£150,000 Salisbury, Shaftsbury, Somerset

Eilis

Hello

In approx 12 mts I hope to purchase my own home. My limit is £150000 which in the grand scheme of things is very little. I am look at the above areas and would appreciate if anyone could offer opinion on areas that are nice to settle in and to avoid.

I hear Taunton in somerset is nice but to avoid yeovil?
Not familiar with Shaftsbury.
Many thanks
:money:

phoebe1989seb

Until late 2014 we owned a period house in a village in the Cranborne Chase AONB, a couple of miles outside Shaftesbury and visited both Shaftesbury and Salisbury regularly for shopping etc. The surrounding countryside is beautiful, although we did always joke that the area was stuck in a 1950s time warp, lol!

Shaftesbury is lovely - quite quaint with some nice independent shops - although supermarket-wise we always felt it left something to be desired and preferred to travel further into Gillingham to Waitrose

There are quite a few new build developments on the outskirts of Shaftesbury with, iirc fairly reasonably priced homes, depending of course on your requirements.

Salisbury has a wide range of housing, so again - depending on what you want/need - I should imagine you'd be sale to find something in your budget.

We occasionally drove out Taunton/Yeovil way and had also heard that Yeovil was the less desirable, but the surrounding villages seemed to look perfectly OK.

dragonsoup

Like everywhere Taunton is good and bad. If you buy in the surrounding areas check the flood risk carefully.

Niv

Eilis wrote: »

Hello

In approx 12 mts I hope to purchase my own home. My limit is £150000 which in the grand scheme of things is very little. I am look at the above areas and would appreciate if anyone could offer opinion on areas that are nice to settle in and to avoid.

I hear Taunton in somerset is nice but to avoid yeovil?
Not familiar with Shaftsbury.
Many thanks
:money:

It really depends what you are looking for / need. Thinking job wise - large parts of Somerset are great for motorway access where I have found Salisbury a right pain for getting in and out.
So if you are likely to drive around the country a lot Somerset may be better.

I currently live in Somerset and think its a nice place to live, cant say if it is better or worse than your other options though.

Taunton is fine but you will get more for your money in / near Bridgwater, you could look at places like North Petherton for example. There is quite a lot of new developments in Bridgwater - one of the newish ones near the motorway junction is Stockmoor Village which also may be worth a look.

Cakeguts

What I would suggest that you do is to take some time off work and then practice the journey to work on a normal working day at the normal time that you would do it. Not during school holidays though if driving. What looks like a nice quiet village at the weekend could easily become a big traffic jam in rush hour.

Eilis

Thank you so much for your thoughts and opinions. You have all been so helpful.
I will be working in Salisbury hospital so thank you for the heads up re traffic etc.
If I move further afield I am lucky as I could move to another hospital.
BW
E

Rain_Shadow

Salisbury hospital is south of the city centre and will only be easily approached from the south at rush hour. Driving through Salisbury is not good at any time. If you are coming from the west then you can by-pass the centre via Wilton and Harnham.


If you want to estimate journey times use an average of 30mph for your calculations if you are any distance at all from Salisbury. I live 12 miles south of Salisbury and my mother lives in North Somerset. the journey is 48 miles. I can rarely do it in less than 90 minutes.


Also £150k is a tight budget for this part of the world. Where I live you would be talking 1 bed retirement flats, so no use to you or park homes like this http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-57485963.html

Alpaca

At £150k, there are definitely options for 2 bed flats. For example in Shaftesbury at £150k: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-50901995.html

This is in a good location - just a few minutes (literally 3 or 4) to walk to either the centre or amazing views. It also appears that other properties in Savoy Court tend to go for higher prices, for example two were sold in March this year for £187.5 and £215k respectively and even going back to 2013 others in the area sold for similar prices. So this flat at £150k would be at the lower end of what people pay for this location. In other words, a good location for your budget. (Obviously notwithstanding personal preferences).

Or in Salisbury at £139k:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-42885597.html

This flat is about a mile to the West of the city centre and has a very nice interior split across 2 levels.

If you were willing to go a bit further out from a town centre, you could look at something like this in Amesbury, 8-9 miles north of Salisbury:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-43155894.html

It's a 2-bed ground floor flat listed at £149,950 but a first floor 2-bed flat in the same block sold in May for £140k so you ought to be able to get a similar price if not lower due to a slower market since the referendum and the fact that you'd usually expect a first floor flat to fetch more than an equivalent ground floor one.