Moving from NYC....in desperate need of neighborhood recs!

[MauraMC]

My husband and I, and our two daughters (7.5 and 2) are moving from Brooklyn to London in the coming months (April/May). My husband will be working in fitzrovia and, despite having lots of cousins in London to offer advice, we are having quite a time narrowing down the neighborhood search. We are ideally looking for a commute that’s under 50 mins for my husband, great state schools for my daughter who will be starting year 3 in September, and a small house with 2-3 beds. We want all the things everyone wants I suppose - leafy, access to parks, bustling high street, safe. Trying to keep the rent under 2750. Any ideas? We’ve been all over the map, literally and figuratively, and I’m going to have to rely on my husband - who is moving over first - to ultimately make the decision.

Greenwich/blackheath sounds ideal for you

Thanks for the reply, Lucy. Those areas are relatively commutable to fitzrovia? My sense of geography is abysmal at best, so trying to parse the map of London’s transport makes my head spin.

What type of feel do you want? Cool and hip with nice restaurants or family friendly more posh areas? You’ll be ok with that rental budget in lots of areas but it depends what you want and also availability of school places

Above all, I want walkabilty and a neighborhood feel, as I’ll be home with my 2 year old for at least some time. I wouldn’t say I need cool/hip or posh - just good schools, family friendly, lots of shops. The neighborhood we are in in Brooklyn is very down to earth, family oriented.

Oh, and good parks! Though there certainly doesn’t seem to be a paucity of those in London.

Well you definitely don't want to live in Fitzrovia itself - it's a concrete, ugly, soulless part of London with hardly any parks and most definitely not leafy. I would rule out most of central London tbh, it's just really busy and crowded. Greenwich and Blackheath are very nice, but I have no idea about schools. However, here in the UK schools in desirable areas, particularly good ones, tend to be oversubscribed and if you're only moving in April/May you'll have missed the application deadline for Sept, so you'll have to apply late and see where you can get a space, which is likely to be a stressful process.

With regard to commute, the best thing to do is look at which tube lines run into Fitzrovia (i.e. Piccadilly, Northern, Metropolitan, Circle, Hammersmith and City), and then search along those lines for neighbourhoods that fit your criteria.

You also have Euston, which is a mainline station that opens up areas of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire to you. A 50-min commute would allow you to move right out of London and there are many nice towns that might suit you, like Bushey, Kings Langley, Berkhamsted, etc: London Midland Rail Route Map

Thanks so much! No, we definitely aren’t considering fitzrovia as a possible neighborhood, or anything really in central London. As for schools, I thought the January deadline was only for reception year? Also, don’t classes get bigger in year 3, so spaces tend to open up? Is it truly that hard to get a spot in a good school? It’s very different here so I’m having a hard time figuring it out. Do we look for school openings first in April/May (for September) or do we settle on a neighborhood? This part is very murky for me

East Dulwich. Very family friendly. Dulwich park and Peckham Rye very close. Pretty much anywhere seems commutable from zone 2 within 40 mins.

Greenwich is now on the Thameslink line which goes into Kings Cross so a great commute to Fitzrovia. Blackheath is doable too but he'd need to change at London Bridge. Greenwich is apparently a nightmare for schools. Brockley is another good option.

I would look at the overseas board for school places support - are you British or American? Just in terms of explaining the system!
You can’t applybfor a place until you have an address, and will need to be able to prove that’s your addres especially for an over subscribed school - so signed lease and etc
You must educate a child at 5+ but that can be home educated, state provision, or private (fee paying)
In London fee paying doesn’t mean you can get in any easier, and entrance exams are required for all private schools
State provision quality varies hugely, but the budget you have would in principle get you in an area where you’d expect schools to be good anyway.
You could look at it also a little differently/ committing into Euston for your husband would be v easy- you could then look at places like St Albans which are everything you’ve asked for- but I wonder after Brooklyn if nice would seem a bit pedestrian and actually iOS be better being in London central in which case I’d also have suggested greenwich, or Barnes village, both more expensive areas.
Could also consider Wandsworth for more urban butvstill gentrified feel.
East is more hip, but a bit younger so shorditch etc

Id fly over ASAP and just head to some areas to suss them out. Ideally without the kids!!

Classes in state schools are a max of 30 children and many schools have two or three classes of 30 per year. In popular schools these tend to be full from the outset, although of course DC do move schools and so spaces do open up from time to time. If your DD is 7.5 now then she'll be going into year 4 (or will she be 7.5 when you move, or in Sept 2019?) Basically, if she was born in the year between 1 Sept 2010 - 31 Aug 2011 then she will be going into year 4 in Sept 2019. If she was born the following year then she'll be going into year 3. Do ask around on the local boards though if you decide on an area outside London, as many attractive commuter towns have good, but unfortunately also seriously over-subscribed state school systems.

And yes, you definitely need an address in order to apply for a state school place - that means a signed rental agreement, bills to that address in your name, registered for council tax, etc. Schools have 'catchment areas' and you will be prioritised for places in schools that your address falls within the catchment area for, however, if those schools are full then the next nearest school with space will be allocated to you - and in some cases that can be further than walking distance - it really depends where you end up and how full the schools are.

I second Greenwich. The original and the best..

Schools will be the hardest part of the move - TBH, the really good schools will be full, so you are unlikely to get your DD into one unless you live on the doorstep and get lucky that someone leaves. Fortunately, there is more chance of that happening in London, where there is much more movement, particularly towards the top end of primary schools (as families decide to move out to the Home Counties for secondary schools)

You could check out "Nappy Valley", places like Wandsworth, Balham, Clapham, Tooting, Wimbledon. You would be able to find a lovely property for your budget. If you are interested in researching more, there's a great website called NappyValleyNet that is like Mumsnet but for locals of the area (and less swearing )

East Dulwich would be ace if you can get into one of the good primary schools eg Goose Green. It’s not on the tube but overground trains are quick to Victoria (then easy for tube). ED has a nice community feel - lots of kids groups, mummy yoga, heaps of cafes and restaurants and you’re very near Peckham Rye which is a huge park, as well as others. However ED is not v diverse (whereas Peckham is).

Also look at north London - crouch end?

Or Little Venice which is North west ish but quite central.

Friend of mine wrote a book called Finding Myself in Britain about her experience as an American expat here. She describes the differences in culture using a year as a narrative - eg what’s different about school starting or Christmas etc. You might like to give it a read.

I’d also wonder if an agency could help you with relocation and do some of the hard work for you re researching schools/rental properties etc?

Ah thanks everyone, this is all such valuable information which I simply couldn’t glean from google searching! It seems like, yes, my daughter would be year 4 in September as her bday is May 2011. So if we were to start letting a property in April/May, we would likely just find ourselves on the waiting list for a good placement for September. Nightmanagerfan (no idea if there’s a way to tag someone by their username, if so let me know), east dulwich was actually a place we were considering already. We found the below property, which looks to be within a very close distance of an outstanding primary school (fairlawn), which rightmove lists as “not oversubscribed.” Would i be naive to think, in this instance, that were we to rent this property, she would get a spot in this school?

It’s all so stressful! My head could explode!

Oh and here’s the property to which I was referring above:

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-69127150.html

we would likely just find ourselves on the waiting list for a good placement for September

Not quite.... Once you have moved and made an application for a school, you should be offered a place at a school. Ideally this would be one of your choice, but if there isn't a space, you would be offered a place at the nearest school in your borough that has a space. This may not be the best school, shall we say.

You would, however, be able to stay on the waiting list for a school that you would prefer, and as soon as a place comes up the person at the top of the waiting list would be offered the place. The criteria for prioritising people on the waiting list varies, but in your situation (without siblings already attending a school, for example) is most likely to be distance. It doesn't make any difference how long you have been on the list - if you move into a closer property to the school than the current #1 on the list, you would become #1 yourself. But someone else could move into an even closer property and you yourself would be pushed down into #2.

Spaces can come up at any point during the school year, so you might be lucky and either be able to enroll in your preferred school from the outset, or not wait very long to be able to move there. But you might also never get a place at your preferred school if you never get to #1 on the wait list when a space becomes available.

Does that make sense? It's not the most straightforward system to understand...

If you want to tag people here put a @ in front of their user name - like this @MauraMC

Have a look at Wanstead, East London. I work in Fitzrovia and is about 35 mins door to door on the central line. It's a really lovely place, very village feeling with lots of green spaces, excellent state and private schools, a thriving high street and a very strong and passionate community. Our local playground renovation was recently crowd funded for example. It's a fantastic place to bring up a family.

Take the Rightmove schools info with a big pinch of salt...

Using Fairlawn school as an example, you can see from Lewisham's admissions info that last year it had 60 places for reception aged children, plus a further 30 places for reception aged children as a "bulge year" (in other words, the school has expended by one class to accomodate more children, but it's not necessarily a permanent expansion). It received 400 applications, of which 32 were siblings of children already at the school - so they get priority admission. The others were admitted on the basis of distance, and the furthest away the 60th child to be offered a place lived was 368.91 metres and the 90th child to be offered a place lived 820.00 metres away from the school

I can't add much about various areas as I commute into London from over an hour away but I'd definitely recommend downloading the apps

'Tube Map' (for underground/subway)
'Train Times' (for overground trains)

You'll need them once you're here anyway and they'll help with figuring out commuting times as you can easily plug in the details of your potential local stations and figure out the commute times to Fitzrovia.

East Dulwich and surrounds is a great family friendly area... parks (Dulwich and peckham rye), woods, Horniman museum, cinema absolutely tonnes of kids things to do and loads of great places to eat out. Transport is not as good maybe as other areas as not on the tube but it’s zone 2 so not far out.
The house you linked to is on a lovely road but likely be a little too far from Fairlawn to get an inyear place as they prioritise on distance and the catchment is v small. Most primaries in the area are good (eg Goodrich, Heber, Harris) though, although I think you can be placed anywhere within the borough technically, but there does seem to be some movement as you move up primaries in this area as people move area or out of London. Good luck and please DM me if you end up moving to ED, happy to give you some pointers!

@MauraMc hi, I would also have a look at Beckenham it has two stations that go to Victoria (Kenthouse & Beckenham Junction) it’s very family friendly some beautiful parks also has lots of activities for children, a good leisure centre/library/cinema & a fairly varied high street with lots of excellent restaurants/coffee bars good range of supermarkets.
Schools are excellent as well, if you wanted any more info feel free to message me.

St Johns Wood. Very nice area and close to regent's park. Commutable, although would require one tube change as it is on the jubilee line.