help me choose where to live - does this magical mythical place exist?

[addstudentdinners2]

Our budget is 350k, we have 50k deposit. That is our absolute max, and with DH commuting to London and what we'd spend on travel we'd prefer to be spending more around the 330-340 mark.

Min 2 bedrooms, prefer 3 but 2 is fine. Prefer garden but not 100 per cent essential. Prefer house but perfectly open to a nice flat/maisonette.

We want:

1. Less than an hours' train journey to London (I desperately wanted to stay in London itself as I am born and bred but I think it's impossible on our budget for what we want - please say if you know somewhere in London I might be overlooking)

2. Area not too dull. I would die of boredom living somewhere there was a big Tesco, a school, some houses and not much else. No offence meant to those who currently live in such places, but it's just not for me. Would love to live somewhere there was a nice high street with a different mix of shops/cafes etc.

3. Good community of families with kids. Ideally fairly diverse mix of people (ie, from different social backgrounds and ethnic groups)

4. Ideally near nice countryside/park/large area of green for dog walking etc.

5. Area relatively safe to walk around late etc.

6. not massively bothered re: schools as long as there are some there.

I had considered Cambridge as that provides all of the above but it seems to be too expensive for us :( Ditto St Alban's (please feel free to contradict me).

Am I being completely unrealistic, and if so can anyone recommend some places to buy where I could achieve at least some of the above?

Thanks very much!

Can I just say, your description of a place with a big tesco and not much else instantly made me think of Baldock. We lived there after leaving London and hated the place. So I wouldn't recommend it. The countryside is blah around there too IMO - flat and intensively farmed.

Billericay in Essex. 25 mins into Liverpool Street, has a lovely high street and very close to lovely countryside and villages such as Stock.

whyisit can't live in billericay as I need to avoid a relative who lives there...

My mum also lives along that train line and I never found it very reliable unfortunately.

Itmustbe thanks for tip on Baldock! I was thinking of Flitwick when I said it actually :)

It's a tricky one add. I think you will make friends when you have small dc as there are so many people in the same boat - on maternity leave while all their usual crowd are at work. I actually have found London great with small dcs as there is so much going on and so many different people that you're bound to find some you get on with. But then friends are now starting to move away to get bigger places and I feel the best years have possibly already gone.

I did manage to upscale my flat to a house in the same area of North London (not quite as posh as Islington but a nice area and handy for transport). We were very lucky, compromised a bit on the house and also stomached 2 years of building works to get here but I am glad. I would be a bit scared to move to a village, though I am sure I could do a different town. I think I'd prefer to be somewhere with its own life and chance to get a job locally though (poss Cambridge, maybe somewhere bigger further North) rather than commuting into London from a commuter town, which I think would be a stress when you have to get back for the nursery run, but maybe you are planning to be a SAHM?

When comparing mortgage + train vs bigger mortgage remember these costs are not exactly like for like. Mortgage payments will in real terms get smaller, subject to interest rates staying the same (which is a bit if!) and you will have an asset at the end, whereas train fares will go up each year (and could double if you start commuting too) and are money down the drain really. That said if you like the idea of more green space, less pollution and fewer crowds, then these will be worth it - just that financially it's not quite so straight forward as may first appear.

Well if children are in the pipeline then I think it could work. I see lots of happy looking people going to the village school and there are lots of things for young children, scouts, cricket club, football all happening in the village that many families are part of.

You may say you are anti social but you will be surprised how being part of a school can make you feel really connected to where you live and you will meet so many more people.

I suppose that's what I miss, all the lovely parents and children we knew at primary school and that real connection with where you live, it's not really about missing London in itself (as many things about London were driving me mad), it's about missing being part of where you live.

I'm a very sociable person and although I wasn't out all the time I did have a very wide friendship group and a large support network (no family in London) and went out several times a week, so if we went back we would need to be near out friends. My husband hates going back and sees it as a failure, so we are very undecided about the whole thing.

Most of my friends in London (who now have teenaged children) wouldn't dream of moving as they are very happy where they are, but lots of people I knew when the children were small moved before the start of school as they really didn't want their children to grow up in London. I really think doing what we did was the worst of all as it has unsettled us and the children and I'm pretty sure the children will end up back in London as many of there friends are there (and jobs of course).

Yes move to Ham! It's honestly bloody lovely, riverside walks, Richmond Park, the finest of all the London parks imo. The commute is messy with buses to Richmond underground unless your dh can cycle to Kingston? He'd be at waterloo in 20 mins. Or cycle to Richmond station?

Oh dear addstudent! Bloody relatives :)

Cambridge is increasingly stupid price-wise, but you can still get a perfectly OK house for £350k if you don't mind not being in the trendy Mill Road area. Chesterton is still affordable and will have its own mainline railway station soon. If I was commuting that's where I'd want to be, because you'd get on the train before it reaches the main station, so might stand a fighting chance of getting a seat.

Failing that, maybe Ely? Not a huge place but nice, great rail links and not as suburban as places like Baldock and Hitchin.

longestlurker yes I am fully intending on being a SAHM (so no nursery fees etc and only one set of commuting costs). Naturally I realise it's easy to say that before DC arrive, but that's certainly my intention at least before they start school.

I would happily move somewhere completely different (Bristol, Newcastle etc) but sadly DH has got to be in London for work, he can't do his job anywhere else. Well, he could, but would get paid about a quarter of what he gets paid in London.

I know this sounds completely stupid and ridiculous but with my anxiety issues I don't want DH cycling...

I grew up in London so would have no issue with my kids growing up in London, but I watched my parents struggle with money my whole life and my strongest motivation is having enough money to live comfortably without having to worry and constantly having nothing left over at the end of the month. So I really want to make the best moving decision that enables us to have that.

Thank you for all your replies, I am finding them very helpful.

Hmm, I understand but Cambridge might not be such a great plan with no cycling actually. The houses walkable to the station are really expensive and the buses aren't great. Unless you go for somewhere near the new station in Chesterton as a pp said.

I think you have the right idea about what will work for you though - somewhere with enough going on that you won't go mad cooped up with dcs. My only thought, that preoccupies me a bit as my ttc journey hasn't been easy, is whether you would be lonely before dcs come along if they take longer than planned. They're an easy way into a community. But then if you're on a train line back to London you won't be too far away.

Good luck!

longest yeah I'd ruled out Cambridge based on price anyway tbh, and also DH thinks the commute is too long for him. I think Hertfordshire's probably going to be the best option for us taking everything into account.

yes, I'm totally aware it may well take us longer than planned so I suppose I will definitely have to factor that one in too!

Rickmansworth would fit the bill, its a lovely area

Epping has a nice village feel to it, individual shops and on the tube, also inside the M25, greater London feel to it and plenty of green spaces.

A bit over your budget but would have thought an offer around 350 would be feasible.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-49462402.html

Student, The Ham to Kingston route is a gentle 5 minutes puff beside the river thames, no cars, a few old ladies perhaps .

Lord,the 65 is pretty good as it goes through Petersham rather than the residential route. That's no more than a 10 min walk from anywhere in Ham. The 371 is a ball-ache in winter when the park closes early though. I walked every day along the river from Ham to Richmond, took around 20mins.

Meant to add, I'm glad you share my love of it, Lord.

Ham is lovely but prices have gone crazy in recent years. About 6 years ago you could get a two bed cottage for about £350k in Ham. Now you're looking at

This is in a nice part of Ipswich

thats gorgeous. I like Ipswich

Has anybody suggested Milton Keynes yet? (sorry, haven't had time to read entire thread).

We moved here out of London 9 years ago and love it. I know it has a bad reputation amongst people that don't know it but it's a fantastic place to live. I think of it as the town that can't decide if it's a city or a village...

It has all the benefits of living in a big city - big shopping centres, big supermarkets (at least one mega sized version of each of the big 5 plus aldi, lidl, costco), fantastic theatre, some good restaurants both independent and chains, a decent train link to Euston (between 30 mins and 1 hour depending on whether you get on a fast train, a medium train or one that stops at every station along the way!), history (really - right from the Romans, but most famously currently for Bletchley Park, home of the code breakers and birthplace of computing), sport (lots of different sports to play and watch, National Badminton Centre and National Gymnastics centres are here, the MK Dons have an amazing stadium that lots of other sports and teams use too - the Rugby World cup is holding some matches here, and they also have a very strong educational arm that is very involved with the community, Red Bull F1 are based here and Silverstone is just down the road), skating rink, athletics is strong (even have a gold postbox for MK's own olympic gold medallist), loads of parks with a strong Parks Trust that organise lots of different events - from walks and wildlife spotting to fairs (I could be at the May Day fair right now), music events, open air cinema, festivals and more. There's also an award winning International Festival every other year in July with lots going on. The OU also has its HQ here, along with several other big companies. And the cinema companies have chosen MK to launch their first UK 4-d (seat shaking/etc) cinema and some other whizzy type of cinema that's a first for the uk too.

It doesn't have a single 'main high street' - but that's because it has lot of them... They've used a gridded road system so each grid square has its own set up. Some are based on ancient villages that MK was built around (for example, mine has a church going back to the 1100s, a reasonable village pub, and a good sports and social club, nice playgrounds, several parks, small village shop and is a couple of minutes walk from the station, a junior and infant school - there are a choice of a couple of good comprehensives in the next squares over. Others have different characters - some have a cricket ground or football club, some have bigger high streets within them, lots of places have nice little shops or coffee shops or bars, loads of playgrounds spread around and so on) - so it feels much more like a collection of villages than just one big amorphous town. There also seems to be lots of stuff going on - art classes, dog walking, ski-ing (indoor snow covered ski slope),

There are also redways which are special designated pathways that connect all different parts of MK which mean that you can walk or cycle across the town without the need to negotiate the traffic - they're mostly through parks - which is a really big bonus if you like walking, running, cycling etc. The roundabouts are much maligned but actually make life driving around much easier and less stressful than driving in other towns I've driven in - not least because if you make a wrong turn and you're on a grid road, all you have to do is go up to the next roundabout and come back again. Despite having driven in London for years, I had to drive in Oxford recently and it reminded me what a nightmare driving could be when you have narrow roads, parked cars on the sides, pedestrians and cyclists popping out, and so on.

Schools are a bit of a mixture but there are some fantastic ones if you choose the right place to live.

It's the fastest growing place in the uk and the fast growing job market if you decide you want to work locally.

And house prices - £350K should get you a nice 3-4 bed house within decent striking distance of the station, with plenty of parks around and be pretty nice...

Shout if you have had your curiosity piqued and have any more questions!

Colchester?

Definitely consider West Reading - it has quite a London feel about it, very diverse area, lots of asian stores, a fab coffee shop and a large Tesco to fall back on! Have a look around the area around Reading West station - you can get trains to Reading station and change and it's about 40 minutes to Paddington that way. Crossrail is coming too. It depends about where in London your DH works - if it's east then forget getting there in an hour until Crossrail comes. You'd get a lot more for your money than in Caversham - 350k would get you a nice 3-bed with a garden.

Hertford, Ware or Hitchin.

South Lincolnshire is lovely. Peterborough only 50 mins to kings cross I think. You'd get a fab 4 bed detached in a lovely friendly village with great primary and secondary schools on your doorstep ??????

I have just moved to hitchin from hackney and love it. Bought a 3 bedder in town in good nick for £325. Commute is a doddle and I am 7 mos pregnant. Trains stop at finsbury park and the 106 gets me back to hackney in undef an hour door to door. Last trains are about 1am so still possible to go out up london. Really friendly family feel and quite a mixed community. The town has some lovely ye oldie bits but is not so perfect as to be twee. Always seems to be buzzing. Some really lovely countryside on the doodstep and if you cycle it is right on the start of the chilterns cycleway.
I reeeeealllllllly didn't want to leave london, but with a nipper on the way needed more space and craved a garden. Spent two weekends looking in walthamstow / leytonstone / forest hill. I found the whole experience so stressful (open fecking houses) and depressing that we started looking outside london. Originally looked south in and around 7 oaks. Found some lovely houses but the town itself is depressingly dull. Had been to a wedding in hitchin many moons ago and had vague memories of it being nice so pitched up here. We just got allocated an allotment. I have been on a waiting list in london for over 5 years!
Only downsides so far. Older terraced 3 bed properties tend to have small kitchens and downstairs bathrooms. Ours has but we live with it. No cinema but there is one in letchworth. In older terraces there tends to be shared access across gardens to get the bins out. The recycling is baffling. Buses are shit and stupidly expensive. Turkish food not on a par with hackney.

Good luck! (And avoid stevenage at all costs it is a total shit hole)