London:should I stay or should I go? (with kids)

[Annie456]

Hi folks,
Hoping you can give me a bit of perspective on my current dilemma...
Currently living in a terraced house in SE London. Have enjoyed living here until crime became an issue and since having a baby I want more space! So trying to find a compromise either in or just out of London. The general plan is to do state primary schools and the private secondary so need to be near a good primary.

I love being a "Londoner" but the grit and crime is starting to get me down. I don't want to feel so crammed in. If I can put up with it for a couple of years then our housing budget becomes pretty good but not sure I can hang on that long so as it stands we have around £550k.

So what are my area options on that budget for a 3 bed near a decent primary school with a nice safe community (I'm a SAHM) and good links for DH to get to the city? Ideally his door to door commute wouldnt be much more than 45 mins as he often works late.

Suggestions for areas very welcome!
Annie

[fiddlerintheloft]

Watching with interest but no areas to suggest yet as we're still here? (though, having said that, St Albans, Oxted and Tonbridge seem to be names that come up a lot). We can't bring ourselves to make the move out of London but have noticed all our friends leaving "because you can't bring up kids in the city" - as one helpfully informed us. DD1 will start primary school this September so we've decided to stay for the time being but do feel a bit guilty every time we visit the countryside and start to think about what they might be missing out on/how much more space we'd have there etc. But saying all that, London has a huge amount to offer and I know we'd miss it desperately if we left. Also my DH works in the city too and his commute would be so much worse, he works v long hours and I don't want him to miss out on any more time at home, which he inevitably would if we moved out of London.

[RCheshire]

Simplest way to narrow down options with a reasonable commute is to establish which London mainline stations are options and then look at the stops down that/those line(s).
If commuting in you want to minimise the time either end, i.e. home to local rail/London rail to office. Also bear in mind that somewhere closer may result in a shorter train journey but no seat (although on many lines you'd need to be >1 hr out before you got one anyway...)

I've lived in Surrey (~20-25min train in to Waterloo) and never felt that was excessive.

Having lived in several cities (inc. South London - Clapham), small towns and pretty rural spots, I honestly don't understand what people feel they will miss when moving out of London. Unless you're at the theatre every night, or the kids are at the Natural History museum every Saturday morning, in all probability the facilities you 'actually use' exist in many places of different sizes.

If you're wealthy and can afford a decent sized house in a 'better' area of London then I can see the appeal for teenagers etc, when rural/small town life could be a little dull, but for toddlers and young children, having a small patch of grass/Victorian yard to play in, heavy pollution and nowhere safe to run about unless accompanied to the park - each to their own, but it wasn't for me.

If you move out then you're probably going to be a 20-40 minute train ride in, i.e. the city doesn't vanish over the horizon.

[Rhubarbgarden]

I feel your pain. We are currently facing the same dilemma. With a toddler and a baby on the way I am sick of SE London and desperate to get out. London is great when you have the freedom to nip up into town and enjoy all it has to offer, but when you have littlies your horizons are limited to a small local radius, which if it's grotty as it is where I live, gets quite depressing pretty quickly. our only saving grace is we have a good state primary on our doorstep (fluke) so there is no immediate pressure to leave. But that's s double edged sword - I want to leave.

This week we are staying with friends in Brighton so that dh can experiment with the commute. It's turned out to be a lot longer than advertised times, and he's finding it impossible to work on the train because of the intermittent Internet signal. So it's not looking good. I'm still going to view a house this afternoon, but it's a triumph of optimism over realism; I don't think it's going to happen for us [weeps].

Another problem is that houses in 'nice' areas that are commutable are by and large the same prices as London.

Sorry this is no help to you whatsoever.

[Blu]

this
and
this
and
this

are all in the catchment of an 'outstanding' and very popular Primary, and within 12 mins walk of the Thameslink line (or whatever it is called now) and other excellent travel connections, with a speedy journey to London Bridge, Thameslink stations, Victoria etc.

[BlueChampagne]

You could do worse than put Cambridge on your list. Again it's not cheap especially near the station, but you should be able to get 4 beds for your budget.

[Blu]

Rhubarbgarden - and you have massive commuting costs, too, on top of London prices .

[LittleMissGoodEnough]

Whereabouts in London is your DH going into to?

Given it can take the better part of an hour to get from one end t'other, that makes a huge difference to where you're looking.

I think there's an iphone app that will look at commuting radiuses (radii?!) for you as well.

[Rhubarbgarden]

Blu - tell me about me. There would be nothing economical about moving to Brighton. It's all about quality of life. I love it here, I'm having such a nice week; but if the quality of life for the poor bugger dh commuting plummets, it doesn't work does it?

[Rhubarbgarden]

Tell me about it not tell me about me

[rockinhippy]

Brighton - best move I ever made - easy access to visit if I want - though having escaped I find I can't deal with London anymore,so you might surprise yourself

Also we have a similar cosmopolitan feel to London & a more european approach to DCs in restaurants etc - we even have kid friendly Pubs most of our Schools are at least good, great parks, loads to do & of course the beach

[confusedperson]

I am in a grotty area in SE London with 4yo and 1.5yo and although tempted by moving outside London, I am finding it impossible to actually make the move. DH and I are both working parents and our life is all dependant from childcare which is from 8 to 6, so move me a bit further out and I will be forced to pay nanny costs on top of regular childcare for wrap-around hours, plus ridiculous commuting costs. With regret, I have to push the idea of moving out of London to the future? perhaps when DC approach end of primary education.

[Rhubarbgarden]

Rockinhippy It's my favourite place in the world.

[RCheshire]

I've always been a fan of Brighton. Considered moving there about 10yrs ago - which was immediately after local house prices had surged as it became more popular with people moving out of London....the price jump from ~12yrs ago to ~10yrs ago was huge.

[LucyManga]

Are you set on South London? There are some suburban, pretty safe areas in north London/Herts where you could buy a 3 bed on your budget and be near some great state primaries. Barnet springs to mind.

[planestrainsautomobiles]

We moved out of SW London recently to the Home Counties and really pleased that we made the move. We had two attempted burglaries and then a small thing happened (my DH saw a guy pissing in public at the bottom of our street on his way home from work) and my DH suddenly decided that he wanted to move out somewhere a bit leafier!

So far it seems to be really suiting all of us, my DH has a 1 hour commute (door to door) so not really that different from his 45 min commute in SW London.

[SnaggleFlap]

Whereabouts in SE London are you currently? DP and I have just moved a few miles from SE London to Kent borders for similar issues to yours (mainly that the primaries where we were are crap), and we love it (already knew the area quite well anyway)!

Try Hayes, West Wickham or Keston (the first two have own stations, Keston is more rural and Hayes is nearest station). 25 minutes from London Bridge, 30 minutes into Waterloo East, Charing Cross or Cannon Street. All primaries AND secondaries in these places are outstanding or good. Very close to Bromley for decent shopping, and nice restaurants/pubs/shops locally, have a 'proper' High Street feel. I'm a SAHM at the moment and there are gazillions of baby and toddler groups/classes/activities going on. I also love the fact the countryside is a 10 min drive away, with lots of farms/things to do, yet we can be in the city within half an hour, so nights out with friends still happen often!

With your budget you'd easily be able to get a 4 bed house, or a 3/4 bed house with large garden. Area already feels much safer than where we were before, not to say there is zero crime as you might get if very rural, but no gangs hanging around, hardly any petty crime etc.

I love the fact we get the best of both worlds here, and don't feel isolated because of good transport links. Feel confident that kids will grow up with best of both worlds too, and won't feel cut off when they're teenagers.

[SunnyUpNorth]

Can't really help with area suggestions but just to say we made the move from SE5 to Cheshire a few weeks ago and I haven't looked back since. I loved living in London, adored the City, shops, lifestyle etc. But once I accepted I didn't actually take advantage of those things anymore I could see moving made sense.

I braced myself to feel London-sick for a year or so but honestly haven't missed it. We moved from a top floor flat to a 5 bedroom house with huge garden for less than the price of our flat. It is so nice being near the countryside and I feel safe all the time. I was so fed up of all the thugs with scary dogs making me feel vulnerable.

So my point is, go for it. You wont regret it. Could you rent your place out and rent elsewhere to try things out? The rent on your London place should go quite far further out. Good luck!

[BeattieBow]

rockinhipppy/rhubarbgarden Brighton is lovely if you don't have to commute.

We've just moved back to London from Brighton after 5 years away as the commute was just too much.

I personally wouldn't move out of London again unless I was moving everything (jobs etc). My children (apart from the toddler who doesn't mind either way) are very happy to be back in London too - the teenagers particularly love it here.

[thomasbodley]

sunnyupnorth would you be prepared to say where in Cheshire? I'm working on moving back from Hammersmith within 5 years, but I'm not sure I can take the deathly quiet of Lymm, where I grew up and where there was 1 bus into Warrington every hour!

[rockinhippy]

I used to commute to Oxford St area Beatie & I personally didn't find it a problem at all, perhaps it depends where in London you need to get too, but I used to make a point of arriving early for my train * making sure I got a seat with my coffee, newspaper etc & generally enjoying a relaxing commute, I even worked sometimes.

I could never of gotten away with doing that crammed like a sardine into a tube train, as my London commute had always been & it was no quicker either I've friends who still do it & they reckon the trains are better than they were too, so I can only presume it is down to where in London you work - DH hated it as you do, but he had to get to Acton

[BeattieBow]

I commuted for years from Brighton (and so did my H) and had the same issues as Rhubarbgardens dh. I also found that in order to do a reasonably short days work in London I had to get the 7.30 train (and still wasn't in until 9.15) and didn't get home until at least 7pm. that was too long for me as I didn't see the children enough.

There were so many train delays, cancellations and network coverage problems that it wasn't at all easy. I was exhausted.

My Dh did it for the first year we were in Brighton and then moved to a more local job. But he didn't enjoy that job at all and wanted to move back to London.

it's also very expensive.

I now commute on the Northern Line which is no fun at all (and I'm 32 weeks pg) but it is infinitely preferable to commuting on the mainline train.

back to the OP I suspect somehwere like Surrey is the place for your DH. My friend had similar considerations (well her dh did) and they ended up in Walton on Thames. very short commute etc etc, but downside is that I suspect house prices are very high (and you're living in Surrey too).

[Annie456]

Wow, thanks for all the replies!! Some great suggestions there and I will check them out when DS is in bed!

In answer to some of your questions...
-DH would need to get into Liverpool street ideally
-not a fan of the tube unless it's the Overground line
-he often works until 10 or 11 (or later....) so there needs to be fairly regular transport at that time of night
-currently in Brockley

It's the crime thing that really bothers me and we were burgled last year when I was pregnant and haven't really got over it. I know there are burglaries everywhere though. Interesting to see that some of you have moved back to London as we've always thought that once you leave you can't afford to move back. I like the idea of renting out our place while we try somewhere.

If there are any more specific areas please make suggestions!

[Minisparkle]

Annie456 - we made the move just outside of London just over a year ago, for the very same reasons that you listed. Be careful for what you wish for though - we're in Gerrards Cross, super safe for children, very suburban, and frankly, claustrophobic and very middle class (well, at least that's the way I see it!). I miss the grit and grime!

We're actually contemplating a move to Brighton in the next few years, so any of you former Brighton residents (or currently living there), is the commute really that much of a killer if you're going into London 3 days a week? Is it outweighed by quality of life? (sorry for hijacking your thread Annie456!)

[QuintessentialyHollow]

There is a little gem for you here
and here

In the dover house conservation area in sw15.

[GrandPoohBah]

I would second the West Wickham suggestion and add in maybe Warlingham. DH and I grew up in South London and we've moved to the Kent/Surrey borders as we get much more for our money here (I.e a 3 bed house with 50ft garden instead of 2 bed flat). DH commutes into Victoria every day and it takes about an hour door-to-door. The overground goes as far as West Croydon and although you wouldn't want to live there, if you could get a bus there it would be workable :)

Have you considered somewhere like Crystal Palace? I think the problem with Brockley is that you're really stuck between some not-nice places, so although pockets of Brockley are nice, New Cross and Lewisham aren't so much.