Where can I live in the South East? Budget £450k.

[Fedupofthepoo]

Where can I live in the south east that has good transport links to London? Budget £450k. I need a 3 bedroom house.

I'm so fed up of the antisocial behaviour where I live. Bins overflowing as people can't be bothered to recycle, dog poo everywhere, flytipping all over the place, drug issues, illegal parking and dangerous driving very common.

I want to live somewhere that's just nice. Where people take a bit of pride in where they live. I need to be walking distance to a station.

Any suggestions for my budget please?

What is more important: good transport links and a nice house, or an underwhelming house in a nice area? I guess that's the question

@I2amonlyhereforTheBeer that is a very good question. There's some very handsome Edwards and Victorian housing stock where I live, which is a big plus for my area. A lot of the places linked above have quite modern housing lacking character. So I need to decide what is more important to me.

Thank you for all your suggestions. I'm working my way through them.

I can comment well having lived all over London and Brighton too. Can confirm Worthing is a great place if you want:
-A lovely quiet beach
-Beautiful countryside and walking nearby
-Friendly safe community, quite diverse and queer friendly
-Very good cafes restaurants pubs and bars (both traditional and also natural wines bars and small plates etc, craft breweries for a bit of pizazz)
-Good schools
-Leafy parks
-Decent town centre with walkable shops
-Three train stations(!) and an easy enough commute straight to Victoria/East Croydon/Clapham, and Brighton of course
-Decent parking (especially compared to Brighton)
-And affordable homes! I bought my three bedroom house in a good area for only 30k more than my one bedroom flat in Brighton-For us it's been a no brainer and we love it, we're in our 30s and lots of our friends are following suit.
-Best areas: Check it out in person. Personally we're near the station on a leafy nice street, Tarring (West) is also desirable. But the best way to ascertain is to go and walk around.

North Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

Amersham, Chesham, Rickmansworth, Chorleywood - all on the Metropolitan line.

Crawley will get that for your budget but it's not all nice. Nice areas of Crawley are Worth and Pound Hill. Possibly Maidenbower is OK, I don't know it well but it's a newer built part. It's really a declining town centre at the moment, but Tilgate Park is nice (not super nice to live near it) and there's a good leisure centre K2 with an Olympic pool.

Horsham is very nice- the posh cousin of Crawley so may be small housing. Southwater is a new development on the outskirts may be worth a look.

I always said the hard end of Crawley is crack and the hard end of Horsham is weed.

Reigate is nice but you'd have to look nearer to Redhill maybe for your budget.