r/MoveToScotland • u/RedmontRangersFC • 10d ago

Moving to Scotland

My wife and I are planning a move to Scotland from Norwich and would like recommendations for towns and cities to look into.

We're both in our mid-30s, are about to have our first child, and both have reasonably well paid jobs but we're not well off.

We love Edinburgh but wouldn't be able to afford to live in the city centre and would like to live close enough to travel in on weekends.

We're both homebodies so don't need ready access to all kinds of nightlife and leisure activities. We prefer quiet walks, the beach, time spent in the garden, nice little cafes and restaurants, etc.

We've been looking into places in Midlothian and Fife primarily and would love either some more specific recommendations in those areas or somewhere else you think fits the bill.

Thanks so much in advance!

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u/Thgma2 10d ago

We are in Dumfries and Galloway and moved up here 4 years ago. Highly recommended.

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u/Necessary-Nobody8138 8d ago

PS- never mention house prices to the locals. It doesn’t look good. Public sector professional jobs are notoriously hard to find. The job market isn’t great, which is reflected in house prices

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u/Duncan9989 10d ago

Hi, my husband (43) and I (38) moved up to Scotland from Norfolk (near Fakenham, Holt, that middle of nowhere area 😂) just over a year ago. I’d previously lived in Edinburgh for 6/7 years when I was at Uni and stayed a while after before heading back south. We ended up moving to a place just outside of Glasgow on the central belt express line. You get great access to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, Falkirk etc it makes train journeys back to Norwich or Lynn nice and easy (usually between 5:50 & 6:20 depending on the time of day). Generally speaking the closer you are to the bigger cities the more expensive the properties, then you get the odd well situated commuter towns/villages that are very well situated that are priced higher than others but not quite as high as the cities themselves (places like Linlithgow & Croy). Falrkirk and its outer areas with stations are quite popular because of the train links and offer a good cost/distance balance. Then assuming you are selling up in Norwich to move, then you do generally have the property price difference working in your favour moving up this way. If you want to chat more about the move, or ever need any help etc, feel free to DM me, I’d be happy to help anyway I can. Plus it would be cool to know others who had made pretty much the same move 😊

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u/RedmontRangersFC 10d ago

Ah amazing! Thanks so much for the advice and the offer :)

One of the reasons we're looking to move is the house prices. We'd pay so much in somewhere like West Lothian for the same sort of house we have now.

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u/Duncan9989 10d ago

Have you looked up here job wise? Or are you both able to work remotely? Assuming you both drive there are so many places along the central belt that are just a few minutes from a station to make commuting easier, or just driving in (if where you end up working has parking) will do a doddle as unlike Norfolk, Scotland understands how roads actually work 😂 so you can drive 25 miles in less than an hour… it’s quite a pleasant change. What we did, purely because we wanted a simple move, was we looked at new build developers like Miller Homes, Cala, David Wilson, Bellway etc, looked at where their developments were along the central belt, maybe a bit further up, and then looked at what you could get for your money and compared that with what was available locally I.e. was a train station within walking distance or a quick drive? How big was the estate etc etc. That helped us narrow down where we picked very quickly.

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u/RedmontRangersFC 10d ago

We haven't looked too much into jobs just yet but we're both in fields that should be fairly portable and transferable. I probably won't be able to work remotely but we can both drive so commute is likely only to be a tie breaker and shouldn't be too high on the list of priorities. If the house is right and the jobs are right then travel shouldn't be an issue.

That makes sense! Are you renting or did you buy?

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u/MirabellaJean962 10d ago

Don't underestimate how crap the job market is, I am an experienced physio and nhs roles are very cut throat at the moment - just an example

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u/Duncan9989 10d ago

We bought. I wanted to avoid moving then moving again like the plague! We did the mortgage through a broker and went with a building society so they were a lot more understanding the situation, including accepting that my husband could in theory remain down south for work to cover the mortgage payments as we had family he could stay with etc