If you’re only in the office a few days a week, what does a little extra journey time matter? Annunciata Elwes begins a four-part series looking at how our new work patterns have redefined the concept of a commutable home. Riding a train may not be as joyful as clicking a pair of ruby slippers, but there is a kind of magic to the new one-to-two-hour commute. But the journey itself is just the start of it: with flexible-working broadening our horizons, you may find yourself shopping for a bigger, better house, without actually spending more money.
It’s as if the countryside just got bigger. Whatever mandates bosses issue about returning to the London office, one thing that the tumultuous past few years have taught us is that life is for living. We’re been forced to re-evaluate what’s really important and, for most of us, the good life does not involve spending 15 hours a week on a packed commuter train.
Flexible, hybrid, WFH, WFB or W-in-pyjama-bottoms-with-a-Zoom-worthy-shirt-on-top — whatever you want to call it, homeworking is here to stay, which means the property market has broken free from its golden-hour shackles. Where ‘under an hour from London by train’ used to be the mantra for estate agents selling old rectories, cottages and manor houses to families moving to the commutable sticks, your average partial homeworker or TWaT (the acronym for a person who comes into the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays) can cheerfully manage a journey of an ho.
