Buying our first home - Farncombe or Godalming?

[eflo]

Hello mumsnetters,

This is my first post; I think I have posted it in the right place, but if not apologies!

My husband and I are looking to buy our first house and start a family. We really like Surrey, in particular the Farncombe and Godalming areas. We are from Canada originally, so every english town/village looks nice in our eyes! We don't have any friends who live in the area with kids, so are going at it a bit blind! Ideally we would like to buy somewhere where there is a good infants school, in case we end of staying a while. The houses in Farncombe look nice around the station and are in our price range (up to 350,000 max, but around the 300,000 mark would be more affordable; we are happy to renovate something to make it work). Godalming looks really nice too, and I saw a few 2 up 2 down that looked within our price range, but again, don't know if these are nice areas or not with good schools:

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-40607560.html?premiumA=true

We both work in London, so a 45/50 minute journey is the absolute max.

Any help or guidance from those a little bit ahead in the game, would be very much appreciated!

Godalming is beautiful and generally considered much nicer than Farncombe but don't know about state primaries, sorry!

Godalming is generally considered nicer than Farncombe but Farncombe infant school near the station is very popular so that house would be in the right area.

It's a nice area for children to grow up overall though.

Both Godalming and Farncombe are nice places, but Godalming is probably regarded as the posher location, so you may find that house prices reflect this slightly. If you're commuting by train, there's not much to choose between the two in terms of commuting time (the journey from Farncombe to Waterloo is about 5 mins less) - Godalming has more trains at peak times, but parking is easier at Farncombe. I don't have any personal experience of the local infant schools yet, but based on what I've heard, if you aim to be within a mile or so of Moss Lane, Farncombe Infants or Busbridge Infants, you probably won't go too far wrong as all of them are well-regarded schools.

Hi. You need to bear in mind for schools that infant and junior are mostly separate in Godalming (Farncombe is really just part of Godalming - 10 mins walk from Farncombe station to end of the High Street) so you need to think about two catchment areas. Farncombe infants for the 2013 intake - furthest child lived 450m from the school. ..

At the moment the only school to really avoid is probably Green Oak. Loseley Fields in Farncombe/Bincombe has struggled at times but now seems to be on the way up.

Thanks very much all. Very helpful!