Are you a London commuter? This is the cheapest town

It's well known that London is the most expensive place to live in the UK.

This means that many who work in London choose not to live there, and instead commute from surrounding towns and villages.

However, even some of these commuter towns are very pricey to take up residence in. Therefore, it's best to know which areas are more expensive than others, and their travel times to London.

It's not just rent or property prices which matter, but also travel costs as some routes are more expensive than others.

Which is the best commuter town?

For the research, assumptions were made like pricing for a 2 or 3 bed house with a 15% down payment. Costs for a 2020 annual railcard were taken from the National Rail website.

Essex is home to the best commuter town according to research on pricing and travel costs, and the name of the town is Grays. In Grays, average house repayments cost per year plus an annual railcard totals £15,008. It takes 39 minutes to travel from Grays to Fenchurch Street station.

In second place is Leagrave, where the total cost is a little higher at £15,399.50 and it takes 55 minutes to commute to London Blackfriars station.

At an annual cost of £15,662.53 was Crayford, Kent, in 3rd place. To London bridge, travel time is 41 minutes.

What if you're commuting to other major UK cities?

This research didn't only look at London. It also looked at major UK cities which have lots of commuters; Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh.

Birmingham

Coming first for value for Birmingham commuters was Wolverhampton. Travel time is only 20 minutes and the cost of an average house repayments and ticket for a year was £7,483.94.

At just £500 more per year was Cannock, but this has a much longer travel time of 59 minutes.

Third place was Stoke-On-Trent where the annual average house repayments was only around £5,000, but the annual rail ticket is very costly coming in at over £3,000.

Manchester

At a little under £7,000 for the annual cost and in first place for commuting to Manchester was Hindley. However the commute time is a hefty 58 minutes. Wigan was second with similar costing but a little more expensive.

Third was Bolton at just over £7,000 and a shorter commute length of 41 minutes.

Bristol

Believe it or not, the best option for commuting to Bristol is in a different country. Newport in Wales is just 35 minutes away and costs just over £10,000.

However, if you'd rather stay in the same country, consider Highbridge and Burnham where the travel time is actually longer at 53 minutes and costs £11,500 per year.

At an hour's travel from London is Bridgwater with an annual price of £12k.

Edinburgh

If we go much further north to Scotland, Edinburgh is a popular working city attracting commuters. Living in Dunfermline you could get to work in around half an hour at a cost of £7.5K. Or if you want to pay just twenty pounds more, you can live only 24 minutes away in Falkirk.

In third place is Linlithgow at 48 minutes away and a cost of just over £8K.