Rent in London

Tamiko

Hi! Anybody here lives or has lived in London??

I might need to move to London next year for work reasons, but before I take a decision I want to get a feeling of the rental accommodation panorama over there. I have been looking at websites in order to get an idea of what the average prices are, but I feel like I'm wasting my time if I don't know what the areas are like (safe, rough, trendy, residential..). So my question is: can anybody give me a couple of relatively safe areas in London? Then I would be able to search for specifics..
A mention of the areas to avoid might be useful as well

Also, is there an equivalent to our DAFT in Uk?

Any advise will be appreciated!

Ouijaboard

Been a while since I was living in London but some of the areas I'd recommend are Putney, Clapham Common, battersea, Chelsea, Highgate and the docklands areas around canary wharf. Rents are going to be excessive in these areas though.
Trouble with London is that certain areas have their bad parts but other areas close by can be very trendy. For instance most people will turn their nose up at Brixton but there are many upmarket areas such as on Brixton Hill that are great.
Generally (and I'm painting with a big brush ) avoid south and east london and concentrate on north and west london, this is not a hard and fast rule as there are many parts of south and east that are fine, but you would need to know where you are going.
Dont know if theres any equivalent of daft, but I'm sure there are a few decent accom sites...
http://www.moveflat.co.uk/cgi-bin/dbr.asp

Also, always liked the areas around Wimbledon and Southfields, nice residential quiet areas in that area of south west london. Dont know if they've changed dramatically or had an antisocial behaviour epidemic in the last five years but I'd doubt it.

Tamiko

I know what you mean about areas having good and bad parts, I'll keep that in mind in my search.
Anyway, your list and comments give me a lot to start with, really appreciated!

Victor

Have a look here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=912

SarahMc

Loot is good for rentals and houseshares http://www.loot.com/

tHE vAGGABOND

Lived in London for 5 odd years [I lived in Islington, as thats where I worked.]..

I always used www.thegumtree.com for house shares [finding them for me, and finding housemates], as I always seemed to find weirdo's on Loot, and since Loot has 4 or 5 papers out a week, it can get expensive/annoying!.

All of London is generally safe as houses, what you want to do is make your work commute as short as possible. Find out where you would be working and search around there..

IMHO the two best places to live in London are Islington and Clapham, as both have a good mix of residential and things to do outside work

fitzy73_London

Now London is a BIG place. You need to narrow it down for anyone to give you a reasonable answer.

1) Where are you likely to be working?
2) Decide on how far you are willing to commute - 20 mins, 30, 45 etc
3) Do you want to live on your own or flatshare?
4) Do you need to be near an airport (e.g back to Ireland at weekends)

Answer these questions and I'll try help you out.

tHE vAGGABOND

4) You don't need to be near an airport! I could get from my work in Islington

to my home here in Rathfarnham in just over 3 hours door to door if every transport link went in my favour and I really left things tight.

London has one of the best transport networks in the world you can get from any part of London to any other part of London pretty easily.

Your main interest should be sorting out a short/easy commute to where you would be working..

Nea

Sahf London always seems to get a bad deal.
I lived in Sydenham SE London for two years, we lived near Crystal Palace Park, it was a common occurance to see squirrels and foxes in the garden. You wouldnt even think you were in London!

I worked in Canary Wharf so it was 10 mins on train to work. 20 mins on train to Gatwick and there was a night bus route to the city centre.

I too used gumtree and local estate agents.

iguana

tHE vAGGABOND wrote:

London has one of the best transport networks in the world you can get from any part of London to any other part of London pretty easily.

That's not really true. Quite a lot of south London is badly connected. A lot of the soil south of the river is too sandy and not suitable for underground rail. We have friends in the south and we almost never see them because they're too hard to get to. And if we meet in city or the west end they take twice as long to get home as we do.

tHE vAGGABOND

While large parts of South London are not covered that well on the tube network still has a better transport network than any part of this damn country [or most others], between saturation of bus coverage [the main routes running 24/7] and various overland services

You got home twice as quick as them as you prolly jumped on a tube and were half way across one of the biggest cities in the Europe in 20 minutes

I never lived south of the river tbh, the only place I would have would have lived south would have been clapham, which is on two different tube lines [etc etc]. I lived in the east end when I did not know what I was doing when I got to London first, and moved to Islington [various houses around Upper St] when I had figured out London

The point stands tho, on a whole, there are not many places at all with a better transport network than London IMHO

daveirl

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fitzy73_London

daveirl wrote: »

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Jebus Dave you are following me around boards

Correct - Clapham is on the Northern Line Only. Actually, there are three stops in CLapham, North, Common and South.

As you head North, Stockwell is where you would change onto the Victoria line.

Re travel, the South side of the city does have a poor Tube network, but does have a far better Overground and Bus Network. I've lived "Norf" but now live "Sauf" and I think I prefer it. Islington, Camden etc feel far too "city" for me, and bugger all open spaces. I have a wee park of about 35 acres next door to me, and loads of other open Kent countryside within 20 mins drive.

iguana

fitzy73_London wrote: »

Re travel, the South side of the city does have a poor Tube network, but does have a far better Overground and Bus Network.

No it doesn't. For a large part south London has less A roads and as such has a poorer bus service with less bus lanes. The overland where I am in Tottenham is far superior to anything that any of my husband's or my friends have in Streatham, Morden or Kingston. Our trains are more frequent, especially on Sundays and I have a choice of 4 overland lines, 2 tubes and a phenomenal bus service.

The transport in the south is just not as good. You can live on a convenient route in the south but the north has better diversity. When we moved to London we needed a diverse series of routes as my husband works freelance and used to sometimes work in 5 locations across the city in a week. And it's easier to find a cheap area north of the river with good transport than a cheap area south of the river with good transport as good transport of more common in the north.

As for the parks I've no doubt there are lovely parks in the south but they are in the west, east and north too. Over 30% of London is public parkland so you are always going to be near a great park. I'm in walking distance of Bruce Grove 30 acres, Lordship lane 35 acres, Downhills 20 acres, Alexandra Palace 200 acres and the Lee Valley which goes on for miles and miles in either direction. I'm also a short train ride from Epping Forest 6000 acres and Cheshunt national park 1000 acres.

daveirl

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fitzy73_London

iguana wrote: »

No it doesn't. For a large part south London has less A roads and as such has a poorer bus service with less bus lanes. The overland where I am in Tottenham is far superior to anything that any of my husband's or my friends have in Streatham, Morden or Kingston. Our trains are more frequent, especially on Sundays and I have a choice of 4 overland lines, 2 tubes and a phenomenal bus service.

The transport in the south is just not as good. You can live on a convenient route in the south but the north has better diversity. When we moved to London we needed a diverse series of routes as my husband works freelance and used to sometimes work in 5 locations across the city in a week. And it's easier to find a cheap area north of the river with good transport than a cheap area south of the river with good transport as good transport of more common in the north.

As for the parks I've no doubt there are lovely parks in the south but they are in the west, east and north too. Over 30% of London is public parkland so you are always going to be near a great park. I'm in walking distance of Bruce Grove 30 acres, Lordship lane 35 acres, Downhills 20 acres, Alexandra Palace 200 acres and the Lee Valley which goes on for miles and miles in either direction. I'm also a short train ride from Epping Forest 6000 acres and Cheshunt national park 1000 acres.

Iguana, sorry to be pedantic, but what you have written simply isn't true (with regard to trains). See the following wiki article - in particular the transport section and the piece about more parks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_London

iguana

fitzy73_London wrote: »

Iguana, sorry to be pedantic, but what you have written simply isn't true (with regard to trains). See the following wiki article - in particular the transport section and the piece about more parks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_London

The train network in the south may be more comprehensive than it is north of the river but it is not more comprehensive than it is not more comprehensive than the combination of the tube and trains in the north. All you have to do is open the middle section of the A-Z and look at the map which details all rail transport in London. Also the trains don't run with the same frequency as the tubes. The north is just far better connected and it's more diverse. I can get to both Gatwick and Heathrow faster than friends in Morden can despite the fact that they are a lot nearer.

Also if you want to be pedantic Wiki articles aren't exactly a fountain of all fact.;) But as the one you linked to points out 4 out of the 6 stations it lists as used by south Londoners are actually north of the river.

The main termini for South London commuters are London Bridge, London Charing Cross, London Victoria, Blackfriars, London Waterloo and Cannon Street, although only London Bridge and Waterloo are actually south of the river.

I've nothing against south London and I'm not trying to run it down but the transport is not as good as it is north of the river. That may not matter to somebody who is on good transport links to where they need to work as Nea described, but if you work all over London it is. It mattered a huge amount to us for the last two years as my husband worked in City, Soho, Fitzrovia, Knightsbridge, White City, Osterley and Pinewood, occasionally working in all of those places in a month.