Buying a House in London

BitterAndTwisted

Joolsybools is right. If you've got long-term plans to raise a family here you'll be selecting an area to live in based on the quality of the schools or saving to send your kids to private schools like all the other middle-class high-salary earners hoping to get in before the next wave of gentrification. N17 missed all that in the last three booms, so maybe it's ripe for the next one. Haha

If I was planning to raise a family (I'm not) I'd be thinking about commuting from somewhere nice and peaceful down in Kent,

RacyRed

joolsybools wrote: »

I think you are mad to consider living in London and raising a family here when you don't have much of a clue about it...

If you don't have to, don't saddle yourself with crippling London costs.

Average expenditure on housing is about £1,000pm
Vast majority of homes are leasehold and have very high service charges.
Insurance and other costs are 3 times higher.
Food costs more.
Congestion charge and traffic jams.
Minimum 1 hour commutes, just to go a couple of miles, 3 or 4 hours a day if you want to live somewhere offering "respectable"
Pollution.
Overcrowding (everywhere and on everything! - Central line in the rush hour *shudders*)
Security threats and armed poice all over the place.

If you are young and want a taste of life then go for it but most people thinking of raising a family move OUT of London if they can

Multiply your budget by 3 and you could maybe afford the quality of life I bet you are currently enjoying.

GDB2222

These have been suggested in the past:
East Dulwich
Peckham
Mitcham Common
Finsbury Park

I suspect that Finsbury has already come up a fair bit, and I don't know the other areas.

RacyRed

HERE ya go, 3 bed properties within 3 miles of central London on at £250,000

All 20 of them :eek:

butterfly72

I agree with joolsybools, you must be mad to want to move here and raise a family, without knowing the areas! Even within areas there can be differences and vibes from street to street. If you really want to move, I'd rent first.

For what its worth I live in SW London (Borough of Richmond) and would recommend it and its surrounds... good schools, the park, sports, leafy streets. I guess the majority is white middle class, although there are pockets of deprivation and some diversity. The quality of life here is good. Saying that I don't want to settle here, I'd rather go back oop north. I've also lived in NW London for a few years but didn't really like the feel.

Blacksheep1979

RacyRed wrote: »

Minimum 1 hour commutes, just to go a couple of miles.

bull - I'm in zone 3 and to get to work in ec1 is 30 mins door to desk.

RacyRed

Blacksheep1979 wrote: »

bull - I'm in zone 3 and to get to work in ec1 is 30 mins door to desk.

Well done! I lived in Bow and worked in Canary Wharf - an hour each way if the traffic was just a little bit heavy.

NB, I could walk it in 45 mins and often did.

cashbackproblems

If your working in central london, look at what tube line your place of work is and go up (if you want north london) or down (for south) and try finding somewhere on that line as changing stops in rush hour can be a pain!

Long term everyone wants to move to the home counties, watford, middlesex etcbut if you intend on staying at least 2yrs you wont lose out by buying.

CarineG

I live in South Norwood which is in zone 4 (part of Croydon) and you can easily get a decent 3 bedroom house with a decent size garden for less than £250K.
South Norwood consist of Norwood Junction (where I live) and Crystal Palace.

Norwood Junction is run down but the borough is injecting a lot of money in upgrading the roads/parks as well as creating leisure facilities and building new school (the Harris Academy which opened 2 years ago is highly rated by Ofsted).

It has fast trains to London Bridge and the underground is coming our way in june which will no doubt boost the area.

I do believe that it is an up and coming area and that is why I decided to buy my first place here, the amount of space I could get here was decent comparing to other areas nearer central London. My flat is 10 mins away from South Norwood Lake which is a wonderful place.

Blacksheep1979

RacyRed wrote: »

Well done! I lived in Bow and worked in Canary Wharf - an hour each way if the traffic was just a little bit heavy.

NB, I could walk it in 45 mins and often did.

So you're completely spouting rubbish then as you have knowledge that it doesn't take that long - also docklands is a little bit of a special case as is out of the way.