leytonstone vs forest hill for families

[CDavidson]

Weve been looking to buy in forest hill, leaving East London behind. We recently missed out on a fab huge house near horniman. but today visited leytonstone and saw a great house near wanstead flats. can someone explain why e11 is so much cheaper than se23?
with no disrespect to se23 it has seemed v expensive given the high road is nothing amazing and has the south circular. or is e11 v dodgy? or is it simply that the schools in f hill are amazing. I loved the feel of leytonstone but it doesn't have horninan so I wondered where's the focal meetingpoint with small kids/playgroundsetc.

E11 is a bit dodgy in places - depends where the house was. Wanstead is lovely, not sure where the mummies hang out though. Plenty of baby classes and other stuff nearby. I do think that bit of south London is a bit more chi chi but obvs there's room for house prices to increase more in leytonstone.

East London has so much going for it! Prices have shot up over last 18mo and are set to continue. Also check out Forest Gate E7, nearby. Was the spotlight area for Evening Standard last week if you want some tips.

Germanhousecat I know. I think im finding the idea of giving up the lea Valley/running/cycling playing with a toddler in the proper green and Olympic playground/pool hard to give up and replace with small parks.

We live near Wanstead flats, on the Forest Gate side. It's so lovely having all that open space but also being so close to town and living in such a great community. Our circumstances have changed since we moved here and we probably could afford a (slightly) more prestigious part of town now but I would miss it so much that we're staying put.

I have never lived somewhere where I've known all of my neighbours and had so many familiar faces in the local pub. There is a really strong E7 twitterati, check out @ForestGreat.

On the day we moved in a lovely neighbour left us homemade jam on our doorstep.

do you have kids germanhousecat? if so what stuff is there to do with children includingrainy days

Yeah there's loads to do. Plenty of outdoor being so close to Wanstead flats but we're only 2 mins on the train to Stratford

Posted too soon... So there's all the things there to do. We have a local craft beer cafe which does loads of stuff for LOs, afternoon showings of Frozen, toddler french lessons etc. it's really kid friendly. good schools, too.