Where to live between Liverpool and Manchester?

[confusednw]

Hi,

We are a young couple in our late twenties/early thirties looking to buy a house in the North West and currently researching places to live.

We will be commuting to Liverpool and Manchester city centers for work using public transport (Liverpool three times a week, Manchester once or twice a week).

Our budget is around ~£400k for a three-bed, with the potential to go a bit higher.

Ideally, the area would have some nice cafes, bars and restaurants plus some green space for weekend walks.

We are currently considering places like Urmston, Hartford/Northwich and Frodsham. We visited Stockton Heath and liked the feel, but found the journey via bus and train potentially problematic. In a perfect world, we would walk to the station for a direct train (< 1 hr journey) to work.

Are we missing other nice places to live that would be commutable to Liverpool and Manchester?

I know this is about transport op, but if you have kids or plan to have kids this should be taken into account. Schooling in Merseyside, Cheshire and Lancashire have very different parameters.
Merseyside and whirral still have 11+ system- great if you’ve got high fliers, mixedif not
cheshire , around the Chester, Frodsham circle, at least, is comp and does have some excellent schools ( Helsby high not as good as once was I understand), so easier to get into good school catchment we found.
Lancashire schools tended , historically, to be a more mixed bag. Even school in Ormskirk wasn’t fantastic.
ok, this was 15 years ago, times change, but do take a look if this applies as it was the factor that dictated where we lived

@Followill

'Chester is a terrible place to live if you rely on public transport and don't drive. There is next to no public transport unless you live in Blacon or maybe the Lache.'

Are you forgetting the massive train station and bus station? Not to mention all the local links to it? Do you actually know Chester?

We live in South Liverpool and it is beautiful: lots of green space, very safe and plenty of cafes, pubs, restaurants and other facilities within walking distance. My husband works in Manchester although he drives as the trains these days are too unreliable. Childwall in Liverpool is great in terms of accessing the M62 and is probably my favourite area (the bit of L16 right next to L18 is my favourite). Easy to get into the city centre but suburban and peaceful and generally just a great quality of life. Houses are around your budget too: they range from £300k for a smaller 3 bed to £500k for a large 3 bed/4 bed.

From euxton Station it's a 40 minute journey with no changes into lime Street station

Listen to this, not the illiterates who keep banging on about how nice Stockton heath, Grappenhall and Lymm are.

On a £400k budget south of the Mersey you will struggle to get a nice three bed these days. Plus public transport is a utterly alien concept.

WA5 is nice enough. Not as nice as south of the Mersey but it is not the shithole people are trying to make out either.

400k would get you a good 4 bed detached in the Chorley / Leyland / Euxton / buckshaw area

Top end of your budget
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/131944559#/?channel=RES_NEW

Stretford has been ‘on the up’ for a decade now… 😁

Urmston/Flixton would tick all your boxes.

NC to say not remotely true about Chapelford being rough and everything @pinkysmum and @RedToothBrush says is true. We did have a little spell of trouble with bored teenagers a few years ago but nothing for a long time now. Would highly recommend WA5, it's exactly what you need for your criteria OP!

https://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/news/23582567.warrington-named-best-place-raise-child-england/
Warrington named as best place to raise a child in England.

Warrington has it's problems but the affordable, has a high employment rate, it's good for commuting and has a fair amount going on.

There are definitely worse places.

@Tootootoot there are some lovely houses in Birkdale but that journey from Southport to Manchester is pretty grim. I wouldn’t commute on that line in a million years.

I definitely wouldn't want to do it every day, granted, but once a week I could handle, especially to get to live in a lovely house near the train station in a really nice area.

Chapelford is not rough at all . I live near it but not on it but I know loads of people who live in very nice houses on there. There's the odd issue with kids like there are in most places. I've not heard of any issues for absolutely ages. It's an estate with mainly £400k - 600k houses, so hardly a sink estate! There was an issue a few years ago with kids from outside the area being dropped off at the park (which is a lovely area at the center of Chapelford with community facilities for kids) with 6 packs and being left. I've not heard of this happening for ages

The people who we were speaking too really dont rate chapleford at all, irrespective of how much the houses cost. They were all from warrington and said as an estate, they dont think its a nice place saying its rough and all houses are on top of eachother. We only visited a pub in there and it did look like the houses were mostly all cramed in when we were in search of the pub driving around the estate.

I'm on the facebook groups for "posh" places like Stockton Heath and I see complaints on there about anti social behaviour as well. You will get that in most places at some time

Yes, of course there are good and bad to all areas. It always best to visit and stay in the areas to get a good view of what you want as everyone is different with different guages of what is good or not. Its personal preference.

The people who we were speaking too really dont rate chapleford at all, irrespective of how much the houses cost. They were all from warrington and said as an estate, they dont think its a nice place saying its rough and all houses are on top of eachother. We only visited a pub in there and it did look like the houses were mostly all cramed in when we were in search of the pub driving around the estate.

Honestly, there are estates all over Warrington (Inc south of the Mersey) though.

Honestly, there are estates all over Warrington (Inc south of the Mersey) though

Yes and this was the one that was singled out and highlighted to stay away from that's all. And when we drove around, the houses looked more crammed on there than in other estates i had seen.
It's a personal preference, i wouldn't like to live on there and its just another opinion to take on board and look at for potential buyers thats all.

Chapelford isn't rough? That's the funniest thing I've read all day 😂

Yes, there are expensive houses are there. There are also hundreds of council houses . Someone in Bewsey (very rough) was looking for a swop and asked on the main Warrington FB page. A few posters replied to say there were a couple on Chapelford and she said christ I'm not moving there. From Bewsey!!

I lived on Chapelford for 6 years. Left specifically because of how rough it was becoming. Mostly the people who live there are people who 'think' they're posh mixing in with some absolute rough townies. There was a guy who owned a bouncy castle company who used to have them all blown up on his front lawn whilst him and mates were smoking pot and drinking beer. Yes, a £500k house but his front garden literally looked like something from Shameless. Bet his next door neighbours were fuming. I know of at least 4 drug den type operations busted on Chapelford.

OP - just avoid Chapelford.

I'd personally pick Liverpool and live somewhere like Childwall. Manchester is ridiculously expensive and you won't get anything for your budget. Or if you're thinking ahead, for schools you can't go wrong with The Wirral. Plenty of grammars and an amazing private school.

Chorley and surrounding areas in Lancashire.

Thanks for all of the comments and advice.

We're spending more time in some of these places (including Urmston and Newton-le-Willows) to see how they feel.

We've also started checking the train reliability data (https://www.recenttraintimes.co.uk/), which lots of people pointed out to be an important issue!