Husband wants to move to Peckam. I don't!

[speckledpig]

We have been looking to buy a place on the outskirts of London in some of the more affordable places in Kent as we are growing out of our 2 bed flat in north London. We have two girls coming to school age. I am not a London person, I don't enjoy living in London but am here for my husband's work. We have been looking for a few weeks now and have found a few places we both like but husband keeps wanting to move further in to his work. He has now got his sights on Peckham!
With a budget of £250.000 I just don't think we will get anywhere very nice at all. I am really not keen on moving this far into London and Peckham doesn't seem like the safest haven.
So please correct me if I am wrong. He is getting fed up now and doesn't want to move any further out (even though there are places within our budget a 30 min train journey away)
This weekend I have agreed to go and view a couple of flats in Peckham but I am not happy about it at all.
Can anyone please correct my misinterpretations of Peckham to help me change my mind?

No No No Peckham- I lived there and would not bring kids up there.

Okay so how about Tulse Hill/West Dulwich.Under 20 mins to Cx?
Or persuade him to move to Bexley/Sidcup- bit further out but you can have a 3 bed house with a garden. he needs to get on and do the commute for the sake of the kids.
Great schools in Bexley and Sidcup area and W Dulwich.
No to Peckham- unless you are loaded and have no kids. Brockley is pricey for what you get-many rough bits to it

Can you rent for a year, instead of buying straightaway? I think it would be good to try out some of these areas.

There's also the Tooting-Colliers Wood-Morden corridor. You might not get a big house but you could get something with a garden at least, on a nice quiet street.

My friend used to live in the cutest little old house, right on Morden park, which is huge and gorgeous.

I live in Nunhead and have a one yo DS - we absolutely love it (and would class ourselves as part of Peckham!) Like anywhere in London it has nice bits and rough bits but I've honestly never lived anywhere with such a sense of community. We know all of our neighbours, and there is lots to do with small children.

I don't think you'd get very much in Peckham or nunhead for 250k though unfortunately.

Good luck with the search!

Catford side of Forest Hill is cheaper than the East Dulwich side and you can commute from Catford station to Blackfriars in 20 mins. Could be worth a look? Blythe Hill Fields is lovely and schools in the area are great.

I beg of you, please also be careful about Morden. I lived there for four years and fucking loathed it, certain parts can be well dodgy, at best its dull and soul less. Put it this way, our local pub had to have bouncers during the day, and quite frequently had some proper old school gangsters dropping in I also remember seeing men coming out of one of the pubs on morden high street and pissing in the gutter, which was just lovely. I actually got properly depressed living there so I may be a bit biased, but it was the worst place I lived in London (and I lived in some proper shit holes). Sorry if anyone lives there, but I couldn't wait to get away!

I beg of you, please also be careful about Morden. I lived there for four years and fucking loathed it, certain parts can be well dodgy, at best its dull and soul less. Put it this way, our local pub had to have bouncers during the day, and quite frequently had some proper old school gangsters dropping in I also remember seeing men coming out of one of the pubs on morden high street and pissing in the gutter, which was just lovely. I actually got properly depressed living there so I may be a bit biased, but it was the worst place I lived in London (and I lived in some proper shit holes). Sorry if anyone lives there, but I couldn't wait to get away!

Oh that's true, parts of Morden are yuck. Where my friend lived was really nice though.

It makes it so hard to just recommend an area wholeheartedly, unless you have a big budget there are always going to be dodgy parts to avoid.

£250k is a very small budget for a family home in a nice part of London, unfortunately.

We live in Newham and yes there are houses here for that budget (East Ham/Stratford areas) but honestly I wouldn't recommend it, not the most pleasant area to live in and there is a lot of crime.

London is London: it is a collection of micro-areas.
Wherever you live, however you live, within in a very short walking distance there will be people who live a different lifestyle (for better or worse) speak a different language, go to a corner shop stocked with a differnt kind of groceries. Peckham is just like that, as is Streatham , Forest Hill, Catford, Islington, Camden, and....Westminster.

Normal, nice, family people live in all of them.

If you cna't cope with the cheek-by-jowl nature of London's micro-areas, you probably do need to look elsewhere.

Personally, living in an area of s London often considered notorious, and having lived 20 years in Brixton, I have never seen any trouble that was a threat to me or my child at all. I have more often found community support, neighbourly friendliness and security in the streets being always busy.

I would say make sure you don't give yourself the stress of being in an area on the marginal catchment between schools - find somewhere v close to a primary that seems happy, stable and has a good Value Added performance. (No need to stress over the 'holy grail' primaries that peolple pay premium house prices to be near- there are plenty of 'ordinary' good primaries)

I lived in Peckham for 10 years and was very happy there. But had kids and moved out to Sydenham/edge of Beckenham.

As other posters have said you won't get anything worth living in for 250k in Peckham. Houses like my lovely Victorian 3 bed terrace in the Bellenden regeneration area are now selling for 5-600k. I think that area has had its housing bubble and is now esconced where it is. I wouldn't expect a fast buck to be made from property. Plus where would you send the children to school?

Come to Sydenham or Beckenham - my commute from Kent House takes 18mins to Victoria - 4 trains per hour. There are a couple of Thameslinks going through Kent House each day. But most people jump off at Herne Hill and catch the Thameslink from there. I think it is about 10 mminutes from HH to Blackfriars and there are lots of trains.

Decent schools, parks and shops and you can drive out to nice parts of North Kent quickly to get to the countryside.

Have to come on defend my endz!!!

Moved to peckham over 15 years ago and would not move anywhere else - BORING BORING BORING...schools parks etc excellent facilities transport (I wanted to keep it a secret but others found out about how great it is and have moved in)
Never been mugged or broken into...Have been through all the regenerations around here...schools are fab and people friendly....BUT you wont get much for 250k not in the naice bits

I live in Nunhead as well and I don't find it the least bit dangerous. There are loads of parks and things to do with young children. Yes, there are a lot of dogs and youth hanging about, but there is a good community here it's just not as obvious or easy as you get in a less mixed area.

But for £250,000 you'd definitely be priced out of a family home. And you would struggle even more in areas for Lewisham like Brockley, or Forest Hill. There are a lot of people in the Peckham area with young children making entry into schools really tough. Someone mentioned Habedasher's Aske upthread and, yeah, it's a great school, but I think it has a catchment area of something like 250m.

Also the commute in to Blackfriars from Peckham Rye/Nunhead will change and may disappear entirely.

So, while I like the area, I think you need to have a long talk with you DH about the type of house you want and his commute.

And if you think it help you can post the flats you are going to see here of PM and we can give you our opinions of the immediate area.

Sorry, no idea why that link I posted last night was for a random place in Brockley! This is the one I meant to link to:

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-34778551.html

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-23516856.html

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-33793723.html

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-38361641.html

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-28627159.html

Some suggestions from round my way......

Peckham is fine in parts, particularly Peckham Rye, but £250,000 won't buy you much. But if you're happy with a flat you will get something, maybe even in East Dulwich.

We're looking in SE London at the moment and DP also keen on rough-as-a-badgers-arse territory, purely because of the commute, not because it's significantly cheaper than the nice bits further out (it isn't). We've had a good talk about it and he freely concedes that he gets to swan round the City during the daytime and so isn't too bothered about local cafes, amenities, shops and pubs, whereas I work from home and do. I presume this is a conversation you've had/tried to have.

I had a big win when I managed to turn up the Environment Agency's flood risk map and there was a lovely big wibbly blue line almost exactly along the line of the Queens' Road/New Cross Road and everything south of there was safe and dry Would that work with your DH?

Also, from what I'm seeing at the moment I don't think £250k will buy you much in Crofton Park/HOP/Forest Hill especially if you'd like a garden. Sorry . I'd second the recommendations of Sydenham, which is a bit shabby but looks ok to me (not lived there yet), maybe even [comedy voice] Penge, which has a pretty quick service into Blackfriars from Penge East in the morning (though bizarrely few coming back at night I seem to recall - it's mainly a Victoria Station).

Another thought is does it have to be Blackfriars or could he use Cannon Street station (about 1/2 mile away to the east)? That would open up a lot of other overground lines to the south east.

Can you tell I have a collection of index cards detailing commuting times from various SE London locations?

Really don't look to buy a flat in the 'nicer' bits if you want a house, as you CAN afford a house if you go out a bit to the less popular bits. The roads coming off the south circular towards Catford, technically Forest Hill, are good value. If you look up to £280,000 in SE23 on Rightmove you'll see quite a few houses/maisonettes. Not much is going for asking price round here right now, and anything priced up to £270k must be thinking of the stamp duty barrier. Sydenham is also great and as much the 'next East Dulwich' as anywhere else now it's got the East London Line.

Ouch, MadBus, good luck! Your husband is wrong but you already know that

I used to do New Cross to Cannon Street, it's about 7 minutes, and I do think Cannon st is a good sub for Blackfriars.

I did not like New Cross at all but there are nicer places just a few stops down the rail line into Lewisham.

Ooh californiaburrito I read something about the Thameslink trains being "rationalised" and had forgotten. Isn't the proposed change that they will terminate at Blackfriars, though, and just not continue on to City/Pancras? In which case that wouldn't affect the OP's DH.

FWIW I reckon the Penge East/Kent House/Beckenham line would be "rationalised" rather than Nunhead/Crofton Park anyway. It already has dodgy Thameslink time-tabling in the evenings and it primarily serves Victoria where Crofton Park only has the Thameslink line. [shuffles index cards]

dreamingbohemian He's being lovely about it now, I should say, and we are both trying to compromise a bit more, it was just interesting how long we went on talking at cross-purposes without really seeing the other's point of view - ie how each of us would actually be spending our day. Walk a mile in someone else's shoes, as they say.

On that Lewisham line Ladywell always looks pretty nice to me. Also it has a bit of a rep but I'd take Lewisham over Peckham any day.

My best friend lives in Bromley. I would so move there, if we did not have to bee in relatively easy reach of North London. I would not touch Peckham with a Bargepole. Having lived near Kennington, The Elephant and castle, Stockwell and Tooting Bec, I would not move anywhere near Peckham. (Richmond now)

I have no idea MadBusLady but I am loving your index cards!

Oh good MadBus, that sounds more hopeful!

I would also take Lewisham over Peckham.

I think it's kind of funny on this thread, how many people have lived all over south London and still don't like Peckham (sorry Peckham).