perth ladies, help!

[jessinwa]

i am so relieved to see that some of you are living in perth! dh, ds (13 months) and i are moving to perth in february. we are trying to find the perfect neighborhood to settle in. ideally we would like to live close to shops, cafes and parks. being close to the beach is not important. my mom lives in scarborough beach so we can go to her house if we want to be close to the water. for at least the first year or so we are not going to buy a home and we are looking for a 3 bedroom townhouse or house to start off. any neighborhood suggestions would be much appreciated. by the way, i am expecting ds/dd2 in may. we are so excited about moving to perth. it is a lovely place with lovely people.

What kind of budget are you looking at?

350/week
are we dreaming?
i have been poking around on some home finding sites and it seems like 350 might be enough. we live in seattle, washington now and there is no way could find a nice three bedroom for that price here. my mom is looking at some places this weekend to give us an idea of what we can expect for the money.
some suggestions from friends have been subiaco and leederville. our friends in perth don't have children so i wonder if those are really good places to cart around two little ones. i have been to subiaco and love it but i know nothing about leederville.
thanks in advance for helping out.

leederville is nice but you need to watch out for the sunday sessions. These are like a happy hour but start in the early arvo and finish in the evening. There used to be a really popular one in Leederville. I grew up in Perth and all my family live there still. The family home was in Mount Lawley which was great to grow up in, I have really fond memories of it. I would have thought that subiaco would be really expensive? I might be a bit out of touch though?

thanks quokka. i hadn't heard about the sunday sessions before. it sounds fun, but not if it is noisy and goes late into the night. subiaco does seem a bit overpriced, but we want to be in the heart of a fun area so that we don't feel like we need two cars. right now we have one car and it is working out really well because we are so close to shops, parks, etc. i will have to check out mount lawley. it sounds lovely. thanks again.

Hello jessinwa - you won't have to change your chat name will you?

I am a south of the river girl, and don't know too much about the northern suburbs but the ones you named are the most expensive.
I think your mum may have the best ideas about places near her. Does she know anyone with young children whom she could put you in touch with?

And don't forget, that if you go within 10 kilometres of the city centre you are close to everything ( it's a small place) but once you start getting further north to Joondalup the distances between the rows and rows of houses and shops get wider, much wider.

Just off the top of my head, Inaloo may be worth looking at, it's home to a colossal mall if that's what floats your boat

Thats a good point about the size suzywong, my dh jokes that everything is 20min drive away no matter where you are in Perth . I had a friend who lived in South Perth and she could hear the Lion at the zoo roar!

Jessinwa the public transport in Perth is terrible, and most families have 2 cars. The sunday sessions are great fun, they start so early because pubs are only licenced till 8pm (Suzy is still the case?) so you get a good sleep before work the next day