Anerley

Anerley's streets are dense with Victorian terraces carved into flats, the kind of place where you'll spot a removals van outside a converted bay-window house most weeks and estate agent boards cluster two or three to a road. It reads as a transitional London suburb rather than a settled one — the sort of spot where renters and first-time buyers outnumber the long-settled families, and the high street does its job without performing for anyone.

The commuting picture is straightforward: Anerley Rail Station sits at the centre of things, with Birkbeck's rail and tram stops giving a second way out, so this works for someone who wants a fast exit from London without needing a car — the 38 local stops and stands reinforce that this is a place built around getting elsewhere rather than lingering. On schools, Harris City Academy Crystal Palace covers secondary-age children locally, and the area's overall schools grade sits comfortably above the national average even though Ofsted ratings for the primaries in the sample aren't listed. Housing tells its own story: the market here is dominated by leasehold flats, not family houses — 82 of the 113 recent sales were flats against just six semi-detached homes — so a "For Sale" board on an Anerley street is overwhelmingly likely to mean a one or two-bed conversion, not a house with a garden. At a median of £400,000, that's noticeably cheaper than Bromley overall, which runs about a fifth higher, and cheaper again than the wider London region — this is one of the more affordable corners of the borough, sitting mid-table nationally rather than at the sharp end.