A big move... advice!!!

[alexis77]

My husband has just been offered a job in Manchester. We currently live in Edinburgh and will be making the move south with our two sons. Having only been to Manchester once I am in great need of some advice as to areas to live, schools (primary and secondary, eldest will start year 8 sept 2021), etc. It's a total minefield at the moment. Looking more at south greater Manchester. Thanks for advice!

Bump I don't know Manchester myself

My biggest piece of advice (having done a big move twice), is to slow it all down in your head and break into small sections.

Are you looking to buy or rent? How rural would you like to be? How much money do you have to spend on house/flat? Do you need access to a train into Manchester? What do you enjoy doing with your current house / lifestyle that you are keen to keep up? Etc

Just south of Greater Manchester is some of the poshest places in Cheshire; Alderly Edge etc. But a look at Lym. and Altrincham would be worth doing (still pricey though!)

Oh and go for a weekend as many times as you can to look at areas and houses. Moving straight into a "permanent" home (rather than few months temp rental) takes lots of leg work...

"Manchester" is a big area to be looking at. So start with where abouts will your Dh be working? City centre?

When people have that info then you can start asking for commute times and distances, then schools and areas.

It would help if you got MNHQ to edit your title to include Manchester. The one thing I would suggest is if you can rent first I would. We have done 2 massive relocations, first time we rented, second time we bought. Wish we had rented the second time round. It would have revealed a lot about the area we had chosen that being local taught us

We also talked to parents dropping off children into the primary schools (which was all we needed) to see what they thought. Thet actually said their primary was lovely but if you wanted an incredible primary then look at X!

I echo what a PP said about breaking it all down into manageable chunks, mainly to ensure you think about everything you need to in order to ensure as smooth a transition as possible.

We relocated from Norfolk to Edinburgh six months ago and are in the process of planning a move back. Our property is under offer, we’ve secured temporary rental and we have a plan in place for a purchase. We simply haven’t been able to settle and several things have happened causing us to rethink things with an urgency, which I won’t go into.

What we wish we’d done is rent our home down south first and rent up here, to allow us to easily return if we wished to. We could then have sold and bought after we’d settled and established ourselves.

We didn’t think it through enough and this has been our downfall. We assumed that it would all work out, as DH lived here years ago and life would be fine.

Plan everything, do your research and be absolutely sure it will work for you and your family.

Best of luck!

I’m in South Manchester (Altrincham), Trafford in general has really good schools but it’s also a grammar area so may be worth looking at how in year admissions work.

I moved from USA to Manchester (DH had previously worked in Manchester) after having only visited once. We chose Trafford for the schools and have been happy here. We rented for 6 months first so that we could get to know the area before committing to buy.

What are you looking for in a house and area? City,rural, driving, public transport, commute, etc.

I would also add that the daily commute should not be overlooked as an important factor.

Depending on the roads and motorways you may need to use to get to work, it can add hours onto your journey in rush hour.

Manchester has some of the worst/congested roads in the country imo.