Owning your own home

My brother lives there. He loves it.

5% deposit is pretty scary though - not Northern Rock-type scary, but still scary.

So long as you can afford the repayments and then some (for increase in interest rates or unexpected periods of unemployment), it is still preferable to renting.

I could pay the mortgage and bills (albeit just) on my salary alone.

It's effectively renting cheaply with a leveraged option on the property at 95% strike. OK unless / until prices come down 10% and you have to relocate for job / family reasons. Then you can't rent the place out because you probably can't get consent to let (rent coverage covenants).

I don't understand 'hipster tax' but while I get your argument there is often much more to do in the more expensive areas - nice cafés, restaurants, amenities, public open space - which all adds to the cost of housing. E.g. personally I like living near so many good cafés/restaurants/good independent shops, being near to the Olympic Pool and London Fields Lido for swimming, being able to go for a walk on the marshes etc. And I'm a 5/10 minute ride from an insane amount of things to do/places to go. Plus they are normally more central, which is more of an issue if you don't cycle.

Grove Park is a suburb and I can't imagine that (relatively) there is that much to do there?

Although personally I'd be up for swapping our Hackney one bed for somewhere bigger, sleepier and with a bigger garden and a garage one day (plus a longer commute), but my other half is less keen :)

(Also £2.50 pints, wahey)

isn't hipster tax just supply and demand?

Grove Park isn't even London. You're living in a commuter suburb and there is nothing there.
That's fine, but you're still paying a huge premium to do so. You might as well live in proper London.

Places like Bethnal Green and Hackney Central command a premium because they offer a hell of a lot. Green space, a real community rather than an estate-agent-generated one, good places to eat, drink, see films, go clubbing, shop, and good transport links to everywhere. I'd quite like a proper house with a nice garden. Originally I was going to move out to Surrey to get it, but like Fox my other half is not keen. So finding that in spitting distance of Hackney will be interesting.

Nonsense: "You might as well live in proper London".

If I could buy a spacious two bedroom flat with loads of storage closets, space in the hallway for several bikes, a secure underground car park and a garden, in Hackney, then I probably would. But it would cost £400k more than it does here.

As for restaurants, entertainment etc, it's not exactly a black hole here. I'm in central London every day for work. And it's only 20 minutes on the train to London Bridge when you want to go to town.

Also, saying that there's nothing in Grove Park but green space in Hackney... Really? I have Beckenham Place Park a few hundred yards down the road - two thirds as big as Hyde Park, but with about 100 times fewer people in it. And a half dozen miles down the road I'm in Kent countryside on the bike...

Well the attractive-ness of area offerings is subjective innit .. and there are always parallels you can draw e.g hackney marshes to beckenham place park or even hilly fields park; I do get the 'nice-ness' of area and get your point but is it worth paying 100%+ more? If you ask me no. There is a reason I have been practicing on my flat white skills at home ;)

@BQ move to Kent, Surrey is 'over' ;)

I paid £2.50 for a sourdough loaf in bromley market the other day ! Also went to the new LBS: http://www.bromleybike.co.uk/ SO much bling in there.

Strong 'where I live is best / best value' argument.

Obviously I would never stoop to live in either Hackney or Bromley.

ikr! Now that I've bought I want all the hipsters to move here to skyrocket my property value ;)

Come live in Chingford, save on the petrol costs of driving here to ride your bike.

E4 so you even get a pwoper Landan postcode innit

Chingford

I always think, oh that sounds a little Asian. My parents would approve.

Mrs T-V doesn't like to cycle out through the traffic!

In all seriousness, Chingford is quite an attractive proposition.

If they converted the dog track into apartments would you move to Walthamstow? ;)

Thursday night karaoke at the pub by the station. @middleofnowhere took a crew there last week for a sing song.

No offence to @Ramsaye (he won't take offence anyway because he actually lives in Sewardstone) but having worked in Chingford for two years, I can confirm it is not an attractive proposition.

Yeah, but I don't really like the countryside except to look at. I'm also a rural East Anglian boy and growing up there made me hate it. People drive too fast there, there's no public transport, and you get hay fever. I meant nice safe urban green space, near a tube station, several breweries, a pizzeria or two and a velodrome.

I don't think Surrey was ever not over. :-)

Kent's a bit of a big ask. I'm having an existential crisis at the idea of living as far out as Turnpike Lane, despite the fact that if my girlfriend and I both sell our flats we could buy a big fucking house there.

In all seriousness consider Bromley or even Beckenham; both have flat whites, good LBS, craft beer places etc. Plus HHV isnt that far off.

Beckenham is full of cunts.