Thoughts on areas of the UK that have cheap £150k detached housing?

Skiddaw1

A vote for Carlisle from me. Very underrated city IMO. Lovely country all around (Lakes, Solway coast, Southern Uplands, Hadrians Wall, etc) and lots of local parks/river walks. I like Carlisle very much (we live near Penrith so it's our nearest large town).

theartfullodger

Scottish Highlands.

BrownTrout

Ex mining area south wales valley. Full of cheap housing

NaughtiusMaximus

Deleted_User said:

When a house is cheap its normally cheap for a reason - either in a undesirable area or in need of renovation. 

Depends how you define undesirable, there are plenty of areas of the UK which have low house values but are still perfectly pleasant places to live. 

moneysavinghero

NaughtiusMaximus said:

Deleted_User said:

When a house is cheap its normally cheap for a reason - either in a undesirable area or in need of renovation. 

Depends how you define undesirable, there are plenty of areas of the UK which have low house values but are still perfectly pleasant places to live. 

Presumably undesirable is defined as an area that most people would prefer not to live in if they had the choice. Hence they choose to pay more to live in a different area and the 'undesirable' areas house prices become relatively cheaper. Does not mean they are terrible places, just that most people would rather spend a bit more to not live there.

janoid19

I am originally from Darlington, County Durham and you would get a detached for around that as my Grandmas house has just gone on for sale at £165k.

Heres_the_deal

davidmcn said:

Heres_the_deal said:

I’ve been looking ‘online’ at £140-160k (sometimes a lot less) detached houses around Durham, Carlisle and parts of Wales and Scotland. Does anyone on here live in such an area, and can let me know what I should expect, or suggest any other areas in the UK with similar house prices.

Work and commute travel are not a priority, the more rural the better. 

Any other criteria? You can get something like that in most of Scotland and Wales.

It can be a either a small 2 bed detached house or bungalow, garden size is not important. A garage would be nice but not critical. Rural or semi rural (not city or inside a large town). In need of modernisation (not renovation), or ready to go.  Location does not have to rely on work or amenities.

There are some nice houses in Lincolnshire that 'used' to fit the bill, many in very nice village locations. But when stamp duty was temp changed, the £950 we would have saved, meant paying an extra £7k for the property !!

Thanks to the other posters for their suggestions, its encouraging to know its possible.

It has to be detached, I could never ever live in a semi again after years of problems, noise, and all the other downsides of sharing a party wall. I've lived in a detached house for the past 40 odd years, I could never go back. I've seen plenty of detached houses in the areas mentioned, and within my budget. However, I want to listen to the people who live there. Every town these days has bad areas.

Mutton_Geoff

lincroft1710 said:

Jaywick in Essex has some exceptionally cheap detached bungalows, but you probably wouldn't really want to live there!

Interesting coincidence. A friend is buying up some of these as they have a fairly healthy % return as BTLs.

Nebulous2

moneysavinghero said:

NaughtiusMaximus said:

Deleted_User said:

When a house is cheap its normally cheap for a reason - either in a undesirable area or in need of renovation. 

Depends how you define undesirable, there are plenty of areas of the UK which have low house values but are still perfectly pleasant places to live. 

Presumably undesirable is defined as an area that most people would prefer not to live in if they had the choice. Hence they choose to pay more to live in a different area and the 'undesirable' areas house prices become relatively cheaper. Does not mean they are terrible places, just that most people would rather spend a bit more to not live there.

Or it can be a place where lots of people would want to live, for the outdoors life and better air quality, but can't get work. There is a quote that says something like:- 
"Fort William is a place where a man could live like a king on half-a-crown a day. The only problem is there is no ready way to make half-a-crown a day." 

In other words the type of place where property prices could benefit from the WFH boom.

pinkteapot

Skiddaw1 said:

A vote for Carlisle from me. Very underrated city IMO. Lovely country all around (Lakes, Solway coast, Southern Uplands, Hadrians Wall, etc) and lots of local parks/river walks. I like Carlisle very much (we live near Penrith so it's our nearest large town).

Came here to say the same thing (hey again, skiddaw1 )

We relocated to Cumbria from Essex just over two years ago, and initially rented a house in Carlisle before we bought a place near Penrith. We hadn't spent any time in Carlisle at all before moving there! There's a shortage of rental houses in Cumbria so choice on location was very limited - we just thought it would do while we house-hunted.

I really, really liked Carlisle. I sort of assumed it was huge just because it's a city, but it's about half the size (in terms of population) as Colchester where we moved from. In Essex it wouldn't even be a big town. Nonetheless, because it's Cumbria and the next nearest town with all the big-name stores is an hour's drive in any direction, it has every shop you'll ever need. And the traffic's a dream compared to congested, southern towns. And you can park all day for a few quid! There's a lot of history and heritage there too - lots of lovely old buildings.

The type of house and budget you're talking won't be in the best parts of town - if you post where you're looking at there may be people with experience of living there. But I didn't hear about any *really* bad parts and there wasn't much crime in the local papers. Mr Teapot works in Carlisle so can ask his colleagues about areas if you get that far. 

Finally, it's on the West Coast mainline up to Glasgow so the train service to London is very good. Takes about 3.5 hours - which is superb when you look on a map and see just how far it is! Far more efficient than the trains in East Anglia. You can get to both Glasgow and Edinburgh easily by train if you want a trip to a big city. And it's right on the M6 and up this way there's hardly any traffic on it, so you've got good road links too. 

The thing you should be aware of before even considering a move to Cumbria is the climate. It's grey and wet - we get all the weather coming off the Atlantic. I think we have something like three times the annual rainfall of where we used to live in Essex, so inevitably there are far fewer sunny days. Plus the days are shorter in winter than down south, so you have more weeks of going to work and coming home in darkness. We'd spent a lot of time up here at all times of year before moving and knew what we were getting into.