Where do you think we should move to?

[savvysquirrel]

Hey everyone!

We currently live in Beckenham and absolutely love it here, but we really want to buy a house and therefore need to move further out as we could only afford a flat where we are now. We are fairly open to most places and have pretty much been looking all around the M25 at commuter towns that will get us into a London mainline station within 30-40 mins. We both like mid sized towns which have some nice restaurants and coffee shops, a few shops like Boots, Holland & Barrett, WH Smiths, etc. and some smaller independent ones but not bigger high street stores (in Beckenham we'd normally go to Bromley for that). We're also both really active so would like somewhere that has some nice parks for running and a good gym. Our budget is £450-500k and we're ideally looking for a 3 bedroom house.

Other than Beckenham examples of other towns we like are Berkhamsted (although I don't think our budget will stretch very far there), Godalming (we haven't visited in person yet but on paper it looks good), Hitchin (this is a bit bigger than what we're ideally looking for but we got a good vibe from it when we visited).

We would love to hear your suggestions of other towns you think we might like

Bump

Have you looked at Woking? 25 mins to London on a fast train, nice countryside a drive away. Decent schools etc. Not as posh as Guildford or Godalming but a bit more like London in its demographics.

@formerlondonlass - I've looked at Woking online but I think it might be a bit too big for us even though the commute time is really good. We prefer smaller towns with a bigger town nearby to go shopping in.

Hertford is lovely and two stations North and East. Ware also nice, smaller but less frequent trains. Bishops Stortford maybe worth a look, Sawbridgeworth but that's maybe too small. Further out Saffron Walden is lovely but quite the trek into London unless you work by Liverpool Street.

You may have to compromise on your commute. Prices in commuter towns have gone crazy.

Haywards heath?

@Penguinpandarabbit Thank you for all the suggestions! I was actually looking at Hertford online last night and had a look around the town on Google street view and it looks really nice! The trains are a little bit slower than some of the other places we have looked at but we could be willing to compromise if the right house comes up.

We visited Bishops Stortford recently as I'd seen other people compare it to Hitchin online and it was ok we didn't not like it but we preferred Hitchin over Bishops Stortford. We also went on a weekday so might not have seen it in its best light as it seemed a bit too quiet.

I've been to Saffron Walden before and it is lovely but the main issue is the train station is outside of the town so would require us to drive or cycle to the station. I'll check out Ware and Sawbridgeworth as I haven't looked into them.

@GregoryPeckingDuck we are willing to compromise but would more so on the house or the commute time rather than the town itself as we would prefer to live in a nice town and buy a house that needs more work rather than buy a lovely house in a town that doesn't suit us.

@KitKat1985 Thanks for the suggestion I haven't looked at Haywards Heath and my initial reaction was going to be that it looks like it's too far out, but just looked at the train times and they're similar to Hertford so I'll look into it further. Thanks :-)

I think you really need to start by deciding a maximum commute time and whether you are willing to split commute driving/bus/train first. You haven’t mentioned where in London you are commuting to-this May help narrow it down to a specific train line for example. You can live a lot further out but get there in the same amount of time if you are on a fast train line.

Also check cost of tickets, can be several thousand pa from ones further out.

@GregoryPeckingDuck the ideal commute time would be approx. 1 hour - 1 hour 15 mins but that would be from door to door. We'd like to get into a mainline station within about 40 mins if possible and live within 1 mile walking distance from the station. At the moment I work near Camden and my husband works near Warren Street, but the reason I hadn't specified was because I might be changing my job in the near future so at the moment that part is a little unknown I could therefore potentially optimise my commute once we've moved if I end up changing jobs.

@Penguinpandarabbit the annual season tickets of the towns we've looked at so far vary from about £4.5k to £5.5k per year.

£10K a year after tax on train tickets - that would go a long way on a bigger mortgage and living more centrally - or paying off a mortgage quicker?

@another20 we wouldn’t want to live any closer than we already are and where we are right now we could only afford to buy a 2 bed flat. Therefore we’d prefer to live further out in a bigger house and pay more for the commute than stay where we are and pay the same amount for a flat. We’d still only be able to get the same sized mortgage no matter where we live. But we can afford the extra £2-3k more a year on our commute. It’s about finding the right balance between property size, commute time, location, and cost.

Yes I understand - my wrong assumption was that there are zero travel costs if you live further in.

Think that you just need to decide which of the overground lines you want to come in on and where to......buy look closely at the journey timetables. You don’t want to be spending the same amount of time on the tube after. From your current job positions it looks like you need to be coming in from N, NW or NE?

Do you want to go further out than the tube?

@another20 Yes at the moment coming into Kings Cross/London St. Pancras/Euston would be good. We’ve also looked at some towns that come into Liverpool Street especially if they stop at Stratford too as I can get the overground to Camden Road from there.

Yes we’ve been looking further out at towns such as Hitchin, Berkhamsted, Letchworth, Bishops Stortford, Godalming, and Billericay.

The Hertford East Line goes to Stratford in the morning and back in the evening.

Hitchin is lovely,

Godalming is lovely but I think the fastest train is 45/50 mins and I’m not sure how many houses there are in your price range- it is not really more affordable alternative to London. Somewhere coming into Euston/king x would make more sense with where you work and also better value. A friend commutes from Hitchen and loves it.

Looks like there’s a lot of positive comments about Hitchin which is good as that’s pretty high up on our list at the moment. We’ve visited the town twice now and really liked it, just haven’t found the right property there yet.