Take the slog out of house hunting: 'Where should I live?' search tool finds the best areas for you to buy or rent across the UK

Rightmove's 'Where can I live?' tool sorts through 3,000 UK locations in a second to help you find the areas you can afford to live in.
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Sara Yates2 August 2017

Finding a home you can afford can mean hours of internet surfing, as well as numerous trips to random areas to pound the streets and befriend the local estate agents. But the latest new tool from Rightmove — “Where can I live?” — offers to sort through 3,000 UK locations in a second.

It is an easy search “designed to explore areas people can afford”, says Hannes Buhmann, the property search engine’s head of innovation. “Some of the areas may be obvious, but others will be in locations they have never considered before.”

Easy and quick property finder

The interface is definitely user friendly. For people looking to commute, they simply type in the location of their work, click a box for their preferred mode of transport, the desired maximum journey time, the number of bedrooms required and their maximum budget, and up pops a map with all the best possible search areas highlighted.

Better still, the tool lets users click through findings in order of affordability. Should any location take their fancy, just one click and they can immediately view all the properties advertised on Rightmove to buy or rent in that area.

Test One
Where to buy a one-bedroom flat for less than £200,000

The results with this test were impressive. In seconds it found 13 areas less than an hour’s commute from Soho Square, in places where one-bedroom flats have an average asking price under £200,000. The cheapest was Dagenham, 11 miles from Charing Cross in the large, multicultural borough of Barking where a one-bedroom flat costs an average of £185,000. For this, you get a home on the Tube, in Zone 5 on the District line.

For those with an eye to the future, Rightmove says look at Chadwell Heath, a relatively affluent suburb in the east London borough of Redbridge. Not only does it offer flats with an average asking price of £190,000, it is just a 21-minute commute to London Liverpool Street and will also get Crossrail. When the Elizabeth line fully opens in December 2019, passengers will be able to travel to central London in 30 minutes and Heathrow airport in less than an hour, without changing trains.

Head to Harlow: Buyers on a budget can find one-bedroom flats for £154,000 
Alamy

If your budget won’t quite stretch that far and you’re willing to commute that bit further, consider Harlow, a former new town west of Essex on the border of Hertfordshire. Here a one-bedroom flat has an average asking price of £154,000. For this relatively modest amount, you can zip into London Liverpool Street in a little over 30 minutes, with six trains an hour at peak times.

Test Two
Where to buy a three-bedroom house for less than your London flat

Once you have kids, a dog, or just a lot of stuff, you need to upsize your London pad. Doing this, Rightmove shows, means stepping up from an average flat in the capital, priced £508,000, to an average terrace house, at £638,000 — a whopping £130,000 more.

Swap your commute from one train or Tube to another, and you can swap your flat for a house, gain extra room and potentially a huge dollop of change, too. Again, Rightmove’s “Where can I live?” tool provides several commuter areas where you could buy a three-bedroom home under £350,000.

Stevenage, 32 miles north of London in Hertfordshire, was a new town 70 years ago. With an average asking price of £280,000 it is a good place to start. With a 30-minute average commute and more than 144 trains a day to King’s Cross, you’ll be back in central London before you know it.

Speed into Central: 144 trains run from Stevenage to King's Cross daily (Chris Guy/Flickr)
ChrisGuy/ Flickr

If you prefer to be closer in, think about Dartford, 18 miles south-east of central London. Here you have the option of direct trains to Victoria, Charing Cross or Cannon Street, for an average asking price of £325,000 — though with Bluewater shopping centre on your doorstep, you may find the bright lights of Oxford Street less alluring.

If you want to keep the convenience of the Tube, you still have options. Again, Dagenham — just 11 miles from Charing Cross, remember — provides relatively good value for money, with a three-bedroom house at £320,000 on average.

If your budget can stretch that bit further, look at Plaistow in Newham, where, for an average asking price of £375,000, you can have three bedrooms and a Zone 3 address.

The search tool is available now at where.rightmove.co.uk — simply sign up or sign in to start looking for a new home in the perfect location for you.

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