Owning your own home

Luckily we're in the Oyster Zone - so it's just normal contactless (this has been expanded to Radlett so I assume will be expanded elsewhere).

I worked out in our situation it was never worth weekly/monthly tickets, only PAYG or annual. But with annual the gain was so small that it wasn't worth the outlay, especially if you had some WFH.

@hugo7 makes a good point - if thats your budget why move out of Leytonstone? My pals bought a great place for a bit more than that but if you were to aim for 750 and spend 150 on refurb/exrtension you'd have a very similar place, and the right parts of East London are quite close to countryside (well, more N Walthamstow direction).

Plus there is so much development in the pipeline in East London. Three universities moving to Stratford, Crossrail, gentrification.

Knife crime, carhartt

Luckily we're in the Oyster Zone - so it's just normal contactless (this has been expanded to Radlett so I assume will be expanded elsewhere).

It can be ripoff though. Putney to Waterloo is £6/day (£3 each way at peak times) on contactless (which is cheaper than £6.50 of a paper return ticket or £3.60 for paper singles).

Cheapest annual ticket for that journey is £772, which works out at ~128 days of £6/day. That's only ~43 weeks of 3 days a week. Anything more than that it's worth getting a season ticket.

I don't as I'm only in the office 2 days a week and when my foot is back to running and playing 5-a-side I'd only be doing one off-peak single journey on the train each week:-
Thu: Cycle in - play 5-a-side in evening, pub and then off-peak train home (£2.50)
Fri: Run in, cycle home

Running is about £1/commute (£60 running shoes tend to last 500 miles - run commute is 7 miles - and the rest covers wear/tear on running gear). Cycling is something around £50/year (1/10th of the cost of the bike, plus consumables like tyres/transmission/tubes/etc) so that works out at under 50p/commute (it'd be much cheaper if I was cycle commuting 5 days/week).

Back on topic. I did CB23 to SW18 on and off for 9 months whilst my US Visa was just a "few weeks away". I hated it. Motorbike/train/tube/train/walk (1h15-1h30 each way). Spent as much time as I could crashing on sofas/floors/etc.

I'd only ever move to a 1h+ commute if I was remote and only needed to go into an office that far away once every fortnight or so.

Long commutes seem a novelty at first but that soon wears off.

if thats your budget why move out of Leytonstone?

Hah

That horrible feeling when you realise £1M will get you, on the face of it, not so much.

"People with long journeys to and from work are systematically worse off and report significantly lower life satisfaction"

This is true and very well reported in literature, for example

https://www.bsfrey.ch/articles/_456_2007.pdf
http://ftp.iza.org/dp9031.pdf

I'm looking at buying in Harringay at the moment. Mainly looking there as I know the area very well and like it. I thought it would be sensible to plug my search (£850k max, house, garden, 3 beds) into other postcodes too to make sure I wasn't missing any other options.

Multiple postcodes (whole area such as NW1) came up with no postcodes or occasionally one. It wasn't until I started getting way out East or North that any properties, never mind ones that I wanted to live in, came up.

Yeah it's ridiculous

£1.5M gets you a three, maybe four bed in Queens Park

Great

Having done this in March this year, both the wife and I are super happy with our choice. We were living in Bickley before and our commutes ranged from 45mins to 1h 20min.

In Royston, it's roughly 55mins to 1h 5mins.

Things to note:

1. I live less than 0.7 miles from the train station. Brompton makes that about 4 mins
   
2. I come into Kings Cross and work nr Great Portland Street. Brompton makes that about 5 mins
   
3. We're now only 30 mins from mine and my wifes parents along with siblings etc and some friends from where we grew up so we see them more than when we lived in London
   
4. Commuting cost has gone up considerably - annual season ticket (without tube) is £5k
   
   

I think you'd hate the train to house distance. You might want to look for something in a town like this.

This site is really fucking useful for looking at commute times in satellite areas.

I’d say the commute effect depends heavily on your personality/life situation. I recently started doing Twyford-Paddington 3 days a week with cycling each way (15 mins home to station, 30 mins Paddington to work). With a 6 month old I had lost a lot of my time to cycle so the commute has actually given me some of that back guilt free, and I’ve shed a few kilos since I started.

On my route 3 days a week is the tipping point where an annual ticket would be cheaper but I generally have to travel once a month so I’ve stuck with singles. I can get them via an app now which avoids the ticket machine queue as you just show the QR code, I imagine other rail operators may do this too.

I worked out in our situation it was never worth weekly/monthly tickets, only PAYG or annual. But with annual the gain was so small that it wasn't worth the outlay, especially if you had some WFH.

Similar here, based in Dartford and commuting into Charing Cross - made myself up a spreadsheet and worked out that even just one day WFH means you can start to save on the season ticket if you pick up one Off-Peak train over the rest of it.

Time-wise, we're 1hr 15min from door to desk at best or 1hr 35min if you don't catch the 'express' ones. Wouldn't want much more than that really, especially when you think a five day commute on the faster services means being out of the house for an extra twelve hours every week!

I'm fortunate that working from home is an option at least a couple of days a week and flexible hours means I can save time as well as take advantage of the Off-Peak services at £4.40 a time instead of £7.60 on contactless and save quite a bit compared to the annual option.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for­-sale/property-66048801.html

Bloody gorgeous

Might be a stupid question, but do you/your partner have to work in London? Or could relocation and change of workplace be possible

Obviously some careers are a lot easier to do this than others

@hugo7 @chrisbmx116 @Soul @Howard @cornelius_blackfoot and everyone else this is all really useful, the thoughts people have expressed are generally how I've been feeling. I hadn't ever considered moving out of London for 7 - 1o years but I just kind of fell for this place. Its beaut and there are some awesome schools nearby and it's got lots of nice green stuff around.
I suppose my thoughts were similar to @Soul in that my partners parents would be 20mins away and lots her family there plus some of our best friends are relocating nearby in the next year and we both work near to KX. BUT the commute from the house to station really is what gets me.

I'm not worried about the affordability aspect so much - but the stress of working pretty intense jobs, moving to a place we don't know people, lots of travel etc would be a worry

I would also consider the time and cost of keeping a place of that size clean, warm and well maintained.

I don't know how it compares to what you have currently, but it looks to me that the effort and / or cost would not be insignificant.

I currently have a longish commute, and a 5 bed house with two kids in it. My partner also works full time and we struggle to keep on top of things.

Good point.

I hope this hasn't come across full on 'lfgss golf club' - I don't really have a wide network of people that commute so asking opinions of those who have done or know about it is honestly really useful. We'll go and see it this weekend and try to make a decision but I think having read through everything then maybe continuing to wait for the right place in London is the sensible choice for now.

House buying is nuts. Consumer rights for something you buy online for a quid. No probs.

750k for a house?

On your fucking own mate! Buyer beware!

Nice house that. Making it kid friendly won't be easy.

Also, kids just fuck all your nice stuff up.

I live in a village outside High Wycombe, I cycle 25 mins to the station, 30mins train to Marylebone, then 25 mins to the office. Same in reverse. On average I probably ride 4 days a week, then if it's pissing down with rain or I'm knackered I will drive to the station then get the tube.

Pros: I do like the cycling 90% of the time
Keeps me fit(ish)
Cheaper than driving & parking

Cons: there's no denying the time is a massive ballache. I leave the house at 6.20am and get back at either 18.45 or 19.15 depending which train I get. It can cause friction at home (although my wife wanted to move out here in the first place haha.)
Train costs £350 per month. I usually get a seat but I think that Chiltern are the exception speaking to my colleagues who commute on different lines

However, having said all this, I love living in the Chilterns, it is brilliant for the kids, my house is twice as big as my old house in London etc etc. If I could wfh 1 day a week (currently in negotiations) that would be perfect. For me the benefits do outweigh the negatives (just)

EDIT also don't use a Brompton a) they are crap to ride b) everyone on the train will hate you. I have two cheapo commute bikes that I leave at each end

I know a few long distance commuters at work. They are a pasty faced, hollow eyed, clock watching lot.

One bloke used to commute to my old office in Holborn from Bristol. I thought he should be given a special award or something for that.

On commuting, the one stat that's remained fairly constant everywhere is that on average people's time budget for commuting is one hour per day. The commutes described above are all high outliers that tend to occur in a countryside<->London situation or in a small town where most jobs have been lost<->another town situation, but there are also a lot of low outliers, of course, including people who walk five minutes. This is not counting people 'working' from home.

Another pro of commuting, I get some time to myself to read a book or listen to music without my family or my colleagues busting my balls

but I just kind of fell for this place. Its beaut and there are some awesome schools nearby and it's got lots of nice green stuff around

Old adage is never buy the first place you see. All of the stuff you mention can be achieved under £1 M without screwing up your lifestyle to the same degree.

Don’t know what your work is but consider what it would be like if you had to get on a 7:30 am plane at LHR from that house.

Yes, feel free!

You can read a book or listen to music in a cafe or pretty much anywhere else and you don't need to pay UK's ridiculous train prices for that. Living <1hr from work by bike is like 'the rule'. But I also know of lunatics that sit on trains for 2+ hours each way. Fuck that. That's your life you're wasting stuck on an overpriced train full of disease and 'wish I lived closer' misery.