About Where Should I Live?
Where Should I Live? is a free tool that helps people find the best area to live in the UK. It was built out of personal frustration: when searching for a new home, there was no single place to compare commute times, crime rates, house prices, and local amenities side by side across every postcode area.
Existing property search sites show you individual houses, but they don't help you answer the bigger question: which area should I be looking in? That's the gap this tool fills.
What It Does
Enter your workplace address and the tool finds every postcode area within your chosen radius. For each area, it pulls together data from multiple sources to give you a complete picture:
- Commute times (driving and public transport) from the Google Maps Directions API
- Crime rates from the Police API (England & Wales) and Scottish Government statistics
- Median house prices from HM Land Registry Price Paid data
- Schools and their Ofsted ratings
- GP surgeries for healthcare access
- Real ale pubs from CAMRA data, because quality of life matters
- Ethnic diversity breakdowns from the latest census data
You can then filter and compare areas based on your own priorities — maximum commute time, budget, acceptable crime levels — to build a shortlist of places to visit in person.
Who Built It
This site was built by a UK-based software developer who went through the house-hunting process and wished this tool had existed. It's a solo project, built with Go on the backend and Vue.js on the frontend, running on AWS.
Data Sources & Methodology
All data comes from publicly available or officially licensed sources:
- Google Maps Platform — Directions API for driving and transit commute times
- data.police.uk — Street-level crime data for England and Wales, aggregated by postcode area over a rolling 12-month window
- Scottish Government — Recorded crime statistics converted to monthly rates for comparability
- HM Land Registry — Price Paid dataset, with median values calculated by local authority district
- Department for Education / Ofsted — School locations and inspection ratings
- NHS Digital — GP surgery locations and details
- ONS Census — Ethnic group breakdowns by area
Crime data uses a 12-month rolling average to smooth out seasonal variation. House prices are median values (not mean) to avoid distortion from outliers. Commute times represent typical conditions as reported by Google Maps.
Limitations
No tool is perfect. Crime statistics only reflect reported crime. House prices are historical transaction data, not current asking prices. Commute times can vary significantly by time of day and route. We recommend using this tool to build a shortlist, then visiting your top areas in person before making a decision.