Greater Manchester guides
The rest of this section answers “which area”. These answer the questions that come before it: what things cost, how renting works here, how the transport network actually behaves, and what to sort out in which order.
6 guides
Money
How much do you need to earn to live in Manchester?
Worked backwards from rent to salary — for a room, and for the very different proposition of living on your own.
8 min read
Renting
Renting in Greater Manchester for the first time
What the process actually involves, what it costs upfront, and the things a landlord is not allowed to charge you.
9 min read
Money
Greater Manchester council tax explained
Why every borough charges over £2,150 at Band D, what the Mayoral precept pays for, and the discounts people miss.
7 min read
Transport
Getting around Greater Manchester without a car
What the network does well, what it does badly, and the areas where living car-free genuinely works.
8 min read
Transport
How Metrolink shapes what you pay
Eight lines, ninety-nine stops, and a rent gradient that follows them closely enough to be worth reading deliberately.
7 min read
Moving
Your first month in Manchester: the checklist
The unglamorous list. Most of it is quick, and the two or three items that are not will cost you if they slip.
6 min read
Every checkable figure in these guides carries a source and a review date, and the tables inside them read the same datasets as the rest of the site, so a rent revision updates the guides in the same deploy. Where a figure could not be corroborated against a source we were willing to publish, the guide says to check it rather than quoting it.