Nice family areas in (outer) London for 600k 3bed house and good schools?

[AnnaVad]

I would like to ask for advice on nice family safe areas in London / nearest commuter belt.
We are looking to buy a quality 3-bed house with driveway & decent garden - budget up to 550-600k.
Both work in central London (Euston/ Farringdon/ city) and have plans to have kids quite soon, so looking for good state schools catchment areas and nice parks.
Would be great to have a nice high street and commute to central London no longer than 30-40min (up to 70min max door to desk), preferably underground, but train could be ok.

Basically looking for something "Villagey", as described earlier in other thread as - not having to leave your area to do things eg lots of places to shop, entertain & eat & green space very close by, [but also within daily commutable distance to central London].

We are quite flexible in terms of directions and have no specific wider family/friends restrictions, but South-West or North would be preferable I guess...

• Sutton / Cheam (tricky to find the "right" part of it for the commute + decent environment?)
• Carshalton (pricey?)
• Epsom (a bit longer commute?)
• Kingston / Surbiton / Teddington (pricey?)
• Walton-on-Thames (further and further away)
• Barnet (any options within this budget?)
• Ruislip (haven't really properly checked yet)

On the east side we might be considering:

• Chingford (not too many good schools?)
• Chigwell / Loughton / Epping
• Woodford
• Upminster

Any feedback on those areas and where exactly to search within those or anything to stay away from?
Any other nice areas we've missed?
Any specific schools within those to keep an eye on?

We have just recently started looking and are not in a rush, I would like to take my time choosing the home where we will raise our kids.
We are planning to buy next summer and it is already quite difficult to find the right quality/money balance and understand where to focus our search so would really appreciate your advice!

What about St Albans? Is it too far out? It's got good shopping, leisure facilities etc and 2 train stations, good schools as well I think.

Hampton or Hampton Hill (near Teddington) would get you a 3 bed for 600k in an OK area.
Good primary schools, bad secondary.
Ok commute if work is near Waterloo (40ish minutes from Fulwell station). If you need to get to The City probably too long for your requirments

These are both Hampton Hill
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-83169128.html
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-73261249.html

With the Tring suggestion, it's a lovely village but the station is miles from the village so adds a lot of time to the commute... sadly, as I also considered Tring before.

Poor Hampton High, not that bad. Average, I'd say. I'd probably be more worried about the smell from the treatment plant.

@Hellomumsne tring station is 1.5 miles from right at the centre of tring? Its not the centre town but it's not far and town is only small! It would depend where you live in tring as to which side you are but it doesn't cause people who live there an issue and a lot of extra time.

Tring is our local station (although we do have to drive there as we live in one of the surrounding villages)

@avocuddl Thanks for this option – will have a look, however I might be not ready to be so far yet, even though the commute look fine in terms of time.

@JoJoSM2 Thanks for your comments. Yes, I guess Ham/Twickenham might be just a bit of a challenge in terms of budget for now, not sure if this would work for us at this point. Will definitely need to check out the rest of the areas mentioned to see what I like most

@fussychica Thanks for this, will go to check Ruislip as well. Could you comment on how it is for schools?

@UncomfortableSilence Thanks for the notes on Hornchurch!

@OpposableThumbs2 Hitchin looks nice, will need to check how these 38min would really work for us :)

@catanddogmake6 Thanks for these options – all look nice and commute seems to be quite reasonable. Unfortunately from a quick search I wasn’t able to find anything inspiring within our budget, but still worth visiting to see what these areas look like.

@peachypetite Chingford is a great option for us in terms of commute and budget and we’ve recently visited it and really liked it, Highams Park should be good too. However my concern was that I was able to find only a couple of schools in the area and I wonder what are the chances of getting into the good one? Would you know how are Chingford and Highams Parks in terms of schools (both primary & secondary)?

@RuffleCrow We’ve walked around Loughton and it seemed quite nice, the high street is pretty convenient, however the Debden side didn’t look as good for us, and the options within our budget mostly included something which I guess we ex-council or around these sort of areas... Would you say Loughton / Debden areas would be good for schools? We might be even looking at Theydon Bois or Chigwell but I suspect both would be quite pricey as well..

@Propertyofhood St.Albans could be a good option – will go to have a look and see what we can get for our budget.

@Tulips2lips Thanks for your comments! Looks ok, but as you mentioned commute might a bit of a stretch..

@Hellomumsne @PrayingandHoping Tring could be a good option, but I guess personally for me a 15min-bus to the station would be not a very viable option and I don’t see myself driving there daily either.. I would hope if we do move so far out, at least we could have a much better house option and closeness to the station and I see it is not something we can get there for our budget, as most options coming up in the search are to the west of the Tring village centre which is further away from the station…

OP, when looking at schools, the website below is a good for academic and other stats.

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/compare-schools

In terms of getting into schools, local authorities publish 'Applying for School' booklets that say from what distance children were admitted in the last 3 years. Some LAs (e.g. Sutton) have an interactive tool where you put in the post code and it throws up the local schools and distances + admission distances for 3 years.