Advice on areas to buy our first home (South London/surrey)

finanegnome

Hi all,
My girlfriend and I are looking to buy our first property. We currently rent in Wimbledon and wanted to buy around here. As we started to look around and put together our wishlist for our first home, it became very obvious we would need to move further out to buy what we wanted.
After some negotiation we agreed on the following set of requirements:
* off road parking for at least 1 car.
* a private garden.
* at least 2 bedrooms.
* < than an hour for us to both commute to work door to door ( I work in holborn, her in East Sheen and she drives to work and needs to continue to do so).

We have a budget of 400k.

So far these areas seem to meet our requirements and we can afford what we want:
* Chessington north
*Chessington south
*Hackbridge
*Sutton
*carshalton
*Worcester park

Do you have any other suggestions? We are in no rush to move and are happy to wait for the right property. If you live in any of these areas I'd love to hear your views on living there and whether you would recommend it or not.

thanks!

00ec25

I appreciate she is in Wimbledon, but has she actually tried a drive from Carshalton in rush hour?
I somewhat doubt it will meet the 1 hour door to door criteria given the experiences of colleagues going from Sutton to Kingston.

what are your lifestyle expectations?
you currently live in a busy "town" centre with lots of stuff on your doorstep
the Chessingtons will be very different as they are no where near as full of the options you have at the moment

Shelldean

I agree Worcester park is a car park practically during rush hour.
We live in Wallington and daughter was going to uni in twickenham. The journey was unbearable by road. So she moved to a relative house in Worcester park, which cut an hour off each way.
But then she deft train to raynes park and then onwards was the best way and quickest.

Hackbridge is slowly regenerating due to a load of new places going up in New mill quarter. Daughter lives there's and loves it. Everything she needs on her doorstep, apart from a large supermarket. Just a Sainsbury local.
However internet shopping solves this problem.

Funny enough she works in Wimbledon, and can get there w/o any problems by various methods. But to get from Hackbridge to east sheen is going to be a bit of a nightmare.

What about the area of byfleet, further out but should be ok to drive to Sheen. I think??? And train into town for you??

bouicca21

The problem is budget and the drive to East Sheen. You can get to Holborn from practically anywhere. Wimbledon is obviously perfect, but too expensive. Presumably the same applies to Richmond. Further west, perhaps.

Or tbh save a bigger deposit.

zagubov

The nearest place with easy access to East Sheen would be New Malden. Drive across/round Richmond Park.
Two-bed flats/maisonettes with off-road parking available for £400k. Some have private gardens.
Good shops Waitrose, Tesco, big stores, trains ( six an hour about 30 minutes to waterloo then bus straight to Holborn) running into the small hours (last train home at 12.30), fast bus to Heathrow (1 hour) Croydon Centre (40 minutes), Kingston town centre and Wimbledon both easily accessible by train.
Good schools, leafy village-y feel, low crime.

Check train times here:
http://www.thetrainline.com/buytickets/

Have a look at crime in an area here:
http://www.police.uk/

Area info available:
http://www.upmystreet.com/

PasturesNew

My advice is, where there are two daily destinations involved: pick one and live by it.

Living "in the middle" doesn't work out.... you're still ALWAYS travelling. If one person has to travel, while the other doesn't, that's luck of the draw if you're not the one travelling .... it never makes sense for two people to live "in the middle" and BOTH need to travel, if it can be avoided.

If you don't "need" to travel to get where you need to be (because it's within a walking distance of 2-3 miles), that's the ideal as you're not reliant on anybody but yourself..... and not at the mercy of transport.

zagubov

PasturesNew wrote: »

My advice is there are ever two destinations involved is: pick one and live by it.

Living "in the middle" doesn't work out.... you're still ALWAYS travelling. If one person has to travel, while the other doesn't, that's luck of the draw if you're not the one travelling .... it never makes sense for two people to live "in the middle" and BOTH need to travel, if it can be avoided.

If you don't "need" to travel to get where you need to be (because it's within a walking distance of 2-3 miles), that's the ideal as you're not reliant on anybody but yourself..... and not at the mercy of transport.

That's not a bad principle in general but in this case, they're both prohibitively expensive. Plus East Sheen isn't really that easy to get to.

finanegnome

00ec25 wrote: »

I appreciate she is in Wimbledon, but has she actually tried a drive from Carshalton in rush hour?
I somewhat doubt it will meet the 1 hour door to door criteria given the experiences of colleagues going from Sutton to Kingston.

what are your lifestyle expectations?
you currently live in a busy "town" centre with lots of stuff on your doorstep
the Chessingtons will be very different as they are no where near as full of the options you have at the moment

Thanks for the advice and appreciate the concern. She doesn't actually travel in rush hour at the moment due to shift work and grew up close to Carsharlton so is familiar with the drive.

In terms of lifestyle exepctations - we are pretty simple people I like to get out on my bike at the weekend and she likes spending time with her family and friends who live in surrey. We like to go out for dinner and coffee at the weekends so if there is a couple of local shops and restaurants we'll be happy.

dan23uk

Have you considered Walton on Thames and Hersham?

I lived in Walton for the best part of ten years, driving to sheen/mortlake every day for work. The journey would generally take less than an hour depending on what time I left home.
Only 30 minutes to Waterloo on the train as well (no idea how to get to Holborn tbh, not a train user!)

It's a really nice place to live, lots of shops and restaurants/pubs around.

Dan

finanegnome

Shelldean wrote: »

I agree Worcester park is a car park practically during rush hour.
We live in Wallington and daughter was going to uni in twickenham. The journey was unbearable by road. So she moved to a relative house in Worcester park, which cut an hour off each way.
But then she deft train to raynes park and then onwards was the best way and quickest.

Hackbridge is slowly regenerating due to a load of new places going up in New mill quarter. Daughter lives there's and loves it. Everything she needs on her doorstep, apart from a large supermarket. Just a Sainsbury local.
However internet shopping solves this problem.

Funny enough she works in Wimbledon, and can get there w/o any problems by various methods. But to get from Hackbridge to east sheen is going to be a bit of a nightmare.

What about the area of byfleet, further out but should be ok to drive to Sheen. I think??? And train into town for you??

Thanks for sharing your experience. She rarely has to drive in rush hour but i'll raise that to her. We spend some time in Hackbridge this weekend and quite liked it - good to hear your daughter likes it. I'll check out Byfleet now!

finanegnome

zagubov wrote: »

That's not a bad principle in general but in this case, they're both prohibitively expensive. Plus East Sheen isn't really that easy to get to.

I'd have to agree on this one. We have been renting in Wimbledon for 2 years which has had both of us having to travel and its been ok so far. If we could afford to we'd live more North but we can't get what we want so have sacrificed travel time in favour of having more space.