If you love London but cant afford to live there, where would you go?

[kissmyheathenass]

Having moved away 14 years ago, we are totally priced out of the London housing market. I am so so bored with where I live, (south coast dull retiremnt place) I yearn for city life. Where can I find a city like London but with lower prices (350,000 ish for a family house) AND good schools - primary and secondary.

Well I only know of the schools where my cousins went, ( Bradfield/Hillsboro' college,) as I said, my time there was well before kids. There were good schools in the Broomhill/Fulwood areas from memory, but you would need to get the advice of other locals to get up to date info.

PS. Yes. Liverpool and Manchester are wet!!!!:)

Right, didn't realise 'family house' meant quite that big!

How about this 5-bed in Blackheath - kids get a bedroom each, you can use the 5th bedroom for one office, and for the other one, either use the conservatory or build something in the 90' garden!

LadyWellian - you are brilliant at finding properties! I am loving your links. Fancy finding something interesting in SE London near Sydenham/Forest Hill/Honor Oak/Brockley for me? Budget £650 .

You would be hard pushed to find a family home for £350k in brighton. A 2 or 3 bed flat is more inline with that sort of money. £350k would buy a decnt 3 bed outside of brighton itself. Saltdean and further out. The trendies still say they live in brighton but the locals know they dont.

Ooh, Mintyy, I do love a chance to channel my inner Kirstie Allsop. Leave it with me - though boringly I have a meeting from 2.30 until 5 and I have to try and do some work first!

Mintyy at your budget!! I am sure you will find something amazing. Ladywellian is fab isnt she? (thank you LW, Boris should give you a job) Unfortunately I cant convince dh to look near London, he lived there for most of his life and we both agree it will be exciting to live somewhere different. He is keen to go North and has agreed on us having a dog as long as we have space!

TBH, Brighton, London, Homecounties etc, although lovely, dont offer us good value for money as we dont actually need to be anywhere near to London to work. In the North for our budget we can get a nice size house and still work just as effectively and keep our income the same.

Bugger the rain in Liverpool and Manchester, when we move and are mortgage free I want a horse but hate riding in the rain. Is Sheffield wet too?

Another hmm - the house that LadyW found is near where I used to live and I would still describe that as not really London. It is close to Blackheath but doesn't feel like BH, it is in an area cut through with lots of big trunk roads and it seems as if everyone is just passing through/trying to get out of it. There was a very notorious secondary school (it could have turned round since) in the area and an estate with an even worse reputation. It is amazing value on paper though.

Mintyy - this thread has lots about Forest Hill. You might end up going head to head with the OP who has about the same budget .

Glasgow, west end in particular!!

Glasgow, west end in particular!!

If we moved back to the UK it would be to Birmingham or Manchester. The posh bits.

Oh or Glasgow.

Where are the posh bits in Birmingham? Im thinking Sutton Coldfield?

Liverpool is not as wet as Manchester and has a stronger identity, I think

Mossley Hill area is lovely. Crosby good as well

Never been to Birmingham myself but am I right in thinking Edgbaston is good? Could be wrong and i'm sure someone will say but some ok houses in that bracket though no idea of area

Manchester is great. Cardiff is really nice to though not as big a city. Both have affordable housing by London standards!

I love London but I think Brighton is a hideous place - shame as I do love the sea side.

Watching with interest though.

I have been renovating houses in Brighton since 1999. You can find bargains but have to be prepared to really look relentlessly and re model if you want to bring in a decent house in a good area for 350. But having said that I always have and have always sold them in days so it is a good place if you buy near good schools. I am hugely biased though as I love it here with all its faults and wouldn't consider London if it had even a sniff of suburbia which is what 350k would get you there. I would want a central cool location which is ££££££

I was going to say, surely that house is Kidbrooke not Blackheath and that's a very different kettle of fish dontcha know. Although I know the Kidbrooke is being redone so perhaps I am behind the times.

I was going to say Brighton which is defo a city. Feels like a city, has all the grime and argy bargy of a city. Is not Bath. I like Brighton.

Nice bits of Brum, IMO are Harborne, Bournville, and parts of Cotteridge, Kings Heath and Moseley. I am "against" Sutton Coldfield and Solihull as they're so bloody up themselves they fail to notice they're actually just a part of Birmingham.

I'm in sniffing distance of Bournville and it's great. Although the lack of pubs is not great we're well connected transport wise and lots of good schools and a real community feel.

Buckinghamshire. The fast train to London takes 30 mins!

The top Sheffield schools i know of are: Silverdale, Tapton, high Storrs all comps and on the southside of the city. For 350k you can get a 3-4 bed house in the catchment areas of these schools. Good luck with your search

lalalonglegs I know what you mean about the main roads, though they have knocked down the estate and the school is now a 'co-operative' academy with fairly reasonable results. I wouldn't personally choose the Shooters Hill area but on the other hand, it's a pretty decent-looking 5-bed house overlooking a green space for £340k!

Mintyy, I'm sorry I haven't had as much time to look for you as I might have liked, owing to a work crisis hard on the heels of the very boring meeting.

Still, this looks really lovely (perhaps just my taste!), though I can't help feeling it's a tad overpriced. It'd be a shoo-in for Forest Hill Boys, though, which may be good for you.

This is detached - pretty rare - and has a gigantic hallway (nice for a Christmas tree) but some of the bedrooms look a bit small.

Leftfield alert: this one is completely about the location. It is definitely not a bargain.

Not much going in Brockley; this is best viewed as a project, though it's well inside your budget, so lots left over for renovations.

I was looking forward to this given your fairly generous budget, but there's not a lot out there at all (unless you want to move to East Dulwich, where it seems prices have dropped sufficiently that there are quite a few 4+ bed places within budget). Ask me again in a couple of months!

(Sorry for the derail, heathen, I know nowt about the North!)

Ooooh, that first one is amazing. Wishing I lived in FH .

I agree with lalalonglegs about being out in some of the suburbs. We rent in zone 4 in a shithole area and when we move won't be coming back. It's a faff getting to and from further parts of the city (especially west London), there's nothing to do locally, and the anti-social behaviour from people here is horrible. Naturally it's relatively cheap - on a 350K budget you could easily get a four bedroom house here - but then as I've learned the hard way, rents and property prices aren't plucked out of thin air...

I have to admit I share the opinions about being in the London suburbs - it seems to be what most London families do, but it's definitely a different lifestyle than being in zone 1/2. I've always lived centrally so I've got used to the small flat/no garden way of life - and I'd always rather take that over a bigger house out in zone 4/5. You can adapt your way of living pretty well, even with more kids and the need for office space.

I'd go for something like this or this. It's not to everyone's taste but it depends what your priorities are.