DH and I are looking to move house but we're so undecided about where to settle that we need outside opinion.
I'll be using fictional placenames in case it's outing, but also for my amusement. Basically, there are three candidates (Hogsmeade, Gotham and South Park 😃) and we can't decide between them.
Summary:
We met at uni in a small city (Hogsmeade). DH is from there and his parents still live there. It's always been the dream to move to Hogsmeade permanently. Unfortunately, it's very expensive with house prices spiralling to the point of insanity since the economic crash. Good quality properties are rare enough to be non-existent at our budget. We'd have to settle for a small flat no better than our current one in a remote part of the city.
Currently, we own a small flat in a big city (Gotham). We've been here for over a decade. It's great for restaurants, nightlife, etc. and has more of a buzz about it than anywhere else. We're conveniently located but the area can be rough with drug problems and the occasional stabbing. It's an hour by train to Hogsmeade. On our budget, we could stretch to a large flat with an extra bedroom in a nicer but less convenient part of the city.
I grew up in a big town (South Park), which is very close to Gotham but further still from Hogsmeade. My family live here. As a town, it's a bit rough around the edges, but property in the best areas is affordable and we could get a real grown-up house with a garden instead of a flat.
Extra context and factors:
Neither of us drive (no need for it in Gotham) though DH said he would start once we move.
We work from home. DH occasionally works in the Gotham office and could easily transfer to his company's office in Hogsmeade. However, the Hogsmeade branch is smaller and does less interesting work than the one in Gotham.
DH also has one of those mysterious DH-type hobbies beloved by Mumsnet, and while the facilities in Gotham for said hobby are fine, they're elite level in Hogsmeade.
DH's parents are older so he'd prefer to be around them in Hogsmeade and wouldn't want to wait ten more years in another interim, un-forever home.
We're looking to start a family. As we don't yet have kids, we don't know what to prioritise in terms of affordability, closeness to family, and niceness of area. I think I'd prefer to be close to my mum. However, my mum says it's a no-brainer and that we should definitely move to Hogsmeade as it's much nicer than both South Park and Gotham (she won't even visit Gotham because it's "too dangerous" and says she'd visit all the time if we moved to Hogsmeade).
To reiterate: most of the properties in Hogsmeade at our budget are awful. In all our time of looking at Rightmove, we have seen maybe one (1) flat that was nice enough at the very top of our budget but it had poor transport links.
South Park has excellent transport links to central Gotham. But as much as I'll always consider it "home", I don't particularly wish to return to South Park.
We've only looked at places we already have ties to, which is important to us. The wildcard idea is that we say fuck it and move to Narnia where my best friend lives. Narnia is an hour from both Gotham and Hogsmeade but also serves DH's hobby better than Gotham, though not to the extent of Hogsmeade. And it's more of a small semi-rural city, which I think would be a good change of pace and great for raising a child. Property there is comparable to South Park, in that you get more for your money, and by all accounts my friend is happy, though she too has recently debated moving to other places to be closer to family, and we don't know much about Narnia at all. (Narnia is not as serious a contender as the other three, just here out of desperation.)
TLDR: For Hogsmeade, we can't afford to be choosy beggars and would need to compromise drastically. Same but to a lesser extent for the more desirable areas of Gotham. But in South Park we could live like royalty.
Hopefully you can make sense of this. We are so stuck, please help :(