Clarkston

Clarkston reads as solid granite semis and neat front gardens, the kind of place where the cars in the driveways are a few years old but well looked after and nobody's in a hurry. It sits south of Glasgow with the settled, slightly formal air of a suburb that has never had to try hard to convince anyone of its worth.

The numbers back up what you'd sense on the ground: this is one of the least deprived pockets in Scotland, ranked at the very top of the national deprivation scale on both income and general circumstances, and a median house price a little over £283,000 puts it comfortably above the going rate in the wider region without tipping into anything showy. Council tax here undercuts the national Band D average slightly, which is a small mercy given everything else about the area signals comfort rather than economy. Prices have been drifting upward gently over the past year, and the broader trend is described as improving — nothing dramatic, just steady appreciation of the kind that suits people who plan to stay rather than flip.

The population skews older-middle, with a median age approaching 45, well above both the Scottish and regional averages, and the density — over 4,000 people per square kilometre against a national figure closer to 2,000 — tells you this is tightly packed suburban living rather than anything semi-rural, despite the leafy impression. That combination points to a place of established households: people who bought here a while ago, or moved in for the schools and stayed once the children left home. Full-fibre broadband reaches the vast majority of properties, which matters more than it once did now that hybrid working is normal.