Neighborhood Guide to Housing in Manchester

The best way to get an understanding of Manchester neighborhoods and housing is to type in Manchester into http://maps.google.co.uk. Once there if you click and hold the map you can drag it around to see where things are. You will then see the city centre. Now, I'm going to type as if you've got that image in front of you. So if you can see just south of city centre where it says Manchester Science Park? That is basically where the University is.

So to the right you will see Longsight and just south of that Levenshulme, and to the left Hulme and Whalley Range. All are a bit sketchy for living as of yet, but remember, Manchester is going through a lot of building and transformation at the moment so you may find nice spots there. In general though, I would rent here cautiously. Also keep in mind that I am going to point you to the areas that run the major bus route that makes transport easy.

The first thing I will say is that if you want to take best advantage of the trains, finding a flat in city centre is best. You can find studios here for around 4-500 pounds a month which are pretty nice and as cheap as you'll find for the most part anyway. And the benefits of being in city are huge. It means you'll be able to get to wherever you want in Britain because of the train stations. This means that instead of taking a half hour bus ride into city centre and then to the train station you can just hop on a train and go. Also, city centre is nice and has all the amenities you'll need. Grocery stores are close, the best restaurants and pubs as well as whatever other shopping you'll need, so if you can afford it and find a place, living in city centre is ideal.

Having said all that, now zoom in once on the map. You should now see that Wilmslow Road is the yellow line to the right of the Science Park. This is the busiest bus route in Europe. I kid you not. 80,000 students go up and down this road everyday. There are busses running every other minute so it is the ideal to be situated in relation to this road for transport convenience.

Keep in mind that there are flats in and around the campus which are nice, but there are some dives too. But ideally, if you aren't going to live in city centre, then if I were you, I'd want to find a flat right next to campus. It makes a big difference getting there, and campus is only 15 to 20 minutes walk from city centre where the best train transport links, restaurants etc are. If you don't find anything here, then the next best bet is to start going south on Wilmslow Road.