Commuter towns, anyone any ideas? Not so great budget...

[airyfairyland]

Soooo. Me and my husband have form for very last minute plans in life. We have gained and lost from this attitude but overall it keeps life interesting...

The current life plan is to sell our house asap and move to London along with dd who will be going into year 1 in September.
We are currently in a commuter town in Essex and have grown tired of its TOWIE ways and the fact we fit in so well.

The problem we’ve found is our budget isn’t very good for London. £700k tops and the most difficult thing that we’re finding is finding a school that doesn’t look like dd should still be an egg before we apply.

We aren’t too fussed about a fancy property on the basis we are hoping to end up living somewhere way more interesting than where we currently do ( currently a completely non diverse area that everyone’s lived here forever kind of thing).
Can anyone suggest the lovely areas they live in /dream of. We could potentially afford more if I worked but I am still trying to figure a way of working and the need to support my even more disorganised h who often forgets to mention he’s in say New York tomorrow for a week (I don’t really mind that overall as his travel is normally booked 24 hours in advance anyway)
We need to be within an hour tops of London (he’s in the city now but anywhere in London is good as can always move jobs) more ideally 45 mins or less with some kind of good school nearby. Dd is in private school at the moment, wouldn’t say no to state but think it’s easier to move private at this stage rather than worry about catchment areas.
Phew long post, apologies.
Help my rather scatty family move please! Or maybe mention we should probably plan this better...

I agree that hampton hill / fulwell are nice

For instance this would have a teddington postcode but I'd say was really hampton hill / fulwell.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-63190174.html

In the catchment of one of the best (results wise) girls's state schools. Hampton Hill junior schoool also has excellent reputation.

Thanks re purley, off the list!
Not fussed about it being a 3 bed terraced in nice area as long as not squished. Also consider nice apartment but has to have spacccceee. We don’t have much at the moment. Bought our current house on a whim pre children. (One visit and 10 minutes later we find ourselves offering to buy)
I grew up in the area I am in now. We’d moved away for a couple of years, then came back here and it’s only after we bought the house I realised oh nooo I’m back here and I actually don’t like it anymore, oops!

Walthamstow

Would you consider a 2 bed Victorian terrace or is that too small?

I second Reigate. You could get a lovely house with your budget & the area has great state & private schools! Can be in London on the train in around 45 minutes, or quicker if you catch it from neighbouring Redhill.

I see people have beaten me to it re Hemel Hempstead, although I suppose you could look at Kings Langley or Berkamsted.

Have you looked at Seveonaks/Orpington....or there are some lovely villages around Westerham/Edenbridge. 2 stations in actual Edenbridge too so an easy commute into London

*sevenoaks even, excuse my typo

Ahhh back to school yesterday and everything kept popping up and I wanted to tear my hair out so I gave myself a wine evening instead of nagging the h about wtf we are going to live.

So have added Reigate. Thanks. Am looking forward to seeing half of the south of England in the coming weeks

Wish we were semi normal sometimes. Not going to happen anytime soon though! Schools haven’t got back to me yet since my emails of Friday so unsure if that’s just them ignoring me or admin is slow.
Thanks for the suggestions. H is wfh today and I will be on this subject all day.
Poor man!

Oh and think we looked at Sevenoaks and can’t remember why it’s not on our list. Will ask h when he’s back from school run.

''Abbey Wood and Woolwich Royal Arsenal have Crossrail coming in December which gives v easy access to Canary Wharf, the West End and Stratford. Both affordable with your budget. Woolwich is more diverse and closer to Greenwich/ Blackheath. Very up and coming. Abbey Wood is more surburban and has a lovely village high street.

Great schools in both areas''

@GoGinny Why on earth are you recommending Woolwich or Abbey Wood?

Even if I had a tight budget, I wouldn't touch Woolwich or Abbey Wood with a barge pole! The schools are absolutely dreadful! The results for most of them are very low for GCSE and A-Level! Some have recently been in failed their Ofsted and were in special measures! The behaviour of the children at school leaving time around Woolwich and Abbey Wood is dreadful! Very loud and unruly! I wouldn't send my children to schools there if even if they were the only schools in the country!

I wouldn’t recommend walking around these unsavoury towns at night alone either because they've changed beyond all recognition over the last ten/fifteen years! I certainly wouldn't describe the high street in Abbey Wood as a ''a lovely village high street''! There was a ram-raid at the Co-op in Abbey Wood in the early hours of the morning in Janauary where hundreds of pounds of stock from the store was stolen. The damaged shop front is still boarded up and still hasn't been repaired! Woolwich town centre's full of vermin that would not seem out of place on the Jeremy Kyle show. I once stepped off the bus near the main town centre square saw a man with his trousers and underwear pulled down urinating in a dustbin in full view and to the dismay of other pedestrians. Lot's of crime in both areas particularly knife/drug/gun crime. At least one stabbing incident a week's reported in the local newspaper! Lot's of VERY ROUGH estates especially the Woolwich Dockyard Estate which was recently said to be one of the most dangerous in London! Many well-known high street retailers have pulled out of Woolwich town centre but don't worry there's plenty of pound shops and other insalubrious little holes selling hair extensions and other cheap tat. The local nightclub shut down because of drug dealing so there's not much to do in Woolwich but worry not because there're more than enough heroin addicts, drunks and let's not forget the gangs to keep you on your toes and if you're lucky you may get a free helicopter ride care of the London’s Air Ambulance service, you will of course need some sort of life threatening trauma to be eligible! Remember, Woolwich's the area where Fusilier Lee Rigby was butchered to death!
Crossrail or not there'll never be enough work for the ever-increasing population of Woolwich so it'll always be a deprived area with a high rate of crime! To be frank, it’s a s**hole!

Please, please don't move to Abbey Wood or Woolwich! Definitely not the areas the type of areas to raise a family! Avoid!

MHodge not too keen on Woolwich then! . I would agree with some of your sentiments but like all areas in London, you have affluence next to deprivation. Shooters Hill/Eltham are close to Woolwich but solid, safe areas with lovely, reasonably priced (for London) houses and good transport links. It wasn't so long ago that Brixton/Peckham/Stratford were no-go areas.

I would also steer clear of Catford, transport is not great & traffic is horrible.
Beckenham is very family oriented, good facilities, plenty of green spaces& some excellent state/private schools, transport is also pretty good, high street has some really good restaurants & bars, good range of supermarkets.
Fairly large stock of Victorian/Edwardian houses & most have fair sized gardens.

We moved out of West Thamesmead (between Woolwich and Abbey Wood) for precisely the reasons listed! There may well be swanky waterside/stationside apartments, but once you're outside the gates it is a very different story. It's an area with huge deprivation and qualified for stamp duty relief as a result last I checked.

I lived there nine years, not in a swanky gated apartment but in a relatively "nice" (for the area) suburban street. My children are still terrified of dogs from our numerous negative experiences there and I lost count of the burned out motorbikes we'd find in the park nearby.

Now very happy in Boxmoor.. in Hemel Hempstead. As with many of the other places listed, it totally depends on which part of town you're in, and Boxmoor is the nice part. More like a village with a friendly village atmosphere and surroundings, but with the convenience of the station, town facilities which aren't that bad at all, and there is absolutely loads to do for families. Everyone I speak to is happy to be living there. It's a well kept secret because the "Hemel Hempstead" location tag keeps house prices low as people assume the worst.

We are in Maidenhead, which will be on Crossrail come December 2019. Quick commute into Paddington at the moment (c. 25 mins at peak time), but Crossrail will offer direct access to many other areas of London (City / Canary Wharf, etc).
Our kids are at a local prep, which I think may have spaces for Y1 this September. I suspect others may have space too. Not sure about state schools though.
Have a look - it is a lovely area to live in with young family, with decent access to London, but right on the edge of some lovely countryside.

Beckenham, Bromley, West Wickham, Crystal Palace. Crystal Palace probably has slightly more of a London feel then the first three, but all are very commutable.

Thanks for these suggestions!
We are currently having our whole house painted to make it look pretty then it’s up for sale and away we go!

Did anyone mention Barnet? Good links into the City, private and state schools and houses in budget

Hither Green is seriously overrated. Sorry HG fans.

We live in Stamford, Lincolnshire -
It's beautiful and you could get an amazing house for £700k! My husband commutes to London. Stamford is on the a1 - 20m drive to Peterborough station then 45m train ride to kings cross.

Somewhere near Oxted? You can get lovely houses like this link. I would imagine it's not terribly exciting, but if you don't mind it's a nice town with a train going into Victoria in 35 mins