Terraced Victorian streets ripple out from the city centre, red brick giving way to student lets on one side and family homes on the other — Exeter reads as a compact cathedral city that's absorbed a university without losing its own shape. You'll notice the mix quickly: independent school uniforms near the centre, delivery cyclists, a fair number of young adults who never left after graduating. Getting around by rail is unusually well provided for a city this size — Exeter Central, St James Park, St Thomas, Polsloe Bridge and Marsh Barton give you five stations across the urban area, which suits anyone who wants to ditch the car for a commute or a day trip along the coast. Schooling is more mixed than the property listings let on: the independent sector is strong, with Exeter School and The Maynard School both established names, but several of the primary academies in the state sample — Ladysmith Infant, Ladysmith Junior, Newtown — carry Requires Improvement judgements, so it's worth being specific about catchment rather than assuming the city's reputation covers every postcode. Housing itself favours the terrace: three in ten sales are terraced houses, freehold is the clear norm over leasehold, and at a median of £295,000 the city sits close to the national figure but below the South West regional median of £305,000 — Exeter is, in relative terms, a reasonably affordable way into a well-connected regional city, even if detached houses here still command a premium over the national detached price. Crime is the one figure worth sitting with rather than skimming past: violence and sexual offences account for four in every ten recorded incidents, a share that dominates the crime breakdown well beyond what anti-social behaviour or shoplifting contribute. That's the kind of statistic that shapes a street's night-time feel more than its daytime one, and it's worth weighing against the otherwise ordinary, walkable character of the place. Day to day, the practicalities are unremarkable in the best sense — you're not fighting for green space or restaurant tables in the way you might in a larger city, and the housing stock (mostly older freehold terraces and semis, no meaningful new-build pipeline) suggests a settled, low-turnover kind of street rather than one in constant flux. Who ends up here tends to be people who want city amenities — rail links, a university, independent schooling options — without a city's scale: postgraduates who stayed, professionals commuting onward by train, families who've made peace with checking Ofsted reports street by street rather than assuming the city's name does the work. The trade-off to sit with honestly is the crime profile against the otherwise settled, walkable feel — not a reason to rule it out, but a reason not to assume tranquility from the postcard version of a cathedral city.