Best places to live in Hertfordshire
As one of the most popular home counties, with so many locations that offer more than simply an easy...
Best Places to Live 2025 | England & Wales
Published Apr 1, 2025
7 mins read
Garrington Property Finders are delighted to present the Best Places to Live 2025 in England and Wales.
The property map of England and Wales has been redrawn for 2025, with demand adjusting and prices in different regions moving at different speeds.
Official Land Registry data shows that in 2024, the average home in England rose in value by 4.3% to reach £290,564. The average price paid for a home in Wales rose by 3% to £208,197.
However these national averages mask wide regional variations. Prices stagnated in London, with the average property in the capital worth the same at the turn of 2025 as it had been a year before. By contrast, average prices surged 6.7% in North East England and 5.9% in Yorkshire and the Humber.
Yet there are some highly desirable locations that are bucking these regional trends to become better value, and we’re celebrating them in Garrington’s 2025 Best Places to Live report.
Quicklinks for reviewing the Best Places to Live in 2025
Garrington has analysed data to identify the best places to live in England and Wales and has created a helpful tool which allows house hunters to compare places they’re considering when shortlisting locations.
Use Garrington’s analysis tool to compare locations
See the top 20 Best Places to Live 2025
How to choose the perfect place for you
If you’re considering a move this year, our Best Places to Live guide can help you identify places in the area you’re interested in that offer the optimum blend of quality of life and strong value.
Our data analysts have identified nearly 1450 cities, towns and villages across England and Wales that all score highly in at least one of five selection criteria – natural beauty, wellbeing, heritage, schools and jobs plus value for money.
We’re once again making our national ranking available for free, and you can use the interactive tool below to explore the entire league table – whether you’re curious to see how your current hometown scores, or just want some suggestions for places that offer more of what matters most to you.
Top ranked locations 2025
The home counties have led the way in this year’s results with the top three best places to live all being possible commuter hotspots.
At a glance, these are the locations that ranked highest this year – these are the Best Places to Live 2025:
- Redbourn, Hertfordshire
- Epsom, Surrey
- Whitburn, Tyne and Wear
- Marple, Greater Manchester
- St Albans, Hertfordshire
- Alnwick, Northumberland
- Merley, Dorset
- Ewell, Surrey
- Chigwell, Essex
- Ashtead, Surrey
Use Garrington’s analysis tool to compare locations
See the top 20 Best Places to Live 2025
1. Redbourn, Hertfordshire – The Ace of Herts
Top of this year’s ranking is Redbourn, a picture-postcard village in Hertfordshire just 30 miles from central London which combines rural charm with easy access to the capital.
Redbourn has two golf courses and traces its history back to Roman times, and it was the scene of one of the first cricket matches ever played – the village common first echoed to the sound of leather on willow in 1666.
But for those considering a move in 2025, Redbourn is a top scorer across the board. Its attractive rural location helped it secure 11th place in our Best Place to Live ranking’s natural beauty category, and it also performed well in both the heritage and the schools and jobs categories.
At £767,501, a typical family home in the village costs well above the English national average. However average prices there have fallen by 8.2% in the past year – bucking the national trend and propelling Redbourn to 15th place in the value for money category.
The top 20 best places to live 2025 | England and Wales
The top places were hotly contested again in our 2025 ranking, with the top 10 locations being closely matched on scores.
2. Epsom, Surrey
The second-placed location in our 2025 ranking is the Surrey spa town of Epsom, home to the Derby, one of the world’s most famous horse races.
Epsom has been a thoroughbred performer in previous editions of our annual ranking, and it finished third in the 2024 Best Places to Live league table.
Epsom climbed to second place on the podium in 2025, thanks to the abundance of highly rated schools and high-paying jobs in the area, which together helped it claim seventh place in the schools and jobs category.
While Surrey property prices are among the highest in England, our analysis revealed that the price of an average home in Epsom fell by 2.5%, powering it to 81st place in the value for money category.
3. Whitburn, Tyne and Wear
The North East lays claim to the location ranked third overall – the seaside village of Whitburn. Boasting spectacular sandy beaches and within easy reach of both Newcastle and Sunderland, Whitburn has long been one of the region’s most desirable areas.
Nature plays a huge part in the village’s appeal – its coastal park, run by the National Trust, boasts rare birds, while seals and dolphins can be spotted frolicking out to sea.
Use Garrington’s analysis tool to compare the best places to live
The price of a typical family home in Whitburn fell by 1.6% to £328,699 at the end of last year. By contrast, the average price of a property in North East England rose by 6.7% in 2024.
The North-South divide
While average prices rose faster in northern England than in the south during 2024, our analysis identified a number of highly desirable towns in the north where prices have been softening, making sought-after postcodes even more attractive.
Hot on the heels of third-placed Whitburn is Marple in Greater Manchester, another consistent contender. In 2024 it came 15th in our Best Places to Live ranking, but in 2025 it has risen to an impressive fourth place overall.
The town is within easy reach of the big city – it boasts two train stations and is just 10 miles from central Manchester – but offers a gentler pace of life with a rural location and canalside walks, along with a farmer’s market, theatre and independent cinema.
Also ranking highly in the North East, sixth-placed Alnwick in Northumberland, a cobbled market town with a stunning castle that starred as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films, where average property prices slipped by 1% and a typical family home costs £327,246, earning the town fourth place in the value for money category.
Meanwhile, the highest ranked best place to live in Wales is Penarth, an elegant seaside town just three miles from the centre of Cardiff. Famous for its Art Deco pavilion and pebble beach, the town looks out across the waters of the Severn Estuary and came 31st overall in our ranking.
But it’s in the value stakes that Penarth really excels, and it claimed the number two spot in the value for money category. A typical family home there costs £502,497 after average prices softened by 5.1% in a year, making this prime location exceptional value.
The most expensive location in the top 20 is fifth-placed St Albans, the cathedral city in Hertfordshire which narrowly missed out on the top spot in 2024’s ranking.
Located just 20 miles from London, the city is popular with commuters and boasts two millennia of history as well as many good schools, which may explain why the price of the average-sized family home rose by 0.2% to reach £974,657.
Find your best place to live in 2025
To learn more about individual locations within the Best Places to Live 2025 rankings, you can use the tool below to compare hundreds of cities, towns and villages across England and Wales.
Simply type the first three letters of the place you’re looking for into the interactive box. Alternatively, you can view all the locations in a region by selecting ‘browse by region’. Click the ‘Pin me’ button to view scores for two places side by side.
Getting expert help
If you feel you’d benefit from the guidance and expertise of a professional property buying agent, please get in touch for a no obligation discussion about your plans to move and the services we offer.
Tell Garrington about your search for a new home.
From city streets to country lanes
In addition to our national research, Garrington’s team of experts offers unrivalled on-the-ground knowledge, with decades of experience sourcing and securing ideal homes for clients across the UK.
Our reach extends well beyond the headline locations featured above, with local insight that often uncovers places which don’t yet appear on mainstream lists but are very much on the rise.
Drawing on this deep local expertise, our advisors have highlighted a selection of hidden gems and emerging hotspots – places that may not have met the broader data criteria for our main research but are nonetheless full of potential, charm, and lifestyle appeal.
To explore these hand-picked recommendations, visit our dedicated page, where you’ll find links to a series of regional articles.
From vibrant city quarters to tranquil rural retreats, we’ve covered a wide range of areas that could be your next great move.
Behind the Best Places to Live research
Each year, our team of property experts collaborates closely with our research analysts to shape the methodology behind this and our Scottish best places report.
By drawing on a consistent set of trusted data sources, we ensure year-on-year comparability, thus allowing meaningful insights to emerge and genuine trends to be identified.
You’ll find full details of our research methodology and the data sources we rely on in the sections below.
Research Methodology
Garrington’s Best Places to Live report 2025 is an impartial, objective ranking based on publicly available data. The ranking is not based on subjective or personal opinions.
Our data team compiled data in a total of 18 categories, including proximity to open space, National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, numbers of listed and period homes, air quality, crime figures and the percentage of homes with their closest primary school ranked Outstanding by Ofsted.
The analysis included a total of 1447 locations with a population of 5000 or more. Our report is NOT a league table of the ‘best and worst places to live’. On the contrary, the research only ranks the best places to live, so being included – whether at number 1 or number 1447 – is to be applauded.
Data sources for our Best Places to Live research
A wide range of data sources have been used to create the report’s proprietary research methodology. These include:
The Office for National Statistics, Scottish Government, Welsh Government, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Land Registry, Royal Mail, Ordnance Survey, Natural England, Natural Resources Wales, Scottish Natural Heritage, DEFRA, BEIS, NapTAN (Ministry for Transport), PCT and Historic England.
Media Enquiries and Intellectual Property
We welcome enquiries from journalists and recognised media outlets regarding our Best Places to Live Research 2025. Our team is pleased to assist with requests for further information, and members of our senior management team are available for press interviews, subject to availability, please contact us here with such requests. We are happy to support accredited members of the press, including those from recognised publications and the Press Association.
All research findings remain the intellectual property of Garrington Property Finders Ltd. While we are pleased to share publicly available insights, we regret that our proprietary datasets are not available to third parties. The use of this content without appropriate credit or acknowledgement of Garrington’s rights is strictly prohibited. When referencing our research, please ensure it is clearly attributed to Garrington Property Finders.
