Should I buy in High Wycombe

dantelo

Hey all,

My previous post on should I buy in cippenham raised a lot of interesting facts to check out, and after exploring a bit more we decided to look elsewhere.

So now I ask you, what are your thoughts about High Wycombe? We went to see a new build there and it seemed very green and you get a huge garden. Commute to London oe Oxford seems to be an hour, but also seems to be expensive. Drive to London also 35min. Reading online they seem to have good schools.

What you all think? Thanks!

AnotherJoe

I used to commute to work into High Wycome, so I'm very familiar with it as a place to work and drive around. I do know that the area is very variable, there are some areas that are very nice and some the opposite so you'd want to research on the areas bordering your new build as that will likely determine the schools there as well.

I can also say with complete confidence that the only time it takes 35 minutes to drive into London from HW would be about 3am. At other times it might take you 35 minutes to get from your house onto the M40 , where you could then have the privilege of staying nearly stationary in your car for an hour or two.

I dont know where you work but if it involves driving into London every day I suggest you stay in a B&B in HW one Sunday evening, and then attempt to drive to your work from the vicinity of the new house on Monday morning to see how many hours you need to add onto the 35 minutes.

dantelo

I work in white city, and have chance to park near the office. So was thinking driving would work out better than the train... we drove a weekday during lunch time and got there in under 40min. My work is flexible, so could avoid the main rush hours. But thanks for those notes def something i need to explore. What about as a place to live? What parts are the nicer ones?

getmore4less

This was a few years back.

I too have worked in the HW area for a number of years so familiar with the bottlenecks around access to the A40 and M40.
For part of that I lived north of HW and commuted into Loudwater area(J3)

London road could go solid for quite a while morning and evening
Handy cross is also also a nightmare as there can be accidents and then HW goes gridlock.


Do you mean just the town or include much nicer area that surround it?
Getting through HW can be a problem so if the primary objective is access to the M40/London then probably best to stay south of the A404 or just off it

Flackwell heath is nice as is Hazlemere/Holmer green to the north.

Where is the new build?

Lokolo

Yes where is the new build? There aren't many big blocks of new builds - just small pockets in certain areas (Cressex Road for example, which is next to a school).

Schools are good in the area - John Hampden, RGS and Wycombe High School are excellent grammar schools. A couple of expensive independent schools as well.

Unless you are outside 9-5 work hours, driving into London is not a good idea. Train is much better. Trains are expensive but quite good. Much better than some of the other services in the South East.

Amersham is cheaper to commute on train, but longer. It is also more expensive to live there.

High Wycombe is regularly the place you never like but the place you never leave.

Edit

https://goo.gl/maps/qvS6CSvKaLS2

You can see here that typically, from town centre to White City driving is 45minutes to 1h15minutes. Yesterday Junction 3 was out for 3 hours because of a lorry dropping its load.

If you are serious about driving to White City I would consider Loudwater (east part of High Wycombe), Wooburn Green and Bourne End. Loudwater you can get on at junction 3 towards London (you cannot go towards Birmingham at that junction) and off towards High Wycombe from London.

My partner who moved to Wycombe from outside has commented the bad things are - drivers, pot holes and hills. But she enjoys that it's more green, the shops are better and petrol is cheaper.

AnotherJoe

dantelo wrote: »

I work in white city, and have chance to park near the office. So was thinking driving would work out better than the train... we drove a weekday during lunch time and got there in under 40min. My work is flexible, so could avoid the main rush hours. But thanks for those notes def something i need to explore. What about as a place to live? What parts are the nicer ones?

If you can avoid rush hour in each direction that would help massively, I would still suggest you try it out at the sort of times you might travel, in each direction.

As I only worked there I can't help with best places (or worst) to live there though, I just recall comments from colleagues who did live locally about there being some areas to avoid. Driving in and out, out of rush hour was fine and relatively recently they did a massive upgrade to the big roundabout at ?J4? which also helped.

Aylesbury_Duck

Lokolo wrote: »

Schools are good in the area - John Hampden, RGS and Wycombe High School are excellent grammar schools. A couple of expensive independent schools as well.

Schools are not universally good in the area. One of the consequences of the 11+ system is that the upper schools (where the 3/4 of Wycombe children who do not qualify attend) are variable in quality and results. Lots of people move to Bucks to try and access the grammar schools but if they don't qualify, the alternatives are a bit of a lottery.

If schooling is a major consideration, I'd be looking at an area with comprehensives rather than grammars and uppers.

Lokolo

Aylesbury_Duck wrote: »

Schools are not universally good in the area. One of the consequences of the 11+ system is that the upper schools (where the 3/4 of Wycombe children who do not qualify attend) are variable in quality and results. Lots of people move to Bucks to try and access the grammar schools but if they don't qualify, the alternatives are a bit of a lottery.

If schooling is a major consideration, I'd be looking at an area with comprehensives rather than grammars and uppers.

Agree the alternatives are a bit of a lottery, but overall I would still say the area has decent schools and universally I think they are all fine.

It is a wide town with a lot of schools, they aren't bound to all be good.

Max_Planck

You mentioned that it seems expensive and IMO the new builds are particularly guilty of this - you can get much more for your money (and in a nicer area) if you're prepared to look at older properties (which is always the way it seems). There are a lot of new builds for sale in Cressex (which is close to the M40 Handy Cross junction), but if I had the choice I would probably prefer elsewhere.

If I'm in the office I leave home at 7am and arrive typically 8am (40 mile route M40, M25, M3), and find that as I live NW of High Wycombe the M40 junction at Beaconsfield is a better route for me. Oh, and a weekday at lunchtime will give you, quite possibly, the worst indication of traffic expectation for your route unless you can actually travel at that time!!

Other options in High Wycombe to look at would include Downley, Hazlemere, Holmer Green, Wooburn Green & Loudwater.

I agree with what Lokolo says re: schools.

(I was born, grew up, educated and live in High Wycombe having returned after living in Staffordshire and Manchester for a few years)

Maxthebrave

I'm from HW and personally you couldn't pay me to move back there. The town centre was violent and unsafe. I also found that although its a town of many different nationalities, people of different backgrounds struggled to mix and it created gangs of white, black and asian youths all looking to kill each other.
Its been 20 years since I knew it well so a lot may have changed and I hope for the better. The surrounding villages and towns are nice and well worth looking at.

dantelo

thanks guys , the one we saw was in Kingsmead Road. We are going to spend the day there on Saturday and get more viewings in, to get a feel for the area which are in Briarswood HP15, Fair Acre HP13, Okaridge Road HP11. Fingers crossed we like it !

Schools won't really be an issue for a few years, first born is still brewing and due in Sept, hence why we are wanting to upscale from a 1bed flat to a house somewhere greener.