Hello again! It’s been a while! I’m writing this from our cosy “snug” in our new home in the Cambridgeshire countryside, a sentence I truly never saw myself writing. We’ve lived in England for three years now, and are the proud owners of an old British country house. Our daily rhythm is busy with our four beautiful children, but I thought I’d take a minute to share some of our new life as ex-pats living in the U.K.
Spoiler alert: WE LOVE IT.
What Initially Drew Us from the U.S. to the U.K.
When David and I purchased our much beloved farmhouse in 2013, we told family and friends the only way we’d ever leave it was horizontally in a wooden box. Never in a million years did we anticipate an international move from the rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains to the peaceful Cambridgeshire fens, and yet as of a few weeks ago, we are the proud new owners of a beautifully charming British countryside house.
When we first decided to leave Charlottesville, we thought it would be temporary. We found amazing tenants who loved our farmhouse almost as much as we did, and we found new homes for our farm animals, assuming we’d be back to pick them up one day. We moved into a tiny townhouse in the city center— er, centre— of Cambridge, England, and immediately loved our new rhythm of life. I will write a whole separate piece on the slower pace of life here, but for now, I think I’ll just share how much David and I both really needed it. We needed a break from house projects and constant maintenance. We needed a break from taking care of animals and landscaping. We needed a place where we could walk to the grocery stores in a few minutes if we realized we were out of butter right before dinner, or where the children could walk to a playground, or bike to the farmer’s market with us on the weekends. We were burned out in Charlottesville from the pandemic, and our whole family system just never found a good rhythm once the twins were born. England provided an enchantingly different environment, and we were so grateful for the opportunity to test it out.
(The huge upside that we had as American ex-pats looking to move abroad was family. My mom married a Brit, and my cousin married a Brit, and both of them happened to live not far from each other in Surrey… so we happen to be blessed with a support system in place in England, which is such an advantage that I definitely don’t take for granted!)
What Kept Us in the U.K. Instead of Returning to the U.S.
One year in Cambridge has somehow turned to three, and as the children have grown (and all started sleeping through the night reliably, Hallelujah!), we’ve slowly gone from a mode of survival living to having a bit of energy and space to dream again. About a year and a half ago ago, we decided to make England the place we wanted to raise our children, at least in their formative younger years. We really like that we don’t have to worry about active shooters in England, and didn’t realize how stressful that is having in the back of your mind every day… until that stress is gone. The British culture surrounding children feels like it’s such less pressure. Politics is not part of the discourse, and in an increasingly politically polarized U.S., it feels like a breath of fresh air to be able to live more simply while the children need so much emotional stability from us. The parents we’ve befriended here aren’t worried about their kids specializing in certain extracurricular activities because they aren’t worried about paying for their kids’ exorbitant college tuitions. Cambridge is an incredibly bike-friendly city, and it feels so freeing that our kids can accompany us on our bikes to all over the city without needing to confine them in car seats.
Cambridge is an incredibly diverse area. When I take the children to the playground, the chances are very high that we’ll hear a language other than English. We have a few close British friends, but it’s probably 50/50 between British and other ex-pat friends that we’ve come to consider part of our community here. We love getting to know our beautiful friends from places like Trieste, Catalonia, Paris, or Budapest… it’s added such a depth and excitement to living abroad.
Lastly, the consumerism is toned down in England. I didn’t realize how much marketing was influencing us as Americans— what we should buy, how we should spend our time, what we should be valuing. It isn’t completely missing from England, but it does not feel as pronounced. It may just be our network in Cambridgeshire, but it feels like there’s less emphasis on the kind of house you live in, car you drive, clothes you wear— and more emphasis on families spending time together, recipes passed down from generations, or marking the passage of a season with an annual tradition. At first, this difference really bothered me as an American. (Didn’t the Brits realize they could look better? Their houses could be prettier? The processes could be more efficient? That we could meet at restaurants and not have to keep going back to each others’ houses where we had the burden of preparing food for each other?) It took me at least a year to fully appreciate the difference and acknowledge that the American mindset of constantly striving to improve has its merits, but so does the European mindset of contentment. Almost every American I know struggles with time management because they have to factor in time at the gym or some kind of high intensity workout multiple times a week. I don’t know anyone in Cambridge who lives that way. People bike and walk everywhere, and fitness is important, but it’s not a high-stakes priority to look toned. Nowhere is perfect, and I’m not saying the Brits have curated a utopian society by any means, but I deeply admire the way people here make do with what they have and aren’t constantly striving for the next shiny thing.
Our Home Buying Journey in the U.K. and How it Differs Compared to the U.S.
We sold our sweet farmhouse to a lovely family last summer and began house hunting in Cambridgeshire. We really wanted to keep the feeling of community but also have some more space and privacy like we used to in Virginia. We decided to focus our search on houses on the outskirts of villages that included good primary schools. The home buying purchase in the U.K. is very different than the U.S. It really gives you a leg up if you have already sold your home— one house we really wanted to view wouldn’t accept viewings from potential buyers unless they had already sold their home and were living in a rental house! We were actually “subject to close” (or as the U.S. would phrase it, “under contract”) on three separate houses. We pulled out of one, and the second faltered/ would have taken months or maybe even years to transact due to legal holdups and a chain, and we got lucky with our third. Interestingly, it’s very common in the U.K. to withdraw from an agreement to sell or buy a house because no contract is signed and no deposit is made until approximately a week before you “complete the transaction” (or as the U.S. would phrase it, “close”). There is even a beautiful British term— gazumping— that means you can agree on a price to purchase a house, pay a solicitor to undergo the background legal checks necessary to buy it, and then the sellers can choose to sell to someone else! You can get gazumped if someone else makes a higher offer on the house, or says they can exchange contracts sooner because they’ve already sold their home and you haven’t yet.
Another major difference here is the concept of a chain. In the U.S., the real estate market moves so quickly that it’s not uncommon to actually own two houses at once— if you find a house you want to buy, you can make an offer on it, buy it, move in, and then put your old house on the market to sell. Theoretically you sell it quickly, and if you don’t, you lower the price until it sells.
In the U.K., the concept is that if you find a house you want to buy, you offer to purchase it contingent on the sale of your current house, and then you wait until someone wants to purchase your house before you can exchange contracts on the new house. Often these contingencies can last for multiple homebuyers, and they all exchange contracts at the exact same time so that no one is faced with owning two properties at once. It can be a very long process taking months or even over a year to “complete the chain.” Part of the culture seems to be that if a house doesn’t sell right away, you lower the price… and usually just sit on it at that price, and eventually take it off the market and try to sell again at that same lowered price. It’s a much more patient (albeit less efficient!) mindset than the U.S.
Physically Moving from the US to the UK: Logistics
We shipped over everything from Charlottesville to Cambridge using a wonderful trans-Atlantic shipping company (it only cost around $10k, which was not much given how much we packed into that shipping container from a 3,500 square foot farmhouse!). I flew back to Charlottesville and oversaw the movers loading everything up— we had so much extraneous stuff, and it felt good to downsize even in Charlottesville— and I hope to downsize even more once we unload our things into our new home shortly. We had a lot of paperwork to complete with customs, and we did have to pay an unexpected ~400 pounds to receive our shipping container through the British customs port, but overall, it wasn’t particularly overwhelming. Please feel free to reach out if you’d like more details on that whole shipping process.
Introducing Our English Countryside House: A New Chapter for Our Family
I’m so thrilled to share with you that as of last week, we became homeowners of an absolutely beautiful English country house. It has everything we wanted for this stage of life: five bedrooms (including a guest room, so please do come visit and make use of it!), a private peaceful yard, walking distance to a wonderful primary school, and even storage space that our American selves feel we can’t live without! We didn’t purchase it with the mindset of being carried out in coffins one day, but rather for thinking through the next 3-7 years of raising our family, and what we think would be the best environment for our entire family unit during this season. A good amount of our bigger furniture (think oversized armchairs and enormous ottomans) almost certainly won’t physically fit in our new house, and that’s okay. It’s less square footage than our farmhouse was, but the layout is far better for our family, and we really love the location. I think village life will suit us really well— being close to friends/ the kids’ school/ the village tennis court and playground… and being surrounded by nature and horse farms too.
Any regrets about leaving the US and relocating to the UK?
Years ago I wrote a post about what inspired us to move to Charlottesville, and all of those still hold true— it’s an amazing place. But sometimes, I think in order to grow, I need to move forward, and that often can be physically/ geographically move forward. I have read and reread Christine Caine’s fabulous book “Don’t Look Back” since we moved abroad, and I highly recommend it for anyone considering how to move forward in their life.