Newly single and priced out of the south help me find a new home town

[Shitonthebloodything]

My absolute peach of a husband is buggering off leaving me with 3 kids and no hope of securing a mortgage anywhere close to my home county of Essex. I can’t rent forever and I don’t qualify for any single parent help from UC so it’s time to put down roots somewhere new.

Budget £150-170 (yeah, I know!)
I need at least 3 bedrooms, close to a town that’s good for shopping and teenage socialising.
A college where ds16 can finish his plumbing training or equivalent opportunities
A decent secondary to start ds10 in yr 7
A decent primary for ds3 to start reception
Plenty of things to do
Somewhere reasonably safe
Somewhere friendly that will welcome us
Somewhere with nice outdoor places to visit seeing as I’ll be bloody skint forever.
Poss near a motorway to allow for regular travelling back to see family etc.

And the moon on a stick.

Any ideas would be very much appreciated, at this point I’m basically just sticking pins in the map and searching on Rightmove.

Durham City isn’t affordable! Surrounding area, yes. Plus there is nothing other than a expensive cinema in city centre for teenagers.

Chester. Chester. Chester.
Beautiful small place with tons to do, classy, beautiful, close to Liverpool, lakes, Peak District, North Wales. The city itself is so pretty and so beautiful, with lots of social options going on but homely enough to feel cosy.
I actually live in the south but can't compare a single city or town that has the night life clubs, pubs, attractions that Chester has.

I can imagine how difficult it must be. I jumped to somewhere like Leicester…at least not too many hours away from Essex and seems a nice property..pasting link I found just in case www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/112559699#/?channel=RES_BUY

I would really recommend staying on the east side of the UK if you want easy access back to Essex @Shitonthebloodything . It’s such a ball-ache getting from NW to the SE, the M6 is awful and 50mph for large swathes, always terrible traffic around Staffordshire and Lancs, Brum etc. M1 is shite these days too. I would recommend Leics, Notts…Lincoln is an ok city for the main, some good schools and the waterfront bar/cafe area and cathedral are nice. Peterborough isn’t my fave city but it is close to Essex. Grantham in Lincs has some good shopping at the retail park and excellent grammar schools. I seem to recall some pretty countryside and a large park out of the town centre too.

Best of luck to you.

Also Norwich is lovely but may be out of price range…

MrsEWetherwax my house in Durham City is a spacious 3 bed valued at 160k. Huge garden too. Teenage activities a bit limited yes but train to Newcastle is 20 mins.

Also if driving you really want to avoid more than a few miles on the M25 on journeys back to Essex, so again I would recommend looking to towns and cities off the A1, where you can avoid the bastard thing altogether!

If you can push the budget slightly, or make a lower offer, this is a lovely house in a v nice part of Grantham. Honestly if schooling is a priority then the grammars are some of the best in the country and a couple of the state secondaries/colleges are also excellent. Good primaries too. Admittedly the town centre is a bit hit and miss but it’s got a lot of what you’ve asked for and is only a couple of hours to Essex.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/116453492#/?channel=RES_BUY

I’m impressed you are in city centre for that price. But you learn something new every day.

I would really recommend staying on the east side of the UK if you want easy access back to Essex

Finally a bit of common sense! Do you really want to have a ten hour round trip on a regular basis? I’m sure your kids can think of much better ways to spend their weekends.

i live in Burnley. you could certainly get a decent house in a decent area here for your budget. v good links to manchester by bus for teens. bit out of the loop for schools as mine are in their 20s and went out of area for school anyway but from what i remember a couple quite reasonable but there are other options in nearby towns as well. one of mine went to sixth form in blackburn for example. burnley gets a bad rap but i’ve been here all my life apart from uni and it had been good for me and my family. you might need to commute for work though as limited options locally but with more wfh maybe not.

I would look around Leeds. Wakefield is a good shout (Barnsley too if only for the accent). Good train and motorway links, lots of green spaces nearby, colleges / good universities within reasonable travel distance. Plenty to do in Leeds and Sheffield, shopping, food, museums, theatre, clubs etc. Yorkshire is pretty friendly too.

I'm not a fan of Burnley, Lancaster is nice but has always felt a bit far away from everything when I've been there, not sure why!

MrsEWetherwax it's Gilesgate. Lots of really solid ex council houses, 20 mins walk to the marketplace, great bus service, large gardens. Not as studenty as it was once now they've built so much new accommodation.

Chester would fit the bill, however very unlikely to find a 3 bed in a 'nice' area within budget.

This looks like an interesting option that might be worth exploring further.

New build in a village in countryside a few miles outside Leeds, good access to A1, railway station also not far from Garforth, which a nice enough small town that I think has quite a bit of life these days.

It says it's a 'discount sale' which means you get it at what they say is 80% of full market price, don't have to pay if/when you sell , you also have to offer the same percentage discount to the new buyer. Slightly above your stated budget, but as I say, the discount scheme might be something to investigate wider.

sorry, don't have to pay extra rent like with shared ownership.

I appreciate the difficulties with the potential East/West travel - it really is a pain. But if you did want to go north OP, you can get a much better standard of living in the north west than in much of the rest of the county - for example, look at something like this in Blackburn near to Ofsted outstanding schools, and under budget leaving a bit for decorating:

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/116133176#/?channel=RES_BUY

Sorry, I’m only just coming back to this. Last week was an absolute write off, it all sunk in and I was floored by the enormity of it all tbh.

Trying to get my head around it all. I’ve been looking at this wrong. I need to get more specific if I’m going to narrow this down. I have 6 months to prepare.

The travelling west to east issue hadn’t even occurred to me. Will it really make that much difference?

So, what we really need is:
A decent area (by that I mean, low crime, no obvious drug issues, employment opportunities, no depressing areas of deprivation)
Good schools
Things to do for teenagers to keep them out of trouble.
Transport links (trains although I appreciate they’ll be very expensive, and good links to roads that get me back down south for kids to see dad and to visit family)
Friendly locals (so not insular towns or anywhere the kids will be bullied for having different accents)
Plenty of things to do for little ones (swimming lessons, football clubs that sort of thing)
A town centre that’s not completely run down or at least close enough to a nicer one.

I appreciate that I’m never going to get the best of the best on my budget but I don’t need naice, just decent enough. I’m originally from the poorer parts of east London so I’m looking for at least a step up from that.

If you sold the two bed in 6 months would that up your budget at all for a house? Or do you need the income from the rental

Everything seems to be moving so slowly currently that I'd be surprised if buying took less than 4 months and you might also be able to sell the house tenanted as an option? Obviously it would limit your market to landlords but worth considering.

I think with a budget of £185 you might find something you wanted in Ipswich that was in an okay area, but prices have been a bit ridiculous recently so while it would have been feasible for £170 pre Covid I don't think it would be doable for a house in decent nick in a decent area now.

I went to uni in Durham. Beautiful town but as a student I felt it had a very weird vibe, the students can behave appallingly and there was quite a lot of animosity between students and locals. One of my friends got punched in the face at a F&C shop completely randomly (as in just standing in line). He had an Essex accent. I went back recently and even the kids were commenting on how much litter there was everywhere and how grim the river path was; I don’t remember it being like that.

But others living there now seem to think it fits your bill? Certainly the train link to Newcastle would be brilliant for your teens.

I have a lovely friend who lives in Doncaster .
I've no idea what the schools are like ,I suspect maybe not brilliant but it has a decent town centre and great rail links to York(20mins) ,Leeds(30mins) ,London ( 1hour40mins )etc . Countryside on your doorstep .
www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/60163999/?search_identifier=8fcdac515f2a8a56696c6beec217bd33

www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/60190880/?search_identifier=8fcdac515f2a8a56696c6beec217bd33

@sociallydistained

My budget was 200k in Hampshire and I can’t even get a 2 bed house. I’m stuck in my one bedroom flat and due a baby. With maternity now I feel well and truely stuck. It’s shit.

Similar in Hampshire. Wish I did something- even a two bed flat before baby. I could have stretched to 250 (and sold my crappy flat)

Your affordability goes waaaay down once you pay out 1k in nursery. Now the banks will loan me what my 1 bed is worth and that plus my equity will get me maybe a two bed ex council. Maybe not even that.

Here's to severals years of nursery to go...

Leeds. We were priced out of the southeast some years ago and we are in Leeds now.

@Shitonthebloodything look I really don’t work for the Grantham tourist board, but I will emphasise that Grantham has brilliant schools, low crime, easy links to Essex, good amenities, is v near cities like Nottingham and Lincoln for additional shopping/leisure, has a nice NT property and nearby woods/countryside for walking, and has houses in budget!

Also this:

www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/lincoln-news/work-begins-new-100m-grantham-5195386

Means that money and opportunities are coming, and with that usually comes a bit of a surge in house prices, so get ‘em while they’re (not!) hot 😉

And even if you don’t go for Grantham, yes the east-west travel thing makes a huge difference when travelling by car. I’ve driven all round the UK hundreds of times for various reasons and I know all the major routes from east London to anywhere. M25 anti-clockwise for more than a few miles and you’re already adding anything from 30 mins to six hours to your journey depending on how many crashes there are that day. Even no crashes there are inexplicable 40/50mph zones for miles and sudden stop-starts for junctions at a time. And that’s before you’ve even begun to navigate the horror of the M6 at Birmingham - Preston!