Terraced rows dominate Nelson's streets, brick after brick of them, and the For Sale boards you see are more often "leasehold" than not — a town built for people who need a roof over their heads at a price that doesn't require two incomes to service. This isn't a place that performs for visitors. It's a working town, dense by national standards, that gets on with itself. The affordability here is the headline whether you're looking for it or not. A median house price of £90,000 sits so far below the national figure that Nelson prices into the bottom 5% of the country, and it undercuts even its own parent district of Pendle by more than a third. Terraced houses — the dominant stock, mostly leasehold — trade at roughly a third of their national equivalent. Detached and semi-detached homes tell the same story. What that buys you is genuine low-cost entry to ownership, but it also reflects an area sitting deep in the more deprived end of the national income and deprivation deciles, and that context matters as much as the price tag. Rents, too, undercut the national median comfortably. Nelson Rail Station gives you a line out without needing a car, and Nelson St Philip's Church of England Primary, rated Good, is one of the better-performing schools among a cluster of twenty in the area — though the average Ofsted profile across those schools sits close to the national norm rather than above it, so this isn't a place where every school is a standout. Green space is genuinely abundant — 73 sites and over 120 hectares of it, more generous per head than the regional average — which gives the town a release valve that its density and terraced streets might not suggest from a drive-through. Full-fibre broadband reaches over 90% of premises, which is a quietly modern thread running through an otherwise traditional streetscape. The place where the picture gets more complicated is safety: violence and sexual offences account for well over a third of recorded crime, and anti-social behaviour makes up almost a quarter more, together forming the bulk of the crime picture. That's the one grade that runs against the town's otherwise mid-to-good pattern — connectivity, environment and affordability all read solidly, safety sits a notch below them, and nightlife barely registers at all. It's worth sitting with that contrast rather than averaging it away. Nelson suits someone who wants ownership without a mortgage that swallows their life, who doesn't need a buzzing evening scene, and who's comfortable with a town that's dense, real, and a little rough round the edges rather than polished. The median age of 33 tells you it's a working-age population, not a retirement spot, and the rail link means you're not cut off. Whether you'd regret it depends largely on how you weigh that safety picture against everything else — for some, the trade-off between low cost and higher crime exposure will feel manageable; for others, it will be the deciding line.