I have a couple of questions for you.
- Are you moving to London?
- Do you have a small family?
- Are you looking for areas in London that meet your requirements?
If you answered yes to all three questions, then read on!
“Where should I live in London?”
London is big. Very big.
But you can also think of London as a collection of villages, each of which has its own distinctive character, all connected by a public transport system that is the envy of Japan er… the rest of the UK.
Even if you’ve lived in London for many years, chances are that you’ll only know a lot about a handful of these villages.
What do you know about living in Rotherhithe? How about Hanwell? Walthamstow?
Some of these areas might be exactly what you’re looking for. Others, not so much.
That’s why I built FindMyArea. It’s a free tool where you pop in the stuff you care about (budget, commute destinations, local amenities etc) and then it gives you a list of areas in London (e.g. Hackney or Richmond) that satisfy your requirements.
Let’s see it in action!
You might have the following requirements for the area of your dreams (it’s hard to do this without stereotyping, so bear with me!)…
Things that are essential to you
- Budget: With two working parents, your budget isn’t tiny – you can afford up to £2,000 per calendar month.
- Property size: 2 or 3 bedrooms would be ideal.
- Commute: You want to be able to get into work in less than 45 minutes via public transport. FindMyArea lets you put in your exact workplace but we’ll pretend that you work at Covent Garden Station.
- Schools: Good state schools are important to you.
- Health: You want to live in an area where people are generally in good health.
- Low crime rate: Safety is important to you.
- Green spaces: You’d like a lot of green space so your kids can burn off copious amounts of energy.
Nice to haves
- Dining out: You’d like some good local bakeries and ideally great Italian restaurants as well – you’ve been into the cuisine ever since they won the Euros.
- Nightlife & culture: Great local pubs would be nice.
- Supermarkets: Waitrose. Add organic multigrain quinoa tofu to the basket please.
So let’s put these requirements into FindMyArea and see what areas it suggests!
Results
Looks like there are a lot of good matches! All 3 of your essential criteria and almost all of your 5 nice-to-haves are satisfied by the top-matching areas in London.
You can see that most of your matches are concentrated in north, west and southwest London.
Show me where the best areas are!
Don’t want to read the whole article? Skip straight to the results:
Top picks
Located in west London, Chiswick and Barnes are both very pleasant areas and great choices for families. These neighbouring areas have a few differences: Chiswick has its own tube station and is slightly more lively (especially along the high street with its wide pavements), whereas Barnes feels like a village close to nature, with lots of nice walks along the river and in the local parks.
Both areas are good for schools and have no shortage of food and drink options, with plenty of nice restaurants, cafes and pubs.
A 2-bedroom flat rents out for an average of £1,705 pcm in Chiswick and £1,857 pcm in Barnes; reasonably expensive, but still a lot cheaper than areas closer to central London.
In terms of connections, Chiswick and Barnes both have their own train stations but only Chiswick has a tube station. If you live towards the north of Barnes, however, you can easily walk across the river to Hammersmith tube station.
The only real “downside” of these areas is that you might feel you’re quite far removed from the hustle and bustle of London – but that might be exactly what you want!
Other options worth considering are Teddington (a lovely part of Richmond upon Thames – if you’re OK with the long commute to central London, then it’s a great place to raise a family) and Golders Green in north London (great parks, great food, great connections, great for kids, not so great for pubs).
Also great
If you have a larger budget (say £2,500pcm), you can use FindMyArea’s Edit Filters button to increase the property budget without having to start over.
A larger budget lets you get closer to central London: the neighbouring locations of Hampstead and Belsize Park have great commutes, amazing green spaces and pretty much everything you need in a “villagey” atmosphere.
If money is no object and you like the idea of rubbing shoulders with the wealthy, you might consider living in Kensington or St John’s Wood. You’ll most likely need to spend £3,000-4,000pcm to find a good place, but these are very nice areas so if you can afford it then why not?
If money is tight
We can use FindMyArea’s Edit Filters button again to drop the property budget to £1,750 pcm and see what’s available.
Located in southeast London, Herne Hill and East Dulwich are inexpensive options, with the average 2-bedroom flat coming in at around the £1,500 pcm mark.
They’re both popular choices for families and for good reason – they’re relaxed, safe, have good schools, great parks and plenty of local amenities. Neither area has a tube station but they’re well-served by trains and buses.
Another option worth looking at is Stamford Hill in north London, which again has 2-bedroom flats at around £1,500 pcm.
I’ve chosen some areas. How do I find out more?
If you want to research some areas more thoroughly, you could just use Google.
But to make your life a bit easier, FindMyArea creates a personalised “detail” page for each area that only shows the stuff that matters to you.
Just click on any area in the list or map to see its detail page.
From here, you can do further research into anything that particularly interests you:
- Click on “View Properties” to see property listings for your chosen area
- Click on any of the local amenities to see where they are on a map
- Click on the commute time to see the actual commute route itself, complete with directions
- Click on “Read More” to see the Wikipedia description of the area
Basically, just click on everything and you’ll see all sorts of useful stuff!
Don’t want to lose your results and criteria? Just hit the “Save Results” button to save everything to a permanent shareable link (no need to create an account).
When you’re ready to return, just use the shareable link to retrieve the same results again. You can also adjust your criteria some more if any new requirements have come up.
Try it for yourself
Take a look at the full list of the best areas for families in London.
You can look at the results in detail and adjust the criteria to suit your specific requirements via the “Edit Filters” button.
Or enter your requirements from scratch to find the perfect area in London for you.
Thanks for reading! If you want to help me improve FindMyArea, you might like to join the beta program. Or just drop me a message the old-fashioned way for general comments and questions.