Emailed in by Lola from The Telegraph:
Commuters who spend an hour-long train journey into London are saving around £380,000 on their average house price compared with the cost of living in the heart of the capital, research has found.
Lloyds Bank said that homes within a selection of commuter belt areas which are about a 60 minute commute by train, including Crawley, Windsor, Brighton, Rochester, Peterborough and Oxford, typically cost £260,000, which is £381,000 lower than the average price tag for a property within zones one and two in London, at £641,000.
With the average annual rail cost from these areas currently at just below £5,000, it would take someone 76 years of commuting to wipe out the difference in house prices, if property values and rail costs remained at the same levels.
OK, so a 25 year repayment mortgage @ 6% interest costs £5.92 per £1,000 per month.
380 x £5.92 x 12 = £27,000 mortgage saving
Deduct £5,000 for season ticket = £22,000.
Assuming that the additional commute time per person is 3 hours per day (half an hour to/from the station and one hour each way on the train), an average commuter loses 235 x 3 hours a year = 705 hours.
£22,000 divided by 705 hours = £31 an hour, which seems like a lot. If it's two commuters sharing a house and both commuting to London, the value they are placing on their own time is £16, which is more in line other calculations I've done on the basis of price v commute time comparisons pumped out by estate agents.
The other way of guesstimating it is to assume that Crawley or Windsor are the starting points and that if people work locally, they can earn £20,000 a year after tax for 2,000 hours a year commute-plus-work time = £10 net per hour. If they can earn £30,000 a year after tax in London for 2,350 commute-plus-work time, that's £12.80, so a slightly better deal (which is why so many people do it).
Personally, I'd rather have the extra 235 hours a year free time.
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