I live in a 2 bedroom 900 square foot condo with a toddler. The kitchen table acted as my “desk” before COVID, usually in a pinch if I really had to. Currently I have half of our bedroom stuffed with a desk so I can work full time during the day.

Not everybody’s situation is the same. I really liked my situation before COVID. I had a 10 minute walk to work, a large public park across the street where the city maintained the “yard”, and I saw my daughter for hours most evenings. Many co-workers who lived further out barely saw their kids during the week.

Obviously, COVID has caused a lot of people who love urban living to take a hard look at it. Living in a city loses its appeal when all the amenities are closed/gone, but the real estate “is not a cost” is not true for everybody. An extra bedroom where I live would have been hundreds of thousands more. We elected not to spend the money because, well, I had a desk at the office and we were only going to have one kid.

> Obviously, COVID has caused a lot of people who love urban living to take a hard look at it. Living in a city loses its appeal when all the amenities are closed/gone

I still don't really understand this attitude. Sure, if you're only living in a particular city to be close to your office, it makes sense to re-evaluate when your office is now your home. But if you like living in a city because of those urban amenities... they're not gone forever. They're already starting to reopen, cautiously, to some extent, and I expect things will be back mostly to normal early/mid next year (minus, unfortunately, businesses that did/will not survive the shutdown). It seems pretty short-sighted to leave a place you otherwise love because of conditions that are temporary.

People in general are notorious for their short term thinking. I’m not re-evaluating personally, even though a good chunk of those amenities are gone and it remains to be seen what will replace them. However, people I know are “fleeing”. At the height of the lockdowns, many people with kids freaked out a bit as the services that serviced the homeless, addicted, and those with mental health problems closed, essentially dumping them on the street where they took over public parks. Even though things are going back to normal, the damage was done in these people’s heads and they’re heading for the suburbs.

I’m not sure how things may change long term. (God I hope) in 5 years a new wave of people who didn’t live here during the pandemic will replace them. I suspect that even if people work from home full time on a more permanent basis, the cul-de-sac bedroom community suburbs will become even more isolating as people spend all their time there, not just for the quiet evenings and weekends.

We’ll see, I guess.

That's far from the case for everybody. Extra heating is looking like it'll cost me another £80-100 over winter whereas I have no commuting costs atm.

That's barely the cost of a couple of cups of take-out coffee a week for the cold months, which I'd be far more likely to buy when at work.

£100 is trivial if you're getting paid £100,000

If you're making £12,000 a year though? That £100 might be your entire budget for Christmas presents.

That £100 might be your entire budget for groceries. There's a real economic class difference that I think a lot of people aren't seeing here.

Speak for yourself, I have good coffee at the office. Hell I spend way more on coffee now just to go sit somewhere that's not my main room.

> I have good coffee at the office

Then in my experience you're an outlier! I've never worked in an office with anything other than the worst bilge available for free....