Tell me about St Albans (or Sevenoaks)

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We are looking to move out of London to the glorious commuter belt and have narrowed it down to St Albans or Sevenoaks. I have visited both and they seem lovely.

My preference is St A as north of London is nearer family, DH is leaning towards Sevenoaks.

What I particularly want to know is what the best places to live in each are, and which areas to avoid? We want to live within walking distance of the station if poss.

There are some lovely propeties, around st.albans city station, but as it is so central you could live further away and then bike it there and back.

St Albans is lovely, but VERY competitive in terms of house buying - it's as expensive as London and at the moment houses get snapped up as soon as they come on the market. Also, parking and driving around drives me insane - it feels quite over crowded tbh.

sevenoaks is v expensive. i lived about 15 miles away when growing up. not sure what schools are like now, but used to be good.

if commuting into london, parking at sevenoaks station is also v expensive & hard to come by.

Thanks for your responses everyone. We would definitely look to walk or cycle to the station.

We can get a bit more for our money than where we are currently. Competition in the housing market is a concern, but we are in rented so are in a good position as buyers, and also won't have a whole chain collapse on us if it goes wrong.

Have you got children or are you planning to have any soon? If so, proximity to a good school may well be far more important than an extra few minutes walk or cycle to the train station!

I moved from London to St Albans at the end of '08. I would never move back to London now, it's lovely here.

Would you prefer to be in the town or would one of the villages(with a station on the same line as St Albans City)appeal?

Do not move to a village if your dcs are approaching secondary school transfer!

Have one DD who is only 5.5 months, so my main concern at the moment is limiting the commute as far as possible, and availability of childcare. I have also been looking at schools though, as I am sure the next 4 years will fly by.

DH is an urbanite and getting him out of London has been enough of a struggle, so we are looking to be fairly central rather than in a village. Having said that though, there are a few villages with stations which do appeal to me BallpointPen

If you go for St A and don't want to move again before your dd starts school, you do need to choose your area carefully. There is a real shortage of places in some of the city centre primary schools - there has been a bit of a surge in families moving in or not being able to afford to move on from the property they bought before dcs. Lots of families living in some of the lovely central conservation areas have experienced real problems in getting a place. But on the whole most of the schools are very good.

So I would probably recommend the Fleetville or Bernards Heath areas which are both an easy walk to the station... and both have their own primary schools.

I know nothing about Sevenoaks...

St. Albans is a lovely place in that it has some great shops, good restaurants, pubs, etc. It also has one of the worst traffic systems I have ever seen in my life and whenever I (rarely thankfully) have to drive through it I generally want to kill someone by the time I've gotten to the other side. Its quite over-crowded in my opinion and over-priced but that will mostly be due to the fact that Thameslink (when working) gets into London quite quickly.

We used to live in St Albans but moved a bit further out 4 years ago. It is a lovely city with good shops and amenities but the traffic jams and the difficulty parking drove me loopy in the end. It used to take me 45-60 mins to get from just outside St A to the centre (3 miles) in the morning. Same again in the evening. Not such a problem if you're planning to live in the centre and walk or cycle everywhere though.

Thanks again everyone. We are hoping to be central so we don't need to use the car often (in fact we don't have a car at all at the moment).

If you live close to the centre you really will be fine without a car. I am always puzzled about the alleged traffic problems but then I usually walk if I am going into the centre. If I am going further afield and take the car I rarely drive via the main shopping area - I know all the back doubles or take the ring road.

Obv some people work in the town centre or choose to drive in to do their shopping but a lot of the traffic IMO is due to people trying to drive straight across via the centre when they don't need to...

I hate the traffic problems in St Albans! I would avoid at weekends and rush hour if poss.

Would you consider renting before you buy. It could be a costly mistake.

I would suggest Harpenden. Lovely, open and green with great primary and secondary schools. Excellent transport links too. Only a short drive to St Albans.

Can I ask what your budget is (roughly) as that will really determine which side of 'close to the station' you are IYKWIM.

The area around Breakspear and the Camp area behind are an easy walk to the station. As you go over the bridge towards town the couple of streets on the left are residential and also a few minutes walk to both station and town centre. However, personally, I wouldn't want to live there.

Much, much nicer the other side of station rd, from Clarence up one side and Lemsford up the other and everything in between. This is, IMO, the nicest pasrt of St Albans but very pricey. But here, you could walk to the station and town plus be 5min walk to the park.

Things have changed a bit, so our house purchase plan is on hold for the time being. We may consider renting in St Albans (as hugebelly suggests), or we may try to find another rental place where we are at the moment, due to the upheaval of moving childminders etc.

We are not really bothered about being near to the city centre, just the station, so we would be happy to live on the other side of the station iyswim. Thanks everyone