Moving from London to Bognor Regis: What It Actually Costs and Buys

That single fact explains most moves down this stretch of coast — but the numbers that catch people out are at the London end, not the Sussex one. Here is the whole picture, priced.

Most guides to leaving London are written in adjectives. This one is written in numbers, because the numbers are the reason people do it — and because the ones that matter are not the ones usually quoted.

What your money actually buys

Here is the comparison that decides most moves, using the same source and the same twelve months for both places.

The average London flat sold for £500,867 in the year to April 2026. The average detached house in Bognor Regis sold for £495,953 over exactly the same period (Rightmove sold-price data, same source and period for both places). Not a similar figure — £4,914 apart. A flat in London, or a detached house by the sea, for the same money.

Across all property types the gap is £309,464: £656,261 in London against £346,797 in Bognor Regis, very nearly double. For what that buys village by village, our practical guide to moving here has the breakdown for Aldwick, Pagham and Felpham.

The honest part: most London leavers do not come this far

It would be easy to tell you the coast is filling up with Londoners. The data says something more useful. Hamptons counted 57,660 homes bought outside the capital by Londoners in 2025, with 68% staying somewhere in the south — but the hotspots it names are commuter towns ringing the M25 in Essex, Kent and Surrey, not the coast. The average leaver moved 71.6 miles, and 54% settled within 50 miles of London.

Bognor Regis sits around 60 miles out. That puts it inside the normal range but beyond the crowd, which is precisely the trade: you are further from London than most movers choose to go, and you are paying coastal West Sussex prices rather than commuter-belt ones. Nobody is bidding the town up because it is fashionable. That is a feature, not a warning.

Renting first, and what that costs

Plenty of people rent for six months before buying, and on this route the arithmetic is compelling.

Average private rent in June 2026 was £2,302 a month in London against £1,227 across Arun district — £1,075 a month, or £12,900 a year (ONS Price Index of Private Rents, June 2026).

If you are undecided about which village suits you, a year of renting here costs less than the difference, and it is a considerably cheaper way to find out than buying wrong. Wolves Removals

The commute, priced rather than timed

Journey times are covered in our moving guide — the short version is that London Victoria is direct in about 1 hour 50, and Gatwick direct in about 1 hour 13. What nobody prices is the ticket.

Southern quote Bognor Regis season tickets through their calculator rather than publishing a fixed annual figure, so check your own journey rather than trusting a number from an aggregator. What is certain is the direction of travel: regulated rail fares in England, which include most commuter season tickets, are frozen until March 2027 — the first freeze in thirty years.

Worth doing the sum properly if you are hybrid. Around 28% of working adults in Great Britain worked a hybrid pattern in early 2025, and two or three office days a week changes the calculation entirely: a season ticket stops being obviously right, and flexible or carnet tickets often win.

The London end of the move — where it gets expensive

Almost everything written about moving out of London describes the destination. The complications are at the other end, and they cost real money.

Your lorry probably does not pay ULEZ — and that surprises people. The £12.50 daily ULEZ charge applies to vehicles up to and including 3.5 tonnes, so a Luton van pays it. A removal lorry over 3.5 tonnes does not pay ULEZ at all: it falls under the Low Emission Zone instead, where a lorry meeting the Euro VI standard pays nothing, and a non-compliant one pays £100 or £300 a day depending how far short it falls. Plenty of removals pages state confidently that your lorry pays £12.50. It does not, and knowing which zone actually applies is the difference between a correct quote and a surprise.

The Congestion Charge went up. It has been £18 a day since 2 January 2026 — £21 if you pay late — running 07:00 to 18:00 on weekdays and 12:00 to 18:00 at weekends and bank holidays. Any figure of £15 you read elsewhere is out of date. There is no removals exemption for any of these charges; the honest answer is that they are a cost of loading in London and they belong in the quote rather than in a surprise.

Parking is the one that catches people out. Suspending a bay outside a London property costs from roughly £51 a day in Westminster to £164.80 for the first day in Islington for a resident, with 10 to 14 days' notice required. Lambeth charges £57.55 a day plus an administration fee that rises as the notice period shortens. By contrast, the same request on this coast — Adur & Worthing, as a comparable district — costs £40 a bay with five working days' notice. A single Westminster bay on day one costs about what a Worthing bay costs for most of a week.

On a red route, moving house is an eligible reason for a dispensation: at least six working days' notice, £48 per vehicle per day on the red lines themselves or £38 in a loading bay. Getting it wrong is a £160 penalty.

The largest lorries need a permit as well as a charge. Any HGV over 12 tonnes needs a free HGV Safety Permit under the Direct Vision Standard to operate anywhere in Greater London, at any hour. It costs nothing, but it has to exist before the vehicle arrives — which is a question worth asking any firm quoting you a large lorry for a London load.

Blocks and estates have their own rules. Some publish them — the Barbican's resident pack, for instance, restricts removals to roughly 8am to sunset and asks residents to clear the van with the car park attendant first. Most publish nothing, and the lift booking, porter notice and permitted hours only surface when somebody asks the managing agent. We ask on your behalf, well before the day, because finding out on the morning is how a move turns into two.

How the day actually runs

A London-to-coast move behaves differently from a local one, and the difference is mostly about traffic and daylight rather than distance.

Loading is the slow half. Sixty miles takes under two hours; getting a three-bedroom flat down a communal stair and past a suspended bay can take most of a morning. The drive is rarely the constraint, which is why the London-end access questions above matter more than the mileage.

The timing window is narrow. Leaving central London after about nine and arriving on the coast before the school run is the comfortable shape of the day.

Completion-day chains rarely cooperate, which is why long-distance moves are more often split across two days than local ones — loading late, travelling early, unloading in daylight. Wolves Removals

Two ends need two plans. The bay suspension, lift booking and emission compliance sit at the London end; parking, access and completion timing sit at the Bognor end, and those are the Bognor end of the move. A survey that only looks at one end is the usual reason a quote moves on the day.

What London leavers get wrong

Assuming a car stays optional. In London it genuinely is. Here, the branch line and the Coastliner cover a lot, but a household with no car will feel it on the school run and the weekly shop.

Budgeting for the house and forgetting the charges. Congestion charge, low emission charge, bay suspension and a longer job at the London end can add up to a meaningful sum before the lorry has left the kerb.

Expecting London opening hours. The late-night convenience of a city does not survive the journey. Neither does the anonymity, which most people count as a gain.

Leaving the school place too late. Moving mid-year means an in-year application, and West Sussex asks for proof of your new address — which you may not have until you complete. The sequencing is covered in our moving guide, and it is worth reading before you exchange rather than after.

Choosing the village from a website. The villages differ more than the map suggests. Our guide to living in Bognor Regis is the honest version of which is which.

Is the move worth it?

If the flat-versus-detached comparison at the top of this page made you stop and read it twice, it probably is. You are trading a shorter commute and city convenience for roughly double the house and £12,900 a year of rent, on a stretch of coast that has not been discovered by the crowd that stopped at the M25.

When you are ready to plan the move itself, start planning your Bognor Regis move — that page covers the arrival end — seafront flats, new-build completions and access — and our house removals service covers the long-distance job from door to door.

Photography: the station photograph at the top of this guide is “Bognor Regis station” by Robert Eva, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped for this page.