New to London, and already looking to relocate!!

Hi everyone! So I've been skulking around the forums here for a while, especially when I was going through the Visa process and decided to finally make an account and say "hi", and introduce myself instead of just reading the posts and not participating.

My name is Mira, and I'm a 28 year old engineer originally from Bosnia. I was a war refugee who came to the US via several other countries. I'm an electrical engineer and am a giant nerd (and proud of it). My husband, David, is also Bosnian, but has been in the UK for about thirteen years. We actually met at a wedding in Bosnia; his younger brother is married to my older sister. We just got married about a year ago and I've been living in London with David for three months.

We are living in Marylebone right now, but we want to start a family and I do not want to raise a family in a tiny flat so we are looking to relocate soon. If I had it my way we wouldn't live in London at all, but the hubby's job is here so I guess we're stuck for now. I really really want to live in a family oriented area, so if anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears!

A little about me: I'm really into cooking, if engineering wasn't so cool I probably would have tried to become a chef. I worked for the US government for a while on some defense projects, but so far my job here in the UK is not nearly as interesting    I lived in Japan for a year, and discovered the mouth watering greatness that is Japanese food. London street fashion is both fascinating and also makes me feel really intimidated, because I'll never be able to look that cool. I'm a die hard football (soccer) fan and played in college, before an injury took me out for good, but it's a great sport and I love watching it.

I really want to make friends, or chat, or offer any of the meager advice I have for any of you, so I hope we get to know each other in the future, and thank you to all of you who post on this forum regularly for your wealth of knowledge and experiences!

Welcome!

I found this site very useful when we were moving out of London. You can select where you'd like to commute to (station), where from, how long you want your commute to be, and (using the advanced search) filter by average house price. http://www.commutefrom.com/

We ended up buying in an area recommended by one of DH's coworkers, so that's another possibility as well - find out where people at work live and if they're happy with their area/commute/etc.

FWIW, this time last year we were looking at 2-bed flats in Zone 2 for £230+ and bought a 3-bed house outside greater London for less than that. Our commute time is about 80-90 minutes (shorter if we bike to the train station rather than walk/bus). Even in zone 2 we had about a 40min commute between walking to the bus stop, waiting for the bus, and riding the (overcrowded) bus.

Whereabouts in London do you need to be for work?

What you'll typically find is that as you get out of London the prices slowly drop, then suddenly jump up again before dropping. The reason for that is that the journey time to town increases, but then you'll get to an area that has a fast service to a London terminal so that local area is desirable for people who want to work in London but live further out.

Consider the implications of making the same journey every single day for years to come. When something is new a commute of an hour or more seems fine but after you've been doing it for a few years it really starts to drag. Not only that but the further out you are the fewer options you have if your train service is disrupted.