A flat in London?

[ciphergoth]

As I mentioned in an earlier LJ entry, it looks like bootpunk is going to need the room I'm now living in before the end of the year, so I'm looking for somewhere new in London to live before then.

• I want to share a flat, is anyone else looking for a flat share?
• Where in London should I live?
• How much rent should I expect to pay? Update I think the £100pw cost of that Tooting flat is about the limit of what I'd want to try and pay.

I want to live near Lisa and Lili, who live very near Streatham station. But I'd also prefer to live somewhere that was on the Tube so I can get into London more easily. One possibility is this flat as mentioned in Howard's journal. It has the huge advantage of being about fifteen minutes walk from Lisa and Lili. But from what he says I'd have to move out again in a year. Alternatively, Brixton has been suggested as a good place to live, handy for the bus to Streatham but also for the Victoria line which takes me rapidly into London and on to the burgeoning bisexual ghetto in Walthamstow. julietk has told me I should live in Bermondsey, which is apparently cheap and handy for London Bridge which has frequent trains to Streatham. Thoughts, ideas?

Comments

[adjectivegail]

*laughs lots* well i'm going to start looking for somewhere to live in London on Monday (after my finals), but £200pw is pretty much twice what i'm hoping to be able to afford. i wish you good luck in your search for a flatmate :)

[gnomatron.livejournal.com]

It's a 2 bedroom flat, so you'd be paying £100 a week, roughly what you're hoping to afford, no?

[cryx]

i ended up living around vauxhall as the transport is very cheap. kennington has a dodgy rep though. I'd have a nose at www.findaproperty.com if i were you, it'll give some fairly good price ideas.

I've just moved into a 3 bed with 2 friends, and we set our limit at 1000pcm, and alot of agents told us we wouldn't find anything, and yet one saturday i lined up 5 flats to look at in a row, and we had 3 good places out of the 4 we finally saw, and we now live in one of them.

[cryx]

i ment to say the transport is good and the area is cheap *d'oh*. So yeah, it's about 230pw for 3 and thats just on the boundry of zone 1.

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

I'll second the recommendation for that site - there was also one which I now, of course, can't find, that had a colour-coded map of all of london divided into price bands. I'll see if I can dig it out.

[booklectica]

I mainly know about South London.

I work next to Bermondsey and would be happy to give you a tour of the area from London Bridge station to Bermondsey station. Pros: the Jubilee line, walking distance from the river, Zone 1, the area's quiet at weekends. Cons: Bermondsey itself is not exactly picturesque and I don't know how safe it is.

There are other Jubilee Line options - Canada Water, say. Also Surrey Quays, which is a little further out but extremely affordable and OK as an area.

Re rent, I think the question is, how much can you afford? I can have a look for average rents round Tooting and Bermondsey if that would be useful.

[juliet]

Bermondsey so far seems safe enough (note: have only been there a few weeks, but I've walked home from London Bridge or from the tube/bus stop by myself late at night several times & not felt worried. marnameow & sbp have lived there longer & haven't had trouble as far as I know). My partner got his bike nicked this week but then he *did* leave it not chained to anything which was a bit stupid.

Rent: we're paying 230quid/wk between us for a very nice house (1 double bedroom, 1 single, large living-room, smallish kitchen, *garden*), about 2min walk south of the tube. When we were looking there seemed to be decent enough 2-bed places available for 200-250 per week depending on location & so forth.

As well as the river, there's Southwark Park as well, which is quite nice. And there *is* Borough Market which is a pretty big bonus in & of itself.

[(Anonymous)]

Bermondsey is relatively safe, although not all that inspiring, as it's broken by Jamica Road which leads to the Rotherhithe Tunnel/ express way to Kent and Dover. It's mostly built up and made of council flats / blocks which are tucked away. There has been a lot of redevelopment, with Yuppie flats by the river. For greenery there's southwark Park, which is a nice park, that's where I walk my dog ( whippet ). Bermondsey is a traditional white working class area, as there's definitley an air to it, and there was a NF march through the area recently, I haven't ventured to the pubs there yet, and probably won't as they don't appear too appealing, and I go out elsewhere. However as Katyha said, Surrey Quays is closeby, and the new Jubilee line has major advantages, there's a big shopping area by Surrey Quays as well, and the area is fairly safe, and quiet. As for N1 don't beleive a word of it, yeah for sure, if you right next to the angel you're fine, or even in agated community in Cannonbury, but there's some dodge areas there as well, I once was queerbashed in N1, and the gangs of kids from the different estates that roam the back roads in the summer are a constant pain.

Laurence

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

* Normally quite a few people, but not I.

* N1. Everwhere else is pants, especially South of the river. Apart from the Borough, which is quite nice. :-)

* Rents are less than they used to be. Bedsits around the Angel are going for about 140UKPpw at the moment, which is pretty good, really.

Tom's top tip is to shell out the extra to live closer in an cut down on commuting costs/time: the increase to one's quality of life is well worth the expenditure.

[(Anonymous)]

Depends really, the thing about London is the travelling / commuting time, which is burdensome. Get a mini map, and mark all the places where you'll probably spend most of your time, and join them up, and then plot a space which is equi distant, then check the nearest, tube, night bus roots etc potetntially Kings Cross sounds like a good bet, given the walthamstow/Streatam link. Bermondsey's not too bad that's where I live, but you need to be close to a tube station a good connecting one, otherwise you'll end up making lots of changes and / or night buses and taxis at night.

Have fun in london town

Laurence

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

when we moved up to London I spent several evenings taking the bus and tube from work to a different station or area each night, to see what they were like and how long it took to get there and back. Spend the time looking at the areas and trying out the transport connections and look on Loot to check out rental prices. Putney is nice but £1k a month for 2-bed flats is the low end, many are £300 a week round here I think; we saved a bundle by switching to a mortgage!

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Tooting is not bad, has a very good hospital (St Georges) should you need one, and is south enough that if you drive you can get out of London quickly. I would be tempted to go for Howard's place myself - you never know with any rented property whether you might have to leave when your contract ends, or if you decide you would prefer somewhere else you might leave in a year anyway. I think with renting having a sane landlord who is not out to rip you off counts for one heck of a lot!

Bermondsey used to be quite a dive, but with the advent of the tube has improved in pockets. Not much there though. Brixton might be better, with the good bus service to Streatham (every 5 minutes, often, also night buses) and the Victoria Line. It's a lot faster into the center of town than the Northern line (Tooting). With any of these areas there's streets of nice bits and pockets of dodgy concrete estates. Brixton might be slightly more than £100pw for a good place - when we looked there 2 years ago lots of flats were £250pw for 2 beds, but rents have come down since.

Have you tried a search on www.loot.co.uk? Very useful.

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Brixton is great - lived there for five years. May be a possibility of moving to where I used to live... will send an email and see!

I'm in Stockwell, now, paying a bit over £150pw, but that's living on my own.

Good luck with it, sweetie.

[reddragdiva]

ali_anarres' house has a very nice room in it (that used to be mine) still available, cheap for London, nice to live in, 10 mins from Hendon Central tube (Northern Line, Edgware branch). Be warned that the house keeps to Jewish food rules (kosher milk kitchen) and the experience of putting up with Passover was enough for Ali (a non-Jew) to declare she'd be out of there by next time.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

eh, NO FUCKING WAY!

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Er, how is that close to Streatham?

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

Ignore the hype about North London - you get much more for your money South of the River, provided you don't go too far west. But if I wanted to be close to Streatham (where I lived for 2.5 years) with better transport, I'd go for either Brixton or Tooting. Personally, I prefer Tooting, but when I was around there it did tend to be more expensive. That flat looks like a good deal, to be honest.

I had a close friend who lived in Bermondsy for a while and getting back to my flat on Streatham Common from there wasn't all that fast, especially late in the evening or at weekends.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think a lot of the hype about South London has a racist subtext - of course parts of North London are heavily multi - ethnic, but you dont often hear the North London Pisses On South of the River crowd raving about Tottenham or Hackney....

[lovingboth]

Go for Howard's sister's flat. With a clear end point (assuming she does actually come back - my landlady went to India for a fortnight over a decade ago and still shows little sign of returning) you've more than long enough to find somewhere else after a year. Plus who knows who will want to live where and with who then?

If you don't, then Bermondsey is a better option IMHO than Brixton. You can get to the East End without going via zone one = cheaper travel. If you get a bike, it's an easier and nicer cycle to the centre and south.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Yes, but Bermondsey is not particularly easy to get to from Streatham.Has that part of Paul's post become invisible?

[hughe.livejournal.com]

bah. london is too big.

but then edinburgh is too small.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Well I'll be desperate for somewhere to live in September, and I want to go south of the river again. Brixton/Kennington area is my ideal. Can you wait until then? I'll live with you! (And where are these Walthamstow bisexual ghettos eh? All I've found is a Poundstretcher...)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

September might be stretching it, but it sounds like a distinct possibility! Cool!

[conflux.livejournal.com]

We lived on the Brixton Road in a very cool 2 bed place that was 10 mins walk from Oval and about 15 mins from Vauxhall, plus it had a night bus route and the bus to Streatham. It also has very good security, which turned out to be important, and a very good landlord. The 2 double bedroom flats were 250pw though, at that time, and I expect they will still be around that or more, even if prices have now dropped. I've got the landlords number if you want it? He had a lot of flats for rent and was buying more.

[werenerd.livejournal.com]

I’ve always found this site: www.moveflat.com infinitely useful when looking for flatshares in London.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Jumping in and bombarding you with further London-opinion. Like they said, I'm in Bermondsey (right around the corner from julietk. We've been there for two years, almost.

It *is* a poor inner-city area, yes, and not the prettiest place London. It's also a lot cheaper than anywhere with the same level of transport and closeness to London.

Cool things about the area include the history (it's an old bit of London), the river, Southwark park, shiny new tubestation, supermarket at the other side of the park from us, Borough market just down the road. Southwark is also the leafiest borough in inner London - trees are *good*. I like it - there's character in the area (but I suspect that there's character in just about every area in London).

Streatham is near-enough by - Sean's sister lives there and getting between the two is pretty straightforward. There are trains from London Bridge or at least one bus that goes there quite directly. Brixton would be *nearer* but is more expensive, we found.

If you've got questions just meep.

Also - I hear a rumour that you want to come to see Secretary on Monday?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'd love to come see Secretary! When and where? thanks!