Nice areas in London

Hi guys.

This is my first post! Me and my girlfriend are looking to move to London. We are recent graduates and are probably going to start on around £40,000 between us.

We are looking for places to live - in an ideal world we would like to buy a house, so this might meen commuting in. For the salary we are on, where are nice areas to live that I could try?

Can I stress that it would have to be really nice - the main thing putting off my gf is that she has this thought that all accomodation in London is slumy! I will convince her otherwise...

If not buying, we could be convinced to rent, but we would prefer to buy. I think I would be getting off at Old Street station, so a house that is easily commutable to there would be quite important.

So a list of nice places would be great. Dont worry too much about cost, I can always have a browse once I know some nice areas. By nice areas, I dont particularly mean for going out etc, more nice neighbourhood and nice houses.

Thanks
Andrew

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Hi Andrew,

Welcome to The Knowledge

If you want to be close to Old Street I'd recommend you look around the Angel/Islington area. It's very popular with younger people and has plenty on offer in terms of nightlife and restaurants, it's also very close to the centre. Some areas look a bit dodgy but there are some very nice parts aswell.

As for house prices it really is a case of you get what you pay for in most areas, there are cheap places to be had but you'll always be compromising on something else to get low rent. That's generally the case in most areas of London, I've found that you can generally pick/achieve two of the following with flats in London: Spacious, Close to tube station/work, Cheap*.

(* meaning relatively cheap, it is London )

I'd advise you to pay the maximum you can afford in rent or mortgage payments. I know people who have opted for cheap accommodation in order to save money for a deposit on a better place only for them to end up hating where they live and spending all of there money going out to get away from it!

Other areas of London I'd consider to be nice:

Notting Hill / Holland Park
St John's Wood
Maida Vale
Chelsea/Fulham

If you take your girlfrind to those areas to start she'll get a good impression of London.

If you're looking to live outside of the central zones and commute in make sure you weigh up all of the costs and time involved, it can sometimes be just as cheap living somewhere central.


Hope that helps,
The All In London Team

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(Sorry I just noticed I managed to post this in the wrong section! Sorry :emb

Thanks mate thats really helpful. I was actually wondering about places outside of London and the nice areas. For example on my way back up to Leeds I went past a place called Hitchin I think which looked ok - that took around 25mins on the fast train so I would get to work in an hour (not so bad)

Are these type of places in higher demand or not? And can you suggest any places of a similar distance out?

Thanks
Andrew

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Trouble is living that far out you spend a fortune on train fares.

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I would have said highbury has got some really nice apartments and houses but since you wanna be out of town maybe you could look towards essex (chelmsford aint bad)/surrey. bloody nice for wannabes and up and comings.

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Hi Andrew

I lived in Angel and never felt really comfortable there, especially at night.

I eventually moved to West london after being told that the crime statistics are far lower and am far happy here. I would recommend places like Richmond or Ealing which really nice areas and have lots shopping, bars and restaurants and parks that i often go jogging in. Richmond i maintain is the nicest part of London to live in, however it can be a bit pricey. But there are other parts of West London that are cheaper, like Chiswick or Acton, which is on the central line and in zone 2 which may be helpful for getting to Old Street

Regards

Jen

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Hi Andrew, just noticed that you had mentioned Hitchin, I am orginially from there and thought would enlighten you some what, Hitchin is a very nice town and great for commuting, I would guess 50% of people living there commute into London, house prices are expensive but you pay for what you get (in most cases), yearly travelcard will set you back about £3750 or weekly its about £90. Hope this helps.

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Thanks for that willm, useful to know - that travelcard cost looks frightening when you see it written down! Do you get contributions from your company for that? I know some people who get really generous amounts paid towards there travel - lucky swines!

All the best,
All In London

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That was a nice place. I want to visit London vacation.

http://london-travel.org/3526placesofinterest.asp

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