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My sister and her partner were thinking about this.
To pick an area they just started spending most their weekends in various places. Get a feel for an area, local pubs, walking routes etc.
They settled on Faversham as she was mostly WFH with a day or two in London, they do a lot of trail running and liked the idea of being near the North Downs. Were thinking of kids fairly soon and moving from a 1 bed flat in Nunhead/Dulwich (Dog Kennel Estate) seemed prohibitively expensive.
They were never completely convinced about the idea of moving out of London and also really liked where they were.
Put an offer in on a house. It fell through. They mentioned they were oddly relieved when it didn't happen. (I don't think the 60% Leave vote and not seeing many non-white faces around felt like home - we all grew up in SE London. /csb).
Ended up buying a 2 bed house in Plumstead. Loft can be a 3rd bedroom at some point.
Haven't looked back.So to pick an area, visit it a lot and see how it feels.
But if you like Camberwell then also consider something not so far away. -
Have you thought about renting out your current place and trying somewhere else first?
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@Colm89
Mrs. Colm89 and I are starting to seriously explore our options for moving out of London.
We bought a one bed house in Camberwell nearly 2 years ago and absolutely love the area (if I'm honest I'd stay there if we could afford a two bed), but i now work fully remotely and herself is setting up an online business so we don't need to be in London anymore.
We're both Irish and don't have much family here (her sister and sisters husband live in East Dulwich), so want to be within an hour of London to meet up with friends occasionally. We toyed with a move back to west of Ireland where she's from, but based on our current circumstances we'd be better off staying in the uk (tax is lower, health care is free). Add to this the fact we're 2 years into a 5 year fixed term mortgage that can't be ported to RoI, and no desire to live North of the border. Even if we made profit on our current house it would be tough to stump up the 10k to buy ourselves out of the fixed term.
We're looking at 3 beds in Kent (Sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells etc) within a train ride of London. Problem is, we've never really spent a great deal of time outside of London, so how do people in this situation settle on a location? Is it just a case of finding a house you like and living with the location? Renting for a while isn't really an option.