Jesmond, High West

Terraced bay windows, shared houses with too many bikes chained outside, a steady churn of students and young professionals filtering between semi-detached blocks and blocks of flats — that's the streetscape here before you've read a single statistic. This is a suburb built around Newcastle's two universities as much as around family life, and the median age of 23 tells you plainly whose neighbourhood this is.

Getting around is one of the area's quiet strengths: Ilford Road's Metro station sits on the doorstep, with Haymarket and St James both within reach for the city centre and St James' Park end of town, so a car is optional rather than essential. Schools are a more mixed picture — West Jesmond Primary and South Gosforth First School serve the area's younger families, and Northern Counties School carries a Good rating, but the area's overall schools grade lands around the national average rather than above it, which matters if you're weighing this against other Newcastle suburbs for a permanent family base rather than a few years of renting. Housing here leans towards flats and freehold terraces in fairly even measure, and the numbers back up what you'd guess from the street: a semi-detached house typically sells for more than double the national median, and even flats fetch a touch above what you'd pay for one elsewhere in the country — this is a suburb where property holds a premium against the region, even if it's roughly in line with the city price picture overall.