Buying/renting in Bristol

stmatt

Hi

I'm looking for some help. My family and I will be moving to Bristol soon. We currently live overseas and have no idea of the desirable and less-desirable areas to live. We need to live within easy reach of Frenchay hospital and have 2 young children so need to have decent primary schools. We will start off renting but would ideally like to rent in an area close to where we would eventually buy to save moving schools.

Also what is the housing market like in Bristol at the moment. Has it been increasing/decreasing etc?

All advice will be gratefully received.

spirit

My daughter was at uni there until recently. Apart from Bristol university, the is the UWE which is in Frenchay area so you get a lot of student accommodation there.

Clifton is by far the best area. don't know about buying there. perhaps Rightmove website, aboutmyplace, upmystreet or the Primelocation one can help you there?

ceh209

Clifton is nice, but very expensive (2 bed flat with no parking for £240k, anyone?), and not great for Frenchay, and extremely difficult to park in.

Fishponds, Downend and Staple Hill are all reasonable areas closeish to Frenchay. They're proper suburbs with their own local high streets.

Stapleton and Easton are much more inner-city type areas, so IMO have higher crime rates etc (don't know if that's really true or i'm stereotyping!)

From a quick check on rightmove I'd say you're looking at £600-800pcm for a 2-3 bed flat/house in Fishponds etc. I don't know if things are increasing or decreasing atm unfortunately.

stmatt

Hi

Would love to have the money to afford Clifton but its way out of our reach. Seen a 2 bed flat that we could afford!! I think we could get a mortgage that would cover us to £450000 but that would be really stretching ourselves and would be happier with max of £400000.

Not too bothered about period features. Our last owned house was a new-build and I quite liked it. Our house before that was about 150 years old and apart from fact that all DIY had a few more problems that expected I liked living there too.

I suppose our main issue are going to be schools (and distance from hospital). Anybody else have any input.

Wee_Willy_Harris

Winterbourne, Coalpit Heath, Iron Acton and Frampton Cotterell are nice, Yate less so. Chipping Sodbury will probably be out of the price range (and over-rated). Plenty of affordable properties in Stoke Gifford/Bradley Stoke, if you like identikit rabbit hutches. All are within easy reach of Frenchay and served by good schools. North of the City centre (St Pauls, Montpelier) is very "interesting", by which I mean you should be interested from the safe length of a barge-pole. Warmley/Oldham Common and parts of Brislington are OK, but avoid Knowle at all costs.

baby_fuzz

downend, bromley heath, stapleton
more modern developments; emersons green, stoke park, stoke gifford, bradley stoke (always get lost in there...)

stmatt

Thanks, that gives me a bit more idea which areas I should be looking at.

hennagirl

Hello I have moved from Bristol to middlesex about two years ago and lived in the Downend area. I would class decent areas close to Frenchay as being Downend, Bromley Heath, Frenchay itself, Emersons Green and Winterbourne. Depending on your budget, Frenchay and Winterbourne would be classed as the more expensive areas, Emersons green has more new builds and Downend has a mixture of properties. Personally we went for Downend because you get a decent sized property for a good price, transport links are good without getting caught up in rush hour traffic and the schools have good performance results. The downend population is quite multicultural as well. I had two children going through primary education and ended sending my kids to Elm Park School in Winterbourne - about ten mins drive from Downend - this proved to be a good school for them (the local school to me in Downend which is about 2 mins walk from our house tends to be oversubscribed so unless you have put in an application before the closing date, we were advised by the LEA to apply to alternative schools.) There are plenty of estate agents who can help you with your property needs - local agents are Besley Hill, Andrews, Connells, Taylors and a few others.

If you are coming from overseas, if you need to shop for ethnic products, the area which provides this is called St Marks Road in Easton. It has a good variety of Asian shops catering for Asian, Middle Eastern and Caribbean/African cuisines. There is also a big Tesco in Eastville which carries a lot of ethnic products and is also the main place to get shopping done at a good price. Emersons green also has a shopping area which has a Sainsburys and Lidl for grocery, Argos, Boots Chemist and clothing stores.

Doctors, dentists etc are touch and go if applying for NHS ones. We eventually got some but had to drive out considerably long way from our local area.

Hope this helps.

baby_fuzz

hennagirl wrote: »

Doctors, dentists etc are touch and go if applying for NHS ones. We eventually got some but had to drive out considerably long way from our local area.

Hope this helps.

That's funny... We had no problem with doctors or dentist. Both pretty close to us, and easy to sign-up (not over-subscribed or anything). The one in Frenchay is NHS.

Frenchay Dental Practice
Beckspool Road
Frenchay
Bristol
BS16 1NU

nad1611

Hi I live just down the road from Frenchay in the Stapleton Area. In my road there is usually a Three bed house for rent, near The Worthies Residential home, in a friendly private estate. There are usually houses for sale too, but it is quite a sought after area. My friend recently sold her three bed semi for 170,00 to give you a rough guide price.
It's very close to Frenchay a 4 minute drive only , easy access to M32 which takes you 10 minutes into the heart of Bristol. Great access to M5 and M4.
Depending on the type of schools you are after, there is a private school, the well known (here at least) Colston's School Mixed. Also a primary school between Stapleton and Frenchay.

I agree if you need to be fairly near Frenchay, then the areas of Frenchay Stapleton and Downend, Winterbourne (which has an excellent secondary school, unsure of primary schools) are good areas. Clifton was mentioned and yes has always been a sought after location, but there are downsides to parking and lots of student lets, if that would affect your choice,and it's not close to Frenchay.
Hope this helps.

giddypenguin

If you are working at Frenchay Hospital you may have to be mindful that some days you may be required to work at Southmead (as Frenchay is in the process of being shut down) I started at Frenchay just over a year ago and my department has since moved to Southmead.

Patchway, Filton, Downend are all good areas - some parts of Fishponds and Staple Hill can be a little rough.

Welcome to Bristol (when you get here)!