Newbie - Planning on moving to Melbourne in January - Advice on where to live, nurseries etc

[Alicia100]

Hi All

 

My husband and I have recently been granted our permanent residency visas and are planning on moving to Melbourne in January with our 3 and 1 year old. Our house in London is currently on the market and its all systems go. We are very nervous and excited.

 

We are keen to hear from anyone who has made the move and any advice they can give us on where to live. We are keen to rent initially with the plan to buy at a later date. Ideally we would like to rent in a similar area to the one we may eventually buy in. Commute to work, schools, children's amenities and shops, cafes, parks/beach are important factors in choosing a suitable area. We would like large house and have a budget circa $550K.

 

Has anyone any recommendations???

 

Alicia

[lovejarora]

I think the good idea would be to open google maps along with www.realestate.com.au you would be able to see the schools n everything on the google maps as well as you could see the properties on the realestate website along with your budget.

 

If you want to live close to city then somewhere around toorak is good...in subarbs i would say chadstone, holmesglen, burwood, boxhill...they are good n safe areas along with schools n colleges around.

 

 

 

Cheers,

Lovej

[jennlx]

Oooh, same same, planning on moving to Melbourne and have a 3 year old and a 1 year old. OK, I'm biased but I would move to the beach. Everyone says "oooh, the novelty wears off..", well it didn't for me! We lived on the coast (I grew up in Oz) and we went all the time. My whole childhood was about the beach, then as a teenager and again as a young adult. Look at Bayside but you'll struggle to get a BIG house for your money. But you'll have a better chance than in Toorak which is the most affluent suburb in Melbourne.

 

Bayside is completely child friendly and has everything you could want: good schools, nurseries, parks, beach etc. etc.

 

PS. We rent in London, and if I had my own house I would definitely definitely rent it out while in Oz. Unless you don't like it all that much!

[Petals]

Hi, I have moved this thread to the Victoria forum as you may get more response there.

 

Join up with the Life in Victoria forum there is a link to it at the bottom of this one. The members are very friendly and a lot have just moved over and they will be able to help you with places to live and schools and other things that are daunting when you first arrive.

 

January is our summer holidays so all the schools are closed and everyone is pretty much on holiday, slow time of the year for most things. Hotels and holiday rentals are expensive during January.

 

If you want to live near to the beach then I would look at the Frankston Train Line as it runs down the bay.

 

Good luck

[James MT]

Hi Alicia,

 

We moved to Melbourne from Manchester just under 4 years ago. We generally like the place & have settled reasonably well. I have to say you will not be able to buy a house with more than 2 bedrooms in any Melbourne suburb for under $700 - 800K, especially the suburbs suggested above! Check out realestate.com.au. We finally bought a house in a lovely area called Mount Eliza, about 50K (1 hours drive) out of Melbourne on the south east coast, a little cheaper as it's further out but by the beach & good schools. The weather was another thing we were a little shocked with after we arrived. It's really not that good & I found that people tended to exaggerate how good it was prior to our move. It's very wet & grey most of the time, in fact I'd say it rains almost as much as back home. People will talk about 40c days but it's pretty rare. Most of the time in Summer it's between 20 to 25C then a random day pops up at 40C then it's back to 20C the following & for the next 2 or 3 weeks. Generally speaking I'd say the weather is like London but with milder Winters.

[starlight7]

Do you get beautiful sunny days in London in the mid 20s in March ( equivalent of our September) ? I don't think so. You can certainly get a 4 bedroomed house for $500,000 in many Melbourne suburbs- not around the CBD area of course . Take a look at some of the leafy Eastern suburbs like Kilsyth, Montrose, Croydon North, Chirnside Park- all less than an hour from the city by train.

[James MT]

I agree - No you don't get days like that in London in March but you have to admit that it's also pretty rare to have days like that in September in Melbourne. Most of the time it'll be around 15/16 with a lot of overcast rainy days - I did say the winter was milder here. And yes you can get a nice house for $500K if you live in a satellite town an hour or so out of Melbourne but not in a half decent Melbourne suburb.

[buzzy--bee]

we were a little shocked with after we arrived. It's really not that good & I found that people tended to exaggerate how good it was prior to our move. It's very wet & grey most of the time, in fact I'd say it rains almost as much as back home. People will talk about 40c days but it's pretty rare. Most of the time in Summer it's between 20 to 25C then a random day pops up at 40C then it's back to 20C the following & for the next 2 or 3 weeks. Generally speaking I'd say the weather is like London but with milder Winters.

 

 

The weather here is like London plus 10 degrees. Melbourne has considerably more sunshine than London, no frosts by the bay (inland suburbs do get frost), no snow, the phrase "black ice" is not one I have heard since I moved here.

 

Melbourne and London get a similar number of mms of rain annually, but in Melbourne it tends to be heavier, therefore less often, and it also rains a lot more at night here.

 

The weather phenomenon we get a lot more of here than in London is wind!

 

BB

[Alicia100]

The weather here is like London plus 10 degrees. Melbourne has considerably more sunshine than London, no frosts by the bay (inland suburbs do get frost), no snow, the phrase "black ice" is not one I have heard since I moved here.

 

Melbourne and London get a similar number of mms of rain annually, but in Melbourne it tends to be heavier, therefore less often, and it also rains a lot more at night here.

 

The weather phenomenon we get a lot more of here than in London is wind!

 

BB

 

Thanks everyone for the replies. I am hopeful. Realestate does show some big properties in these suburbs so we remain hopeful.

[Petals]

If you want tropical Melbourne is not the place to live if you want temperate then it is. We do get black ice but that is mainly up in the dividing range, the Hume highway and roads around have ice warnings for the winter time.

 

Melbourne has four seasons of the year and one of the ops is right 40 degree days are not all the time just periods of one two or maybe a week at a time, thank goodness, I hate the summer so it suits me down to the ground. Spring Autumn and Winter are my favourites as it never gets that hot and its a dry heat so easy to take.

 

I have lived in Sydney and hated the humidity and QLD on the coast is a killer only nice time is winter when its mostly dry.