East London

topdaddy_2

What are your priorities in order? The flood risk thing seems key for you.

jamespetts

It is difficult to rank all factors in order of priority because there are such a vast number of them, but the thought of being flooded is so unremittingly awful that that is a high priority indeed. What I am really after is not an opinion as to what I should do, but some local information that I can add to what I already know about the properties and make my own decision.

topdaddy_2

It has to be zone three or would moving further out be an option?

jamespetts

topdaddy wrote: »

It has to be zone three or would moving further out be an option?

I want to be able to cycle to work, and 7-8 miles is already pushing it.

i_am_bob

jamespetts wrote: »

Forest Gate has boomed in popularity, it seems, this year in particular, after a Guardian article in February entitled, "let's all move to Forest Gate".

The Grauniad publishes articles named "Let's all move to X" on a regular basis - do a google search and you'll find them.
Edit: I see it's actually "Let's move to X"

jamespetts

i_am_bob wrote: »

The Grauniad publishes articles named "Let's all move to X" on a regular basis - do a google search and you'll find them.

Ahh, I do not generally read that newspaper and found the article on the internet. Interesting. (Edit: Although I should note that I am not about to move to Llantwit Major any time soon).

Jaybo10

I am biased but we moved to leytonstone last year from west London and we really like it. Good community, excellent open spaces, good transport links and several excellent drinking holes. Our main concern before we got here was the crime rate, but I feel very safe and really haven't seen anything that concerns me.

jamespetts

Jaybo10 wrote: »

I am biased but we moved to leytonstone last year from west London and we really like it. Good community, excellent open spaces, good transport links and several excellent drinking holes. Our main concern before we got here was the crime rate, but I feel very safe and really haven't seen anything that concerns me.

Ahh, yes, Leytonstone is a rather more expensive area: all that is within my price range there is this, which admittedly is not bad, but it is just a "guide price", so might well become out of reach.

i_am_bob

I bought recently in East London, having moved from elsewhere (MSE was a huge help: everybody, you probably don't realise just how great you are).

Further north, places like Walthamstow, Leyton and Leytonstone are a similar distance, have you considered those?

After massive hours put in looking for an area trying to balance about 20 different criteria, here are some things I found about crime in particular:

1. In London, a few streets' walk can make a huge difference. Where I live, it's less than a ten minute walk to areas I would hate to live in, and there are places where I would feel OK where that's more like a minute.
2. The metropolitan police's crime maps are not very useful. The areas they survey are fairly large compared with the fact that a few streets makes a difference. Often they cover big areas of green space which distorts the numbers. On the other hand they present *monthly* stats by default, which are dominated by statistical noise so essentially close to meaningless as far as I can tell. Even the annual stats are quite noisy. They don't tell you *who* suffers the crime or *when*: is it commuters cycling home at 7 PM, 20 year olds outside the local nightclub, or 15 year olds attacking rival gang members? The more I looked, the less I knew.
3. The "index of multiple deprivation" maps seemed more informative to me. Also there are other mapping tools that show other parameters based e.g. on census data which I found useful.
4. Walking around a place really does make a huge difference to how you feel about it. Once you're serious about an area, do it more than once at different times of day, different days of the week. Talk to everybody you can. Think of the efforts you'll go to *after* you buy a place and then run into problems.
5. Googling for forum posts (not just this forum) I actually found extremely useful, "though your mileage may vary" a lot. It helps to have good google-fu :cool: Remember you'll find people saying "it's a hellhole": for some of those you'd say the same if you lived there, for some you'd think they are crazy or very unlucky. The comparisons between areas are more useful than these absolute statements.
6. Remember you're unlikely to be a victim of crime. Easy to lose perspective on this if you haven't lived in East London...

i_am_bob

A few other things re crime:

Remember that you'll spend most of your time outside on your route to work, not sitting in a deckchair outside your house. So for you presumably cycle routes may dominate.

Have you considered cycling to a station then getting a train (or vice versa)?