St Ann's

Terraced Victorian rows dominate the streets here, red-brick and tightly packed, with the odd corner shop and takeaway breaking up the pattern. It's a young area — the median age sits well below the national figure — and the density of the place, among the highest you'll find outside central London, tells you this is flats-and-terraces living rather than driveways and garden sheds. You notice it in the pace on the pavements and the number of To Let boards nearly matching the For Sale ones.

Housing here is what draws people first. A typical sale is a freehold terrace, and the numbers back that up: three-quarters of recent sales were houses rather than flats, and freehold ownership dominates over leasehold by a wide margin. Prices sit well below the national median and even below Nottingham's own city-wide figure, which is itself modest by national standards — this is a place where your money stretches further, particularly if you're buying rather than renting, since rents here run close to the national average despite the discount on purchase price. Schools are a mixed picture rather than a settled one: Our Lady & St Edward Primary carries a Good rating, and the area has a reasonable spread of primaries, but most local schools don't report an Ofsted grade in this data, so you're often going on reputation and open days rather than a clean scorecard. Transport is served by a solid network of local stops rather than rail, so this reads as a bus-and-bike area more than a station-commuter one.