New Dock

New Dock is terraces and semis packed close together, the kind of streets where the housing stock looks like it was built for factory workers and has mostly stayed in the hands of owner-occupiers since. It's dense — more than 4,000 people per square kilometre, well above the regional norm — and the age profile sits younger than the national average, which tells you this is a place of small households and starter homes rather than retirement bungalows.

The commute and school picture here is mixed rather than uniformly good. Pegasus Academy and St James Academy cover secondary age, with St James rated Good, though Pegasus and the local primary, Jesson's Church of England, are both rated as Requires Improvement — so the schools grade overall lands respectably but with real variation underneath, and it's worth looking street by street at catchment rather than assuming the area as a whole delivers. Transport is the softer spot too: the transport grade sits at C, noticeably behind the connectivity grade (B+, helped by strong full-fibre broadband coverage), suggesting this is a place better suited to those working from home or driving than to a rail-dependent commute. On housing, a For Sale board here almost always means a freehold semi-detached — that's the dominant type and tenure by a wide margin — and at a median of around £198,000, it's meaningfully cheaper than the Dudley average, let alone the regional or national one. This is a first-rung property market, not an aspirational one, and the price percentile confirms it sits in the more affordable tenth nationally.