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

BrownTrout

ChasingtheWelshdream said:

When you say Wales, it really does depend where you mean and what you define as 'rough'.

We live in mid Powys, which is one of the largest, but least populated counties. North and South have much, much better transport links than the centre and thus more expensive. But the central area is stunning, overlooked and very reasonably priced (especially coming from the home counties). You do however, have to get used to travelling to do pretty much anything and the community is close-knit as a result (or insular depending on your point of view). There's not many nicer places to be locked down, ;-) 

I love this area, but coming from Essex it did take me a while to get used to the hours journey in any direction to access the facilities we were used to. But now we don't mind at all and don't really need to do so much. There are a lot of outsiders discovering our town and putting down roots.

Having said that, we do feel our kids will be at a disadvantage as they get older than if we had moved an hour North/South instead. There is no choice of high school and college is a 2 hour bus journey over the border. Brecon/Welshpool would give a much better choice. On the same note, employment is not great in terms of career choices. Pretty much everyone I know works for the Council or Tesco, but the cost of living is much lower than we were used to. I fully expect our brood will move away.

I don't know your situation but we had initially wanted to move to the West coast. We decided against it as we felt our children were too old to be placed into Welsh Medium education and there was pretty much no other option. Similarly, LA work (my career) was pretty much a non-starter without Welsh language skills in Ceredigion and Gwynedd. So we looked further East and Powys CC rarely require it. I must stress we began learning Welsh as soon as we moved and our kids attend a dual stream school so are getting a grounding in the language. Had they been younger we would have not hesitated to have them educated in Welsh from the outset. But something to consider depending on your family/work situation.

In terms of 'rough', as an example Merthyr Tydfil has a reputation and I can't comment what it is like to live there. But pre-lockdown we would travel there frequently for cinema, shops, restaurants - it has pretty much everything a well-serviced town should have. It's not pretty but I certainly don't think the reputation is justified. And the Beacons are on your doorstep, with Cardiff/Swansea very accessible.

So in a nutshell, cheaper areas will have their compromises. But it does not necessarily mean they are undesirable places to live.

I grew up in South wales, its not a well connected place at all, and is wet and miserable in winter, but yes well priced and nice countryside
You mentioned merthyr, fully agree, its a typical ex mining valleys town, far better connected then some other valley places, and is a cheap place to live!

Crashy_Time

Nebulous2 said:

Crashy_Time said:

Even I was shocked by the RMove Sold price drops for Aberdeen! From peak that is, not from the start of the SD holiday.

I didn’t see that caveat in your first comment. 

“Prices in Aberdeen are dropping fast, except for the last year.” Would have been more accurate. 

That doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. 

"They have absolutely collapsed from peak" rings like a Church bell though?