Help us find good place to buy house under £350K

[msbhatti]

Hi there,

We are renting flat from last 5 years, Rather than spending more dead money in rents, we were thinking of buying atleast 2 bedroom house (not flat/apartments) under £350K in a good locality that's safe to live in, commutable from central London under an 1 hour and 10 minutes, and has good affinity for schools (my our son is 2 years old now).

We have checked online and shortlisted few areas like

Hemel Hempstead
Harlow
Cheshunt

Barking & Dagenham
Thurrock
Romford

Kent Areas like : Dartford, Grays, Tilbury, Erith (or any recommend in surroundings of these areas)

Crawley
High Wycombe

Farnborough or Bracknell
Slough

Personally we love Sutton, Carshalton, Wallington area but unfortunately those areas are out of our budget.

Would people living in and around London/Greater London advise of some good, safe, commutable areas to buy a house?

Many thanks!

Some grammar areas have better non-selective schools than most of the country.
If you say so

but the financial arms race of tutoring is an extra cost that will offset the train fare criteria of the OP

@ListeningQuietly

I can’t see the logic. Since the non-selective schools are excellent, you don’t need to even try for a grammar and just apply for the non-selective school. If you do apply for a grammar, tutoring is not obligatory although some parents might spend 1k or so.

CBA to get into a Grammar counties debate

but the fact that Kent, Lincolnshire and Bucks (the only three full grammar counties) have overall results in line with everywhere else shows that Grammars are not a panacea

and the cost of tutoring see threads passim ad nauseam all over MN should not be ignored

OPs kid does not start school for another two years
a lot can change in that time

Well, political views are one thing and parents’ preferences with regards to their children’s education are another.

Some grammar areas are very academically successful. Bucks is very high performing actually. I’m in Sutton LA which is a London Borough not a county but 1/3 of our schools are grammars and 2/3 are not selective. GCSE pass rates and Attainment 8 are the highest in England.
Both LAs have above average progress scores at 0.18 and 0.38 respectively. So being grammar areas is clearly not detrimental.

Thanks @Flamerouge which areas of old harlow you recommend ?