Places to live near East Croydon - Please help

[3catstoo]

Hi,

We currently live in a village in Bucks. My DH works in London but will soon be moving offices to East Croydon. The journey will be 2 hrs each way so we really need to move.
Neither of us know that area. We have 3 children (DS 6, DD1 5 and DD2 2).

Ideally we want a 3/4 bed house with a big garden, in a place with good shopping facilities that could be walked to or easily reached by public transport.
Currently I have to drive to everything. Our village has one small shop and 2 pubs.
DH would also like to be within easy reach of London just in case his job moves again.
Good schools and facilities for children are a must.
Our budget isn't great. Max £375,000.

DH said Dorking has a good connection. Never been there though.

In October my parents are having the children for a short weekend so that DH and I can stay in a B & B to check out our chosen area(s).

Can anyone recommend any where in this area?
Any suggestions would be greatfully received.

Actually, my dh works with someone who lives in East Croydon, and recommends it as a place to live! I haven't had a look around there myself, though. Check out the tramlink which goes to Croydon from Wimbledon, through lots of other nice places to live.

Does he intend to take the train ? How long is he prepared to commute ? If by train it depends which station he needs to get to in Croydon. Dorking is nice but fear you'd struggle with that budget and there isn't a direct train link iirc. whereas the Brighton/ Horsham/Eastbourne/Littlehampton lines and suburban services from Caterham for example go via East Croydon into Victoria or London Bridge.

Yes he would need to get to either East Croydon Stn or West Croydon stn. I think 30 -40mins at the most on the train from home to work. I'd guess at 45 mins to London at the most.
Currently his journey into London takes over 90 mins, bike, train and a 25 min walk. His office will be next to East Croydon stn but West Croydon stn is walkable within 10mins (so I am told).

I hadn't thought of looking at East Croydon as DH didn't seem so keen on Croydon itself. Not sure why.

We went to Haywards Heath to have a brief look a few weeks ago but only managed to see the shopping area en route to Eastbourne Beach. £ children don't make it easy to look around these places.
I liked the look of Haywards Heath but I think the train link to London is too long.

I do not look forward to moving the children out of the village school into the unknown.

I'm only looking on rightmove at the moment. Is there another web site for searching property?

Thanks

I looked up Horsham schools and they look good. The house prices seemed OK too.

We have a 3 bed semi at the mo. Although we have extended the downstairs so that is more the size of a 4 bed house. It makes it harder to look at other 3 bed houses because the downstairs would be smaller than we already have.
I'd also like another baby so need to think about fitting that in. 3 beds are fine aslong as there's space downstairs and a good sized garden.

Horsham is too far, surely.

And I wouldn't live in East Croydon itself. Addiscombe/shirley and South Croydon/Sanderstead are Ok for the immediate Croydon area although South Croydon/Sanderstead has better primaries. Further out, er, used to get people commuting in from Lewis and Haywards Heath and it cost loads and took a big chunk out of their day - not ideal if you have small children IMO.

I'd agree probably Horsham is too far a trek - at least 35/40 mins on train to East Croydon, as is Haywards Heath. If you can get North of Gatwick the price structure is changing to extend the Travelcard zones apparently.

Thanks.
It helps to get other peoples views because all we are doing is looking at a map and picking places around Croydon without knowing anything about them.
Much appreciated.

Well DH spent hours looking up the train times to East Croydon and London last night.
He concluded that Reigate was the easiest place to get to from both. Haywards Heath came out quite well too.

I've looked up properties on rightmove and found a few 3 bed houses in Reigate within our price range. They seem quite nice too.
We may go and see the area this weekend with it being a bank holiday.

Thanks again for your suggestions and advice.

You were right about Dorking. There were a couple of 3 beds in our range but not great ones.

friends live in old coulsdon and are very happy there - good schools i believe

caterham seems nice when i've driven through...

There aren't many through trains from Reigate though , and only at peak hours, Redhill might be a better bet for commuting (and is slightly cheaper property wise) but is a bit more built up and has less character.

Yes Dh did say that Reigate seems to be a branch line. Although the distance between stations is short enough to cycle, so DH could go to Redhill if it was easier.
It will be easier to tell once we are actually there and can see it. We are just going by train timetables and maps.
I noticed that Redhill was cheaper. The centre isn't as nice, although we only drove through it on a very wet day so again hard to tell.

In one way it will be nice to leave a village but in others it will be strange being closer to the busy town.

This village is really a commuter village and so all the husbands and some wives stand on the same spot on the platform everyday and never speak to eachother. DH doesn't have a social life here because he spends his time travelling home.
A village is hard if you are thrown together with people that you normally would not make friends with. We seem to be surrounded by people trying to be something they are not. It's all money money money. We are not really part of the in crowd because we are not ones to boast (not that we would have anything to boast about !)

Sorry, I went off on a tangent there.

I have some friends who recently moved to Merstham and it is erally nice The schools are good in the area too HTH

Beckenham Village is lovely, and has a great tram link to East Croydon.

There is actually a brand new "village" development being built between Redhill and Merstham if you are into that sort of thing, prices not out yet. Otherwise Merstham is a town of 2 halves with the "better" half bordering the A23/M25 ironically !

Caterham/Caterham-on-the Hill nice, good links to E.Croydon & Victoria/London Bridge.

There are a couple of good primaries in the centre of Croydon (Park Hill is excellent) but I lived in East Croydon for over 30 years and wouldn't recommend it now, unfortunately.

We used to live on Park Hill - very close to East Croydon station and good bus links. Easy walk to Park Hill park which is lovely, about 20 mins walk into Croydon town centre (or you can use tram/buses). Loved it there.

Not sure what the catchment primary is like, as we moved away when ds1 was 2 years old, but worth investigating. In catchment for a good state nursery though (the name of which completely escapes me...) which also has a family room drop in centre thing which was great.

I love Croydon, miss it lots

Oxted is lovely and only takes about 15 mins on train to East Croydon. And lots of little villages around that are lovely.

until 2 weelks ago I lived in Merstham - great train line for your DH, but not so good in terms of shopping for you - I used to drive to reigate. It does have some shops newsagent/postoffice and a grocery corner shop but nothing more really.
Caterham is very nice with better shopping and a good train line to east croydon.
Reigate trains all change at redhill iirc.

Wow, lots of helpful advice. Thank you.
I will look up some of those places.
I didn't know there was a tram link too. That would be useful.
We've just been to Germany and used the tram everyday. It's so handy.
It's the schools that bother me most actually.
All i can do is look them up on the league tables because we don't know people who can recommend schools. I know the league tables are not the best place to look but it's a start and gives me and idea of where schools are too.
St Bedes seems to be a good secondary in Redhill/Reigate. Not relevant yet but it's something to think of as we don't want to move again after this.
DS will be in Yr 2 in Sept and DD1 will be in Yr 1. DD2 will start pre school in Jan or Apr.
Hopefully we will get DS and DD1 into the same school. It is a worry.
Thanks again for your help.
Hopefully the weather will be good enough to visit a few places over the weekend.

St Bedes is at the bottom of my garden so ask away about Redhill / Reigate area.

we live in a village between redhill and oxted and love it - esp the lovely primary school. oxted is such a pretty town with nice coffee bars, deli, shops, yet so handy for London. move here!

Sorry to hijack , but hi Dinny ! [wave] Nearly bought a house of a family whose kid goes your school ! Still looking though ...

Hi GeorginaA, you are thinking of Tunstall Nursery School near E.Croydon, ds went there before we moved to bournemouth. Very good school, and like you say the pop-in playgroup was lovely too.

TUNSTALL yes that's it - the name completely escaped me for some reason! Loved it there, and the two organisers of the family room were fantastic. Missed them greatly when we moved