To ask for your suggestions on where to live in the UK, south of France, Northern Italy or Spain

[Kigali78]

I’d value your suggestions.

I work in Asia and will soon be selling a house in the UK near London. I’d like to buy a small place (2-3 bedrooms / apartment or townhouse) in a pines town/city but have no idea where - somewhere around the Mediterranean, or in the UK.

I’m looking for:
-somewhere coastal or on a river
-somewhere pretty - an attractive town/city
-somewhere where I can walk to restaurants, bars and cafes
-somewhere with stunning countryside nearby
-low crime
-if not in the UK, then within 30km from a decent airport

In terms of prices - if not in the UK, then to about £150k. In the UK - up to about £250-£300k

Thanks ☺️ if you like where you live, please suggest it!

The brief is a little broad…. !

I’m pretty open to suggestions!

I did think about extending it to Eastern Europe too, but thought that might have been a step too far…

I'm from Northern Italy originally

I'm not sure you'll find much within 30k of Milan/Venice airports for around 150k but you could look near Turin or Bologna (both have regular flights to London). I wouldn't want to live near the Po river in the spring/summer (so many mosquitos) but there lots of lovely lakes. There's also Genova airport on the coast (Liguria is cheaper than the coast near Venice)

Do you speak any of those languages OP? That might help narrow things down? On that budget you're looking at non tourist areas and certainly in Italy there won't be many who speak English. I say that as a wife of an Italian who's been going there for 25 years and was shocked how few people spoke any English at all. And that was just outside Venice. Coastal towns along the Adriatic are bonkers busy in the summer and ghost towns in the winter.

And as @Girasoli says the mosquitoes are horrific on that coast. Tiger mozzies that bite in the daytime!

Is this going to be a permanent home, investment or holiday home? If you're intending to live permanently, do you have the right to?

You won’t buy much in the U.K. in a nice area for your budget, unless you’re after a small place with possibly no parking/much garden space.

Sorry, just re-read and see you are after a small place, so good luck, hope you find what you’re after.

I speak a little French, Italian and Spanish - lots of living and working with people from those countries when I was younger, as well as GCSEs - I’ll pick it up. It’ll be easier than learning Mandarin! ^^

Thank you! I’ll check these places out!

Non UK would be holiday to start with, although I’d work on acquiring a Schengen visa - there are a couple of routes I could go to get one.

In the UK I can heartily recommend Mumbles, just outside of Swansea which ticks all your boxes but you won't get much for 300k.

Beziers or Pezenas in France

Thank you @jenandberrys @massistar

Around Carcassonne is lovely. Has an airport and there are some nice towns nearby, though possibly a bit quiet.

I’ve visited Carcassonne actually, a few years ago, and loved it. Particularly the rather over-zealous museum of torture!

Yabu.

I suspected as much

Trieste!

Why do you think she's BU? Is it that you think her budget is inadequate? Or that what she's looking for doesn't exist? Or do you just think on principle that she should do her own fucking legwork without asking for help?

I think your wish list is a bit problematic, OP, in that any well connected town/city that's attractive and has nice places to go etc is likely to have tourists and is unlikely therefore (imho) also to be low in crime, but hopefully there's a balance to be found. Personally I would also hesitate to buy too close to water without looking carefully at flood modelling for the next 20-50 years (depending on how old you are).

I'm watching with interest though and I'm surprised there aren't pages and pages of suggestions by now.

@Kigali78 I haven't been to the museum of torture! I'm fond of Rennes-les-Bains, though like many of those towns it's extremely quiet in winter. If you can go up to 300k you might find a cottage in one of the Devon coastal towns, Brixham, Ilfracombe or one of the nicer bits of Plymouth. As far as I know, these places often have a level of crime/asb that wouldn't suit you though.

It's all very well being near a decent airport but if you're flying into the uk regularly then our airports are a bit crap at times.

Your budget won't work in the UK- anywhere worth having OP- on your criteria I would have suggested somewhere like here in Bath or Marlow or Henley but it's way way more than that

Maybe look at somewhere is southern Spain near Malaga but it will still be a flat - and not an amazing one either

My cousin bought a house with a pool somewhere in Turkey. She loves it there. It's quite Mediterranean but also affordable.