I have 2 years to come to terms with moving from my lovely area of London. Please help me find somewhere else in London that I will like just as much!

[IlanaK]

I currently live in Marylebone and love it. For financial reasons we will have to move sometime in the next two years. Until now I have not even been able to entertain the idea of living elsewhere, but now I have accepted it.

I need help to start looking at other areas of London. Here is my list of what I would like to have in an area. I am aware I will have to compromise somewhere as we need somewhere cheaper than we currently are.

1 good transport. I am used to access to loads of tubes, buses and even trains.

2 being able to walk to everything. We got rid of our car. Currently I walk to the leisure centre, drama classes, parks etc

3 Good parks and playgrounds within walking distance

4 Good local food shops - not just supermarkets

5 farmer's market

6 villagey feel

7 cycling distance to dh work (I realise this might be the one to go). He works in the city and currently cycles there.

1. Easy transport back to this area to see my mother

Schools are not an issue as we home educate.

I know already that I cannot afford any of the areas bordering where we currently are (St John's Wood, etc). So I think I want to look at areas completely different.

We are currently in a flat but want a house with a garden. 3 bedrooms.

Soooooo....not asking much am I ? Any suggestions gratefully received!

x-posted

East Dulwich sounds great. I have just looked and houses are affordable. The big question is: could I actually live without a tube line??

Well, I actually live without a tube line .

And I actually lived without a tube line when I was in Stokey and Tulse Hill before that.

TBH, I hate the tube (am claustrophobic) and didn't travel on it for years and years (still don't if there's a choice).

Have survived for 23 years in London though!

You pay an enormous premium for a tube station when you live in London, don't you?

Honestly, if you are used to being central and having London at your feet, you will struggle without a tube line. The tube doesn't always work brilliantly but it is so much better than standing on a cold/wet platform waiting for a train that only runs every 30 mins out of rush hour listening to announcements about points failures. The tube is so much faster, cheaper and, big plus in winter, warmer than overground and it just opens up London for you. Plus you don't spend 10 minutes idling on the tracks outside London Bridge waiting for a platform to clear on the tube (something that seemed to happen every day to me in the bad old days of tube-less living).

doesn't anyone get buses anymore? i know they're not exactly buggy-friendly so maybe that's why, but during the last couple of years of my time in london i took the bus so much more often than the tube because i was sick of fighting my way through megacrowds to get into stations/getting shut out of stations for half an hour at a time in rush hour/teetering along the edge of a crowded platform with people knocking my glasses off in the crush etc. admittedly i was child-free then but there are tons of buses and they go everywhere.

Actually, I take buses way more than tubes. But generally for shorter journeys. If you are going far, a bus can take forever compared with a tube. So the further out of central london I am , the less likely I would uses buses to come back here. Though I would uses them locally I assume.

Wow! We are in the same boat - we're currently in St Johns Wood and have to move before summer 2010. I'd been focussing on Battersea and found a great 4 bedroom house there for 500,000.

But now I am liking the sound of East Dulwich. Can anyone in the know tell me where exactly in East Dulwich we should try and be close to? (Took me a long time to figure out that different parts of Battersea are vastly different in feel etc and if I could get a head start that would be great...)

East finchley is horrid, I used to live there! Nooooo

but you've ruled out kilburn anyway

i guess you won't be going norf

Hi Bogey - East Dulwich on the whole is fairly lovely. There are large council estates on Dog Kennel Hill, and at the very far end of Lordship Lane (forest hill end) but they are nice quiet estates. The supposedly smarter end of East Dulwich is nearer to the more expensive Dulwich Village. The supposedly less smart end is nearer to East Dulwich station and the shops, but it's still really lovely there.

If it were me, I would want to be slightly nearer to Peckham Rye Station, with an SE15 postcode, rather than in SE22 itself. You're just as near to all the shops, toddler groups etc on Lordship Lane, but also easy distance from Peckham Pulse, and nearer to town. That part of Peckham is thoroughly lovely and you will get a bit more for your money - don't let its undeserved reputation put you off.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-22129199.html?pageNumber=1&backToListURL=%2Fpr operty-for-sale%2Ffind.html%3FsearchType%3DSALE%26locationIdentifier%3DOUTCODE%255E2315%26radius%3D0 .0%26displayPropertyType%3Dhouses%26minBedrooms%3D4%26maxBedrooms%3D%26minPrice%3D400000%26maxPrice% 3D500000%26maxDaysSinceAdded%3D%26includeSSTC%3Dtrue%26_includeSSTC%3Don%26x%3D31%26y%3D12%26sortByP riceDescending%3D%26primaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26secondaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26oldDisplayProp ertyType%3D%26oldPrimaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26oldSecondaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26newHome%3D%26r etirement%3D%26auction%3Dfalse%26partBuyPartRent%3Dfalse&propertyType=houses&locationIdentifier=OUTC ODE^2315&radius=0.0&maxPrice=500000&minPrice=400000&minBeds=4 sample

oh pants....

Thanks Paddington. That's v helpful! Link didn't work (even cut and pasted) but gives me a good idea of the area. Think we might pop over there tomorrow to take a look...

operty-for-sale%2Ffind.html%3FsearchType%3DSALE%26locationIdentifier%3DOUTCODE%255E2315%26radius%3D0 .0%26displayPropertyType%3Dhouses%26minBedrooms%3D4%26maxBedrooms%3D%26minPrice%3D400000%26maxPrice% 3D500000%26maxDaysSinceAdded%3D%26includeSSTC%3Dtrue%26_includeSSTC%3Don%26x%3D31%26y%3D12%26sortByP riceDescending%3D%26primaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26secondaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26oldDisplayProp ertyType%3D%26oldPrimaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26oldSecondaryDisplayPropertyType%3D%26newHome%3D%26r etirement%3D%26auction%3Dfalse%26partBuyPartRent%3Dfalse&propertyType=houses&locationIdentifier=OUTC ODE^2315&radius=0.0&maxPrice=500000&minPrice=400000&minBeds=4 paddington's link

Blameitonthebogey - I love St John's Wood - how sad for you to have to move from there too. We can both move to Dulwhich and reminise together! Seriously though - if you do find anything out, let me know too. I am happy to help you with areas as well.

whoops, sorry, serves me right for trying to show off!

Ilana - in the past, Time Out Mag has done cover stories on the 'Best Urban Village in London' (no idea if it is an annual issue). They list all sorts of criteria - good local shops instead of chains, parks, transport, crime stats, etc.

I recall that past winners have been Wanstead and Walthamstow, but know there have been others I simply can't remember. They also list runners-up, and why those places are appealing.

Might be worth googling to see what you can find - or maybe even call Time Out offices to see if they have back issues you can purchase. Or maybe a library would keep archive copies of the magazine?

IlanaK - bumping this in the hope that you are still around. We finally got off the sofa and made it over the East Dulwich yesterday to take a look around. (We managed to chose the coldest day of the year to trudge around with small baby but hey ho.)

So it is nice. Lordship Lane is lovely and I can see why people rave about it. But I have some reservations about it being the place for me. My thoughts are (good and bad);
Whilst Lordship lane is great, it's kind of one road that runs down the middle surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of suburban streets with all-the-same kind of houses. If you can find a house which is near to Lordhsip Lane then this might be ok but otherwise it really, really does feel like suburbia (which is no bad thing but I am so used to the city that it's a step too far for me).
No tube is ok - because it really was an easy trip on the train. But - and again, it's a ridiculous psychological thing - the hardest adjustment to me would be the lack of easily available black cabs. We were freezing and miles from the next house we had booked to view and it just occurred to me how much we rely on them to move easily about the city at the moment.

I'm also quite surprised that our money doesn't buy us massively more there than e.g. wimbledon or battersea both of which we have considered and like (and both of which seem better connected).

Hope this doesn't offend anyone who lives there - we thought it was really lovely but so very different to where we are now and I guess I was kind of hoping for similar but further out therefore a bit cheaper (if that makes sense).

So we're going back to the drawing board again. How is your search coming on?

Lived in Walthamstow, which is nice and upcoming (prices have crashed quite a bit), but if I had to choose is either Wanstead or Epping, which have a nice villagey feel, especially Epping.