Calculating the benefits of your daily commute

Kirsty Mcluckie saves by letting the train take the strain

Fighting through traffic or enduring a daily jostle on public transport just to get into work in the city can be a soul destroying experience.

Particularly at this time of year, when bad weather reminds us that commuting in winter in Scotland in not for the faint of heart, one can begin to yearn to move closer to a place of work, even if that means making sacrifices to afford to live in the city.

Urban dwellers may have advantages of getting to and from city jobs easily and cheaply but a report from the Bank of Scotland shows that workers can save themselves thousands if they are prepared to travel to the best paid jobs based in city centres.

Workers in Edinburgh can save an average of £82,088 by commuting up to an hour each day.

House prices in a number of towns around an hour’s train journey away from the capital – which includes Dunblane, Glasgow, Motherwell, Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy – are, on average, £170,927 compared with £253,015 in Edinburgh city centre.

Ah, you might say, but what about the added costs of travel? The figures also show that the difference between house prices for commuters travelling approximately 60 minutes would pay for the current annual rail cost, an average of £2,299, for 35 years.

For big savings, you don’t even need to be an hour away.

A 30 minute commute will save homebuyers on average £80,671. So Edinburgh workers buying in North Berwick, Dunbar, Livingston, Falkirk or Bathgate, will pay an average price of £172,345 with the saving of £80,671 paying for the current annual rail cost for 45 years.

Glasgow has almost the opposite effect with some house prices getting increasingly more expensive as the commute lengthens. A 15 minute commute from a town such as Paisley would see homebuyers paying £124,319, 29 per cent less than the average house price in Glasgow city centre of £174.688.

But a 60 minute commute, which includes Perth and Dumfries and perhaps crucially, Edinburgh, pushes house prices up to £227,525, 30 per cent higher than Glasgow city centre.

Graham Blair, mortgages director at Bank of Scotland, commented: “Many people have a desire to buy near their place of work to escape the morning commute.

“However, for some towns and cities, the premium this comes with can price out the average buyer.

“With savings of £80,000 to be gained an hour outside of Edinburgh, and £50,000 just 15 minutes from Glasgow, it is an attractive pull for any potential purchaser to look further afield.”

The most affordable commuter town to Edinburgh is Kirkcaldy, where the average house price is £133,589.

This is 3.2 times the average annual earnings for Edinburgh, compared to 4.4 times the average wage for those working within Kirkcaldy.

Therefore if you are reading this on your morning commute into work in Edinburgh, from Kirkcaldy, congratulations.

You may have a boring train journey to endure, but financially you’ve made the right decision.

If you are, however, heading the other way, to a job in Kirkcaldy to fund a mortgage in the Capital, your strategy, purely from a financial point of view, perhaps requires a rethink.