Jowindsor

Hi Everyone,

Hope you all having a lovely long weekend!!

My OH has to commute to Kent street for work everyday and I am planning to get a job once the school starts.Was location hunting for a place to live for the past couple of weeks and I seem to like Chatswood.I love the westfield and the Cinema and the library,all the lovely restaurants to eat and in general the atmosphere.Its dominated by chinese.Japanese and korean community and few Indians.Chatswood public school seems to have good reputation.Easy to commute if my daughter gets into any of the selective school in North Sydney or Sydney girls in a years time.

Manage to view couple of apartments with pool and gym as its a requirement as kids swim nearly everyday and OH uses Gym frequently.Lovely apartments avl ,bit pricey,but suits our budget!!

Planning to live in Chatswood for 6 months and then to buy a nice house after that ?Any nice suburbs with decent houses nearby?

Any thoughts about the area?Safety?Jus in general..

Many Thanks,
Jo

Jon77

I have lived around the Chatswoo area for a few years, not anymore though.

It certainly attracts the higher class Asian immigrant and I found the place a bit unwelcoming and stand offish.

Chatswoo isn't a place I would want to bring up my family as I think I would find it very hard to relate to many of the people there. It is very different even to other very Asian areas.

I live near an Asian family now who also don't like Chatswoo as they think it a bit snobby.

Epping, near where we live now, has some beautiful old art deco style houses if you can afford them. Still Asian but less so than Chatswoo (but where isn't!). Only draw back to Epping is the traffic during the rush hour, it is shocking! But good train links, if I get the express via Strathfield I can be in the city in 35 mins, not bad! You can also go via North Ryde to Chatswood from Epping on the train.

Jowindsor

Really?So far I have found it very nice..Wouldnt be living there for long though!!!Will be moving out in 6 months time!!!

carolinephillips

Any of the suburbs along the North Shore line are pretty good for commuting, and especially schools. Depends on your budget as to what you get, since they can be quite pricey.

chris and farideh

We live in East Lindfield & love our area very safe to bring a family up 10 mins drive from Chatswood or Chatswoo as known by everyone else.
I wouldn't bring my family up there either, we also wanted to be in the catchment area for both good primary & high school.
It is very pricey to either rent or buy in this area.

michael_w

Worked in Chatswood for a decade, plenty of shops but wouldn't want to live there. It's a bit of an impersonal concrete jungle - lots of people working there in the daytime but it hollows out after 6pm. As others said, there's a high proportion of Hong Kong migrants there - great if you like Yum Cha or BBQ Pork restaurants, but its an insular community. Chatswood High and other schools in the area are majority Chinese/Korean, and most of the kids there get the Tiger Mom treatment of coaching school/playing violin or piano and avoidance of things non-exam related such as sport or drama. Believe me, my wife is Chinese and she avoids Chatswood for that reason. Plenty of nice suburbs nearby - Lane Cove, for example.

paddyo

Must admit, never heard the terms 'atmosphere' and Chatswood used in the same sentence before
It is a busy bustling suburb during the day but dull as dishwater at night, as others have stated it can be very insular and not that 'eye to eye' friendly to me. It suits a lot of high end Asians because there is no 'neighbourhood', no kids playing together in the street and everyone minds their own business. You could be there for months and not speak to your neighbours. I would think that for a new person it would soon get very very lonely during the day if OH is at work...there is only a certain amount of shopping and coffee drinking that you can do before the novelty wears off and you find yourself alone in a community which does not welcome people very well. If that suits you then good but it doesn't me.
We all look at suburbs differently though and at the end of the day its what suits YOUR needs rather than our opinions...but....my thought is if everyone else says it is dull and unfriendly but you like it, then maybe that's what suits your character. I don't mean that in an unkind way, but sometimes people when first moving do like to just be on their own to find their own bearings.

Tr1boy

We lived in Lane Cove for 9 yrs, I'm married to a Korean, worked in Nth Ryde (and Nth Syd), and spent a lot of time in Chatswood both for business and pleasure. So I 'think' I'm qualified to answer

I don't see too much of the Korean saturation in Chatswood that people are talking about here. There is a sprinkling of Korean influence but nothing compared to the Chinese side of things. Eastwood and to a lesser extent, Strathfield is where them Koreans is at

As for Chatswood itself, neither I or Mrs TB would want to live there. It's ok for shopping in a typical Aussie 'just add water' kind of way, but I wouldn't say it's a place that we'd want to frequent too often (as in a few times a week). We have many Chinese friends in Chatswood who like it (mostly from the banking sector). Most of the Koreans we know crave a quieter suburb.

Great transport links from Chatswood though. I can't even imagine owning a car there and dealing with the Pac Hwy/Fullers Rd/ Mowbray cluster**k every day though

Lane Cove is an ok place to live. Used to be very much a retirement suburb (we used to live next door to the bowls club). In the last few years we were there it was changing though to be a much more family orientated place and the proliferation of badly parked 4WDs abounded!

Location wise it's good, you can bus anywhere in the tech triangle of Nth Ryde, Chatswood and Nth Syd.

If you live in the area, you can't avoid using or needing Chatswood at some point, but apart from visiting friends, we only went when we needed to, which still turned out to be quite a bit now I think about it.

Summary, good place to be close to, bad place to be in IMO.