Buying a house. How do I know if the area is ok?

[radiateforme]

I'm looking to buy a house. Have had to massively reduce my budget and may end up with a bit of a doer upper. I found somewhere that I really like, but my family aren't sure. It's surrounded by social housing which I couldn't care less about but my snobby aunt seems to think this is a problem. Crime levels are high ish but I live in a city, they're high everywhere. I checked Crime levels for where I live now and they're actually higher and I've never had a problem. Sometimes when people play devil's advocate it doesn't help, it just confuses you. I thought I loved this flat and now I'm questioning myself. Help?!

Have a look on whatever local Facebook groups there are. That's where you'll see people talking about the antisocial behaviour that doesn't get reported to the police.

There are two social housing estates within a 15 minute drive from my house. One is absolutely fine and the other is completely dire. We had a spate of burglaries in our road a couple of years ago so maybe our stats aren’t great but it’s the anti social behaviour stats you should be wary of.

When we were house hunting we found that a visit to the local pub was informative. There was one place we felt really uncomfortable and out of place in. That told us a lot about the locals.