It really does depend on your budget I think.

for what we want, it's much cheaper to move further out of the city and build what we want, than to buy around here.
This is what we did.

For our budget, we could have bought a tiny delapitated 30+ year old house only 15 mins from the city, in an area mixed with oldies, students & not many young families OR we could have done what we did which was move 45 mins away from the city, in an almost brand new area, full of young families, with beautiful parks, 1 min from the beach in a huge almost new house. SO this is what we did and i'm so happy with it.

People always say it must be annoying living so far from the city, but honestly i love it. I hate the city, its too busy and polluted and there's no reason i'd ever go there.