and whose staff at times helped with the fact-checking process.

“I had worked with John Elkann and other family members for my first book, and we had established a relationship of trust. For my new book, I met several times with John Elkann in his office, and with other family members who generously invited me into their homes. I am very grateful that they trusted me with telling this story,” she said.

Clark, the former Italy bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires and automotive industry expert, is in the process of submitting the manuscript to English-language publishers for her 424-page tome, which will hit Italian shelves Tuesday.