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.

Yep your husband has described it well, Beckenham is really good for access to Gatwick airport, just one tram & straight on the Gatwick express.

easy access to London City and Stanstead Airport from Wanstead both of which have regular flights to Ireland. Much more convenient than many places in London for airports in fact.

Southfields, in SW London, ticks all your boxes. Very family friendly, great schools and easily commutable. It has a real community feel with an international flavour and I call our local Marks and Spencer the community centre as you can't go in there without bumping into friends etc. Worth a look.

St Albans really isn’t London - you would end up spending all your weekends there and miss out on what London has to offer.

I don’t know Pinner or High Barnet but I think you want to be in zone 2 really. I would definitely look at East Dulwich/Peckham Rye.

I wouldn’t go to Beckenham if you can afford to be more central

Wanstead to city airport in a cab is 20 mins!

Alexandra Palace, which is near Muswell Hill / Crouch End, and is very green, hilly, and leafy. My favourite part of London (yes I'm biased).

my husband's concern is getting to the airports on public transport from there, as we have lots of family in Ireland that we will hopefully be visiting regularly

This is a nonsense. How often do you see these people now? Are they close relatives/friends? How often do you, realistically, think you'll be seeing them in future - once a year? Maybe twice? I really wouldn't base the decision on where you're going to live on such a minor thing.

My dc works in Fitzrovia and lives in West Ealing . Their flat mate works at Heathrow , they chose it for easy access to both . It’s a nice area and affordable , there seem to be lots of young families.

@juneau if you could only have been privy to my conversation with him around this - it’s absolute madness to base a housing decision around the ease of your family’s biannual trips to and fro the airport. Just absurd.

I’ve been endlessly searching all of these neighborhoods on rightmove! It’s just so difficult to tell, and I simply won’t have the luxury of making a trip over before I move with the girls.

It is absurd! There are airports all around London and regular flights to Ireland from many/most of them. We live north of London, but have access to Luton, Heathrow, Stansted, City, Southend and Gatwick - all within about 90 mins of where we live. If you live in or near London you're never very far from an airport!

One other thing - is your DH's firm not providing you with any assistance regarding this move? When we moved overseas for DH's work we were provided with a relocation consultant to help us sort out where to live.

@juneau they gave him a relocation package (ie a lump sum) which we can use at or discretion. Our thinning was that we could use it towards flights etc and figure out the neighborhood piece ourselves. It’s hard for me to imagine what a relocation specialist would do apart from perhaps driving DH around and sussing our neighborhoods and then calling the council (or whomever) to find out about schools if they found a suitable house...

Am i totally minimizing the benefits of a relocation specialist?

Figuring out the neighbourhood is what those people are good for though! London is so massive (as you're discovering), and the school situation so variable that what you really need is a local who can hold your hand, narrow down your search, do some of the calling round and online searching for you and help to guide you towards neighbourhoods that are going to fit your criteria. All of that will save you hours upon hours of fruitless floundering around. If you already knew London well then I'd agree with your plan to do it yourselves, but neither of you seem to know it at all and your DH is getting bogged down in irrelevancies like visiting relatives in Ireland.

Balham is lovely - lots of green spaces nearby a practical centre with shops / cafes and tube and rail connections. I think the issue will be schools - you really need a cluster of large good schools - where you may get movement.

@juneau haha. “Irrelevancies” will certainly be a term that’s thrown around our house in the coming weeks. You might be surprised to hear this but we both actually have several first cousins in London (buckhurst hill, dulwich, Wimbledon) but they all just tell us to live where they live and seemingly have no knowledge of the areas right next to them! It’s very different from here in NYC where every neighborhood has a very distinct and universally agreed upon reputation.

@ricstar my husband is a big fan of balham!

Ah yes - the subjective views of Londoners! I was living in south London when I met my DH and he was living in north London - I almost wrote him off just based on that

Keep your priorities uppermost in your mind when it comes to your search and try not to get sidetracked. It is all about: your DH's commute, schools, and a pleasant and relatively safe area to live. Everything else is far less important. If you allow other stuff to distract you from these central points then you'll never find anywhere to live.

Here's a silly thing
use street view to check out the high streets of the bits of town you are interested in to see where "feels" comfortable

• Blackheath Village Tranquil Vale end not that is has been tranquil for decades
• Dulwich around the Horniman
• Greenwich around the Cutty Sark
• Battersea by the corner of the park

etc see the shops, the buildings etc and see where you'll feel happy

Herne Hill has a lovely distinctive high street and a strong local community keeping it vibrant. Fantastic secondary school (Charter North) and a range of good primary schools (Bessemer/ St Jude's / Judith Kerr). Trains direct to Victoria and a 15 min walk to the tube.

North and east London are cheaper.

London really is a collection of small towns / villages and everyone prefers their own! We lived in Balham pre kids and moved less than 2 miles down the road but are now in the entirely different village of Herne Hill. It is amazing the number of people in each who know nothing at all about the other...

St Albans is out of town. You can walk anywhere in London. Do you want multicultural, it's much less segregated here, great to be close to world food and buzz. read ofsted inspector reports for schools to get some idea. Most of them are ok, no shootings. Look at Walthamstow, haringey, Barnet.