Good places to buy house in London under £300K

[ivt03]

Hi there,

Due to personal change in our circumstances, me and my husband may have to relocate to London in a couple of months.

Rather than spending dead money in rents, we were thinking of buying a house (not flat/apartments) under £300K in a good locality that's safe to live in, commutable from central London under an hour and has good affinity for schools/shops, etc.

We stumbled upon areas like Tilbury and Gravesend and while the houses internally were wonderful for their price, the locality and people around didn't seem safe.

Would people living in and around London/Greater London advise of some good, safe, commutable areas to buy a house?

Many thanks!

Petts Wood is a lovely safe area to bring up a family. Lovely Outstanding Crofton School. You wouldn’t get a house for that money but for £285k you’d get a 2 bed maisonette which has a garden and wasn’t in a big block with maintenance fees etc www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-52215573.html zone 5 for commuting with lots of choice of destinations including Victoria, London Bridge, Charing Cross, Blackfriars, Cannon St etc

So, if the office is Waterloo, buying has to be a commute to Waterloo! Little choice for £300,000 and obviously quite far out.

Horsham, which has a rail link via Clapham, to Waterloo is in the price range.

I live in Chelmsford and v expensive here but Witham the next stop on Trainline is good lots new homes being built there.

Pencil 'Wouldn't bring up a child in Romford as their English would be fucked'

Really?

OP, please ignore completely ignorant statements such as the above.
I, and many many others, have managed to be raised in Romford and speak perfectly fine.

But for the Romford edge, I think that previous poster is a judgemental knob.

I am from barking and lived there all my life, in 2009 I lived for a couple of years in Romford to as it was better than Dagenham and I knew the area anyway since it was where I went school.

I do think you'd have to up your budget though, my mums house is in Collier row and is a three bed semi detached and valued at 372k. Central Romford is dear to. But it's super quick to get to London.

Barking and Dagenham are rough now though Dagenham will definitely get you something under 300k. My dad sold is house in 2014 for 215k but now it's worth 270k though so prices are going up fast. I lived close to Becontree tube station till I was 23 and commuting to London was never complicated and always fast. You have the c2c at barking to which is very reliable and fast taking you to fenchurch st

Out of all of them though Romford is the nicest area personally.

By the way my English is fine, please ignore the silly stereotypes of Dagenham and Romford. I went to a standard state secondary and my accent is fine and most of my peers including me went into higher education

Sorry and Dagenham East is awful and the Heathway. Rainham village is actually quite nice. Ockendon is Essex but on c2c and ok. Chafford hundred is all right. Avoid area like grays tilbury and Stanford le hope.

Sparklefarts: this whole thread is shot through with snobbery.
People who were lucky enough to get in the housing ladder in London even a decade ago need to seriously recalibrate their thoughts!

If you need to love further out, access to the RIGHT train line is important. An extra unnecessary tube journey is uncomfortable at rush hour.

For Waterloo I'd look around Morden, New Malden, Wallington, Sutton. Not very lovely, but you could probably find a 2 bed. Prices are really on the slide round that area.

I know Dagenham, Rainham and Romford areas well, you may not get as much for your money in Romford but it's the better place to go if you can. Great transport links and schools.

Rainham has a huge development coming up on the old ford site which is going to make the local house prices shoot up so as an investment, this is a good place to go.

Dagenham is not a great place to be IMO. When I lived there we had several murders / stabbings practically on my doorstep so I was glad to move out of there.

I should say the new development includes a new stop on the c2c line to Fenchurch street so makes transport easier once built.

Bubbles. Horsham is again in Surrey, quite a way out, so rail fairs to pay. I agree with PettsWoodParadise. Petts Wood is lovely. There is a MN obsession about posh bits of Bucks and Surrey. Waterloo East serves north Kent. Cheaper, surprisingly green and often good schools, especially if you are after grammars. Plus the promise of Crossrail at Woolwich.

My r experience of growing up in posh Surrey is that is very dull. Fine for parents who base their social lives around the golf club and ship their kids off to boarding school. Expensive yes, community no. And not for posters asking for cheap London options.

Horsham is not in Surrey! It's in West Sussex!

Just to add to my post upthread that Petts Wood has direct trains to Waterloo East...

OP, you would be crazy to move to a new area and buy straight away. It would be crazy anywhere but especially in London which may as well be on a different planet in terms of affordability and lengthy commutes.

I say this as someone who moved to London from the north at the end of the 90s thinking we would be very comfortable on the salaries we had. We found living costs to be shocking (it’s obviously 10 times worse these days) and were unhappy at the areas that some people were recommending as ok to live in.

We had to totally adjust our expectations and try (so rent) a couple of areas to live in before we found somewhere we were happy to settle in and buy. (We preferred to buy a one bed flat in nice area over 2 bed in not so nice area. A house was out of the question even then)

Unless you have lived and worked in London before I think you would be foolish to buy as soon as you move there. A life down there really is very different from everywhere else in the country.

We moved back up north after 4 years so maybe that tells you how we found it!

all I hear round here in my northern city now is southern accents so maybe that tells you how others have found it too!

London has lots going for it and I’m glad I live down there for a while but I really would not like to be tied down there by a property that was difficult to sell. Be very careful and make sure you keep your option so open.

Thanks Bert. However hardly London is it!

OP had asked for London rather than areas commutable from London. First I think living in London is more fun (I am a Londoner) than being a commuter, but also I think it makes more sense putting money into repaying mortgage than on fares.

I moved from Plumstead, direct train into Waterloo East. But unless prices have gone down you won’t get anything for £300k, I sold a two bed terrace for £325k and that was cheaper than market prices at the time. Plumstead always gets sneered at on threads like this but it’s nice, safe as most places in London, lots of green space, and good transport links.

Thanks Bert. However hardly London is it!

All the areas are actually in London. So only a travel card required for commuting.

"Hardly lovely"

Well that's me put firmly in my place! I doubt you'd find much for 300k in either Morden or New Malden - even if prices are "really on the slide" (which I haven't noticed despite keeping a close eye on prices asked & paid!)

I'm not too sure what you are referring to. Horsham, as Bert has pointed out, is in Sussex. So you need to commute through a whole county to get to it.

Need, the areas Bert suggested were New Malden, Morden, Wallington and Sutton (so zones 4-5).

But yes, Horsham would probably be prohibitively expensive to commute from given the housing budget.

London it certainly isn't!

But I don't recognise your generalisations of Surrey. As an East Surrey resident, I have never been to a golf club except for weddings and work piss-ups, my son attends a fab and very diverse comp, and It's a pretty friendly supportive place to be.

Places like Oxshott , mind....

If you're absolutely set on having a house, then Romford is definitely your best bet. Despite the 'reputation' and what others who don't live there may say, it's actually a very practical place to live. Within the LONDON borough of Havering and in Travel Card Zone 6.
Houses within a mile of Romford station at scarce at £300k, but you might get lucky at £325k.

If you absolutely have to keep beneath the £300k, go for Harold Wood. There is plenty of choice of houses at the moment at that price, walking distance to the station.

Harold wood station will be a Crossrail station, so will be a fantastically easy commute into London. Prices will almost certainly rise as (as you have already seen) it's massively under-priced vs anywhere else with a similar commute in to London.

I have nothing against Harold Wood, but if it were my money, I'd try and get closer to Romford central if you could at all afford it..

Potential example contender:

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-52851159.html

Bert, I was exaggerating, and should not label a whole county, though to be fair I have been a bit by some of the suggestions.

I am also not sure that living somewhere with significant affluence helps community. Up and coming places in London, still have small businesses, and will attract young families who will local schools. Kennington, East Dulwich and Balham have been and gone. The approach is, if you find an accessble area you like but can't quite afford, is to look a couple of stops down the railway line. So, for example we bought a rental property in East Greenwich a couple of decades ago, in anticipation of transport improvements. Since then people have been buying in Charlton and Woolwich. Too late there on OPs budget but I would guess that current flat owners/renters looking for a small family house are heading just a bit further east. These are the people who will provide community by attending baby and toddler groups, campaign for improvements to the local park, use local shops, and organise NCT activities. If OP were to start somewhere like Woolwich or Petts Wood and ask local estate agents where she should be looking they will know. As she may be the sort of person they were selling to a decade ago.

Oddly Thamesmede, long a strange lost white elephant on the banks of the Thaames, seems to be coming of age and looking more like its origional architectural vision. I don't know if the social problems of an isolated new community dominated by renters, have been shaken off.