What I was wondering about was whether anyone else had faced a similar decision on where to choose to live, where wouldn’t be too expensive, what to advise them really?
I worked in London for 30 years, including lots of the time not far from Vauxhall. It is a long time ago now, the details have changed, but the principles are still the same.
The question in the title is misleading, living in London still involves commuting, unless it is possible to live very close to work, and I suspect that's not an option here.
from Vauxhall you do have access to a lot of the south-western suburbs of the smoke.
By changing at Clapham Junction, lots of other parts of South London are accessible too. There is also the option of the southern end of the Northern Line.
For the first few years of my career that's what I did, living in various of the less desirable parts of South London, because that's what I could afford. Some of the places I lived are much more desirable now.
As soon as I got my first promotion I moved out of London. Commuting was more onerous in terms of distance and cost, but the difference in journey times wasn't that great.
Generally wouldn't recommend commuting much over 60-70 minutes, if doing daily, starts to get very tiring, especially if it goes above about 90 minutes. (and if daily becomes 15% of waking hours)
My door to door daily commute is 95 minutes each way. That involves 30 minutes cycling. I wouldn't want to go above that.
I did a 90 minute commute for more than 20 years, which included a long train journey where I could read or sleep. This was before the days of smartphones and tablets, which occupy the time for most commuters these days. In that sense, commuting time is not so much "dead time" as it used to be.
What's not good about long distance commuting is the disruptions. Here it helps to have alternative routes, and to be able to walk to/from the end stations and the office/home.
I would work backwards. If your place of work is Vauxhall; pick a direction and keep going outwards till you hit your budget.
Yes budget budget budget!
No mention of their incomes solo or joint and their rental budget and savings to fund a deposit.
In the end it comes down to this. The housing market is very efficient at pricing in the desirability of locations for commuting. Where to live then becomes a trade off between cost versus time, convenience and resilience.
our daughter has a car, so if they want to come back to Exeter for a weekend that would be quite useful.
Links with home are important. I much preferred it when I moved out to the north side of London, nearer to the Fens, even though getting across London for commuting was a pain. That isn't a problem here because Exeter is in the south west and Vauxhall is on the south west side of central London, there should be some "sweet spot" somewhere in between. The issue would be whether it would be affordable to keep the car, especially bearing in mind that it needs a parking space.
