Good place to buy house and live in Birmingham

[Gorgygeorge]

I would like to buy a 3 bed semi-detached or terraced house in Birmingham, and would like to know some good places apart from Sutton coldfield, Solihull, Harborne, Bournville and Moseley

Happy New Year to all!

To some extent, I support @flirtygirl
It's difficult to assess a place by what's going on in a potential street that one want to live, because even if the street is good, the next street might be bad. And I think even if an area or street is assessed good, few nuisance could make it bad if they move there. In essence, it might be difficult to easily conclude outrightly that an area is good.

Notwithstanding, for parents, it will be great to live in an area with good primary and secondary school, with many working professionals and low crime rates.

@flirtygirl thanks. You said "I did not like Erdington at all when I looked at it." Please did you mean looking when you visited or via pictures? And please any insight to which part of Quinton one could look at?

@Frogonalog, thanks. I checked the link you sent and saw the place is in Sheldon / Yardley. Are the schools you mentioned good?

@JoJoSM2, thanks. This is getting really interesting! To what extent should one use this statistics as a guide? Does the "deprive" refers to social amenities like schools, hospitals or what? When I checked, most of the good places people have mentioned earlier are in RED, except for Sutton Coldfield, Solihull, and Egdbaston. And schools in the most deprived part have better results. Strange!

Aboveall, having gone through some of the suggested places and considering our budget, I found some detached houses within the budget at : Quinton, Weoley Castle, Great Barr, Kingstanding, Erdinton, Northfield, Kings Norton, Castle Bromwich, and Castle Vale. Could anybody please suggest what will be her priority from 1 - 9?

I think the stats are helpful with regards to schools as you’ll see which ones are the high performing ones.

On the police website, you can put in a postcode and quickly see if the area you’re considering suffers a lot of antisocial behaviour, for example.

In terms of the colours on the depravation map, if it’s green, it’ll be clean and nice. If it’s red, it’s likely to have lots of social housing, unemployment etc. Some affluent areas do come up orange, though, as they might have lots of social housing surrounding posh roads. If you want to identify areas popular with professional families, filter by ‘Internet User Classification’ and look for light pink areas.

I'm appalled by the kind of social apartheid which is coming up on this thread. I lived in a Housing Association flat for years and had lovely neighbours. (Though yes, there are sink estates and areas where you can get a cheap house but which are in other ways blighted.) The only thing I'd point out is that Mumsnet is absolutely full of people who are owner-occupiers in area they regard as 'nice'. And yet their lives are dominated by feuds with neighbours over parking, fences, dog barking, arguments re noise etc. So I don't think that owner occupation should equal 'yes', and the existence of 'social housing' a no. I live in a relatively mixed area, where I am very happy.

Yes the schools I mention are OFSTED good and actually feel it when you visit.
KESH used to be Sheldon Heath and not brilliant but was taken over by King Edwards and has come on leaps and bounds. We are a Solihull postcode now so DS goes to a Solihull school but if we still lived that side of the Coventry Road that is where he would have gone.

I would be interested to know which schools in the deprived areas are getting better results than schools such as Moseley CE, Bournville Juniors, St Mary's RC et al.
People in the most expensive parts of Edgbaston, Harborne, and Moseley are more likely to use independent schools rather than state schools, so taken out of the equation.

I'm with KingsHeathen here.
Those more 'disadvantaged' areas you bolded simply do not have better results than schools in those more affluent parts in red.

You mention Erdington upthread - one of the poorest constituencies in the whole country. It now has 2 'Good' secondary schools that have worked hard to improve and are rich in community. MP Jack Dromey campaigns hard on the 'Save our Schools' campaign to highlight the issue of cuts. He always talks of the poverty in the area (rich in spirit). There are some wealthier pockets and roads bordering Wylde Green, but they are in a catchment black hole for schools.

However, if you are looking at results alone, they don't touch some of the neighbouring Sutton schools, for example.

@KingsHeathenfrom the link given by @JoJoSM2, and as shown below:

1st on the list, Eden Boys' is in B42 2SY -Perry Barr, Great Barr, Hamstead

2nd on the list, Heartlands Academy, is in B7 4QR - Nechells

4th St Paul's School for Girls is in B16 9SL - Ladywood

5th Nishkam High School is in B19 2LF - Lozells

St Paul's Girls isn't open to 99% of the population! You have to be baptised Catholic girl in a feeder school to get a place. Yes, it's an outstanding, excellent school, but you haven't a hope of places there. Even baptised girls in feeder schools don't all get places as it's so heavily oversubscribed.
Heartlands would only be good on progress score not attainment 8.
Eden is a boys Muslim school AfAIAA and
Nishkam is a Sikh school, so again very limited intakes in who can attend. (Yes, they have criteria for "any other child by distance" but Birmingham schools are so oversubscribed that only places in dire schools end up allocated like that)