Buying what I think of as a decent house in the very nicest part of Newcastle, Liverpool, Nottingham, almost anywhere mentioned is not possible at that price point
Well of course it's not, but believe it or not, there's a huge middle ground between the subjectively very nicest parts of any particular city and the rough areas with social problems that blight people's lives. And the majority who live in those middle ground areas generally do so quite happily.
I honestly despair of the obsession on Mumsnet with only accepting the very best and if there's any sort of compromise, feeling hard done by.
And as for the most desirable areas of the city where I live, there's still issues. The schools are the most oversubscribed, so if you move there, chances are your DC won't get into the schools that you've paid extra to live near anyway. In non COVID times, the traffic is worst and access to the motorway takes forever. I know a few people who live in areas like Adel, Horsforth, Cookridge and they've all been burgled, sometimes more than once, because guess what, criminals have transport and know where to look for people who have the nicest stuff and are often complacent about security, because they live in a nice area.
I remember a thread where a Mumsnetter needed to move to a nice small town on the east side of Leeds because her DH had got a job there and there were endless posters suggesting that they lived in areas like Horsforth, which would have forced him into a 2 hour round trip each day to commute because they couldn't see past their desire to live in their perceived 'best' area, when they could have found somewhere perfectly nice within 5-10 minutes drive at most that still had lots of nice local amenities and would have been cheaper too. Ridiculous.