Warrington

Warrington's streets do a lot of red brick and pebble-dash semis, the kind of town where the housing stock looks built for families who've been there a generation rather than first-time buyers chasing a trend. It's a working town more than a destination one — you sense it in the mix of terraces, semis and the odd new estate rather than any concentration of flats or student blocks. The average age here sits a couple of years above the national median, which tracks with what you see: people who've settled, not just passed through.

The practical case for Warrington is built on transport more than anything else. Five rail stations serve the town — Warrington Bank Quay and Warrington Central among them, with Padgate the closest to much of the residential sprawl — which is an unusually generous spread for a place this size and explains why commuters from Manchester and Liverpool both end up here. Schools are a mixed bag rather than a selling point: Oakwood Avenue and Beamont Primary both hold Good ratings, and St Peter's Catholic Primary carries the Outstanding tag locally, but the borough-wide average sits close to the national norm rather than above it, and secondary progress scores (Padgate Academy's included) run negative, worth checking street by street rather than assuming. Housing is where the arithmetic gets interesting: a median price of £245,000 is well under the national £281,000, and terraces and flats here undercut the national median by a striking margin — a terrace running roughly £53,000 cheaper than the national terraced price. Semi-detached houses dominate sales, most held freehold, so a typical For Sale board here is a three-bed semi, owned outright by whoever's selling, in a market that's barely moved this year and looks flat on the longer view too.