Top 5 suburbs in Melbourne - money no object? Have your say.

Nice list KevFev. I've never thought of living at Mt. Eliza or M Pen. I just felt they were too far from the CBD (cause I work here). I've flirted with the idea of wishing to live in Toorak and Canterbury but I just feel that they might be a bit to serious for my tastes. Can't put my finger on it. I've been to some lovely estates there, though.

Correction to above - Chapel street is in South Yarra, but I meant its close to all the shops around (beside the fact that there are large mansions there).

Great list Denthor - have you lived in any of these suburbs? Always curious to see if the lifestyle matches the pricetag.

Thanks Jason - Yes I have lived in 3 of those listed above. In terms of price-tag, if you imply purchasing a house there then yes it would be quite expensive, in terms of rental it can vary (apartments are not that much expensive compared to neighbouring areas, but houses can be).

Knock Hawthorn off the list. It's now overcrowded and overrated, unless you can afford a mansion in a prestigious street (or, better, court) with no trucks and no through traffic, and most importantly no noisy Swinburne students. Above all, avoid Power Street/Denmark Street/Princess Street. It's a north-south Monash Carpark. Hawthorn is probably still a great place to invest, though, since the rentals are exorbitant and for some insane reason people still want to move here. I'm intending to flee within the next few months and never come back. Sandringham looks very nice, perhaps even nicer than Brighton. Has anyone actually lived there? Maybe I will one day when I'm flushed with $$$$$.

So the developers are wrecking Sandrinham as well as Hawthorn. Dogboxes going up everywhere = hell on earth. Think I'll stay away, even though the beach at Sandringham looks top-notch and the suburb looks peaceful on the surface. Black Rock is not much good as I don't drive. Thanks for the info anyway.

Lol people. Tried living or driving around most places in the greater Melbourne region these days? you can't - traffic. It's crazy :( I just thought it was Richmond when I was living there a few years back, but that was just a precursor to Melbourne living these days. So if the East is overrated, where would you live -and why-. I get that it's busy - but the entire city is busy now. Also, answers need to have some context. I've got a young family 3 under 5 (at the time of posting) so Schools, Safety and Public Transport are the top of my list of requirements.

If you're after public transport avoid Doncaster LIKE THE PLAGUE. The public transport consists of buses, Doncaster Road is so crowded you wouldn't believe it (even on Sundays), the train's probably going to turn out to be about as feasible as bringing a dead parrot back to life (funny how freeways are always feasible though) and these useless wretches of state government have all spent the last 20 years not bothering to even extend the North Balwyn tram a few km's to Doncaster. Building rail infrastructure in seats where Labor can't win and the Libs can't lose is never feasible, so the poor saps who live their (maybe only because they're young and their parents chose to live there) just have to suffer and suffer for years on end because of crass political self-interest and laziness. Please spare your three children an adolescence of hell by ruling out all suburbs that don't have a train line or at least a tram actually BUILT - sitting there already. Never believe the stuff on the Melways about "Future tram extension" (No. 75 to Knox) or "Proposed Transport Corridor" (mythical Epping North train line that disappeared off the map), where supposedly they're going to put in a train or tram. State governments lie and lie and lie. "Things are going to happen! ... yes, just wait a bit longer due to budget constraints ... whoops, no, we're not going to build Southland Station after all (even though we only won the seat of Bentleigh because we said we were going to) ... sorry folks, wait for our second term (which we're now not going to get because of not building the tram extensions / train lines / new stations we said we would ...)" Yes there's traffic everywhere but if you're lucky you might find a small pocket where there's no through-traffic and no one using streets for rat-runs either. I'm going to seriously look at Chelsea/Edithvale, but apparently the traffic on Edithvale Rd is terrible so nothing too close to there.

We just moved to Ivanhoe. Wife got map and said - see that train line. need to find a house within walking distance. Next she found schools near there. Finally she said - see that area there (Heidelberg and beyond) ... once we hit 'The Cutting' u can't drive anywhere at all. Insane amount of traffic. So i hear ya! Also, i have no idea why Doncaster doesn't have a friggin train that goes up the freeway. I love Doncaster Shopping Centre! And the area around there is awesome (eg. Templestowe). If only the traffic can get fixed with some serious PT installed.

If I'm correctly informed, there's no train down the Eastern Freeway because one of the Cain government's first actions was to sell the site of the proposed Doncaster train station. Then they built the last leg of the freeway (from Bulleen Road) without a median strip, when of course anyone can see that the previous part has the median strip, perhaps because they'd decided to nuke the train line. I'm told the Doncaster train line was even on the Melways back around then, showing the proposed stations. That's state governments all over: quietly sell off things that are of use to the public (rail reservations, land for train stations, public housing) and just leave people to wake up 20 years later scratching their heads and thinking, "Hang on, whatever happened to that train line they promised us? Why didn't they ever build it?" The Epping North one is even worse because people in Aurora were apparently sold houses by VicUrban on the understanding that there was going to be a train line, and that their six and seven star energy efficient homes were all going to be within 800 metres of it. I don't know why they didn't all sue the Brumby Govt over that, on the grounds that their homes are worth less than they paid for them because they're now in a public transport desert instead of within 1 km of a train station. This essay provides an interesting study of the mess that Brumby left, although it's from before he got thrown out: http://griffithreview.com/monday-morning-in-mernda