Stranraer Town centre is dense, close-packed housing wrapped around a small harbour town that has seen better days and hasn't hidden it. Terraced streets sit shoulder to shoulder at a density well above the Scottish average, the kind of tight urban grain you get where a town grew around a port rather than a bypass. The people who stay tend to be older — the median age here runs a few years above both the regional and national figures — and this reads less as a retirement draw and more as a place younger families have quietly moved on from. The economic picture is blunt and worth sitting with: this is a decile 1 area for both deprivation and income, which puts Stranraer Town among the most deprived pockets in Scotland on the national index, and the median house price of around £167,000 sits well under the typical Scottish council tax band D benchmark in relative terms — property here is cheap because the local economy is stretched, not because it's an undiscovered bargain. That combination — low income decile, low prices, higher-than-average council tax burden relative to what homes are worth — is the quiet spine of this piece. And yet the Check Local grades don't collapse into a single grim story. Health comes back strong, nightlife surprisingly so, environment solid — this isn't a place people describe as bleak to live in day to day. Connectivity lags, with full-fibre coverage sitting only just past half of properties, so anyone working from home should ask about the specific street before assuming good broadband. Housing and safety both land in the middling C+ band — not alarming, not reassuring, just average for Scotland — which is the more interesting story than the income figures alone would suggest: people who live here don't necessarily feel the deprivation stats in their daily safety or their front door. This suits someone who wants a small, walkable harbour town at a genuinely low cost of entry, is realistic about the local job market and connectivity, and isn't chasing the buzz of a place on the up — Stranraer Town is stable rather than improving, and that stability, for the right buyer, is the whole appeal.