Living in Epsom
Hello!
My wife (29) and I (30) are expecting our first baby soon and we're now trying to figure out where we want buy and settle down. We're currently renting in the Putney area which we absolutely love - it's well connected to the city, it has the river, lots of nature and decent restaurants and shops on our doorstep.
Our budget is £650-700k and we're ideally looking for a 3-bed with a garden and parking. We previously liked the look of Kingston, Surbiton, Teddington etc but after looking into it properly we realised we'd be lucky to get a tiny terrace with no parking and a small garden.
We recently visited Epsom and it has quickly become our favourite location that appears to tick all of our boxes. It's well connected into London which would make my 3 days a week in the office manageable and I especially like that you go direct to Waterloo, Victoria and London Bridge! We like that is has a good enough town centre with some history, lots of nature on the doorstep, and our budget goes much further than anywhere else we've looked so far. We also have family down in East Dorset so being on the SW side of London is important for driving down to visit.
I know you shouldn't trust what you read online, but we've seen lots saying that the town centre isn't what it used to be, that parts of Epsom can be rough and there are a lot of new planned developments on greenbelt land.
So I guess what I'm looking for are peoples opinions on Epsom considering our situation, and whether there are any other areas we could consider that we might not have thought about? We had considered places like Guildford, Dorking etc but it's either a long or expensive commute!
Thanks so much in advance - looking forward to hearing what people have to say!