Owning your own home

Nope, Virgin Cable is not on Inderwick Road.

I have a spacious two-bed on zone 3/4 boundary that will - when I get round to actually doing anything about it - sell for around £290k. There are still cheap pockets around. Some are cheap because they're awful, and some are cheap because it's a bit of a pain to get to work. Go for the latter and cycle and you're well away...

and avoid all home counties

I knew there was a flaw to your eenie meenie minie moe house buying tactic.

No Virgin cable, no talk.

Depends on the type and how it is run but the calcs for mine don't seem expensive.

Whether you're planning on cycling to work, etc or public transport will make quite a difference.

If you're cycling then you don't really want to have to pass through central London every day (although plenty do) but there aren't any real restrictions. If you're thinking of public transport then you need to start considering nearest tube, what line your office is on, what the buses are like, etc which can make a big difference.

3 out of 4 right aint bad...

I was thinking of asking the network team here to ask a few favours of network engineers elsewhere to suddenly increase the priority of my street :)

This. Also, don't just rely on Google Maps estimates - ask on here.

For instance, I can get a train to London Bridge in 15-20 minutes, then hop a Northern Line train to work in 5 minutes. In theory.

In practice, the Northern Line is so manic at that time of morning that even if I could get on, I wouldn't want to. So it's a 25 minute bus ride or a walk of the same length.

This is very sound advice.

Defo ask on here lots, but ignore @amey (general rule of thumb).

The bow quarter is nice but the service charges on those one bed flats will be enough to make even the most hardy northerner weep (they'll be about 3-3.5k yearly)

Worth calling in some favours for.

The bow quarter is nice

But nothing around it is

Actually, that's not entirely fair; Vic park is OK but a bit of a schlepp and there's the olympic park and hackney wick. But you'd be closer to good stuff if you lived in Leyton.

Vic park ok?! How dare you! It's literally the nicest place in East London, breaks my heart to leave...

But yeah, Leyton is a good call too IMO as you can still find bargains. Olympic park is dead nice and the Wick feels decent again.

Yeah, I'm with you on this. Shortly gonna be leaving E London for deepest SE and was thinking the other day that Victoria Park is probably the place I'll miss most out of everywhere.

My first place in London was one of those houses on Old Ford road that overlooks the park, felt like a big winner sitting on that front porch sharing a beer with pals watching the sun go down over the park*

*romanticised story - never really happened, my house faced North.

Never really thought of that, thats pretty brutal...

they haven't said I need to fit one or else, just on the post grenfell block checks told my missus we didn't have a fire door, as our entry door, and it should be.

Now you've mentioned it, I'll probably bite the bullet and speak to Hyde, but whenever I do it's such a dispiriting experience I generally try to avoid it, if possible.

Do IT!

I have no idea what Zone 3 or 4 is. Are they the ones where Katniss is from? But yeah, that sounds good. ie - I think I'd be looking to cycle.

Yeah, you're sounding like a seasoned Londoner already with that stuff.

Dont get too fixated on zones, they dont always = easy commuting to where you work.

Anything past zone 2 isn't London though.

I am moving to the country side (zone 3).

I am scared of three things: Sharks, large social gatherings, and the tube. Ideally I'd be looking to cycle and avoid the tube.

I have no idea about the train/tube line to the potential office. Looks like the orange one, so stops would be around London Fields, Cambridge Heath or Bethnal Green ish areas.

But thanks, yeah, this is top of mind.

Are you in Walthamstow or moving to it?

Bit of a weird question, I'm just remortgaging and the bank have estimated the value of my property 10% higher than I was expecting. I called them and they stand by their valuation based on market comparables and update their system every 3 month etc etc, but it still feels high to me based on the current market situation.

Obviously they don't over value when they lend you the money in the first place, what sort of reason could there be to do it at this point?

It's meant I've got a better LTV rate, but I'm still not convinced the valuation is nearly right, I would expect the bank to undervalue the market rate if anything.

Or maybe I'm just an eternal pessimist.