The young professional dream is dead as UK flatsharers wash up in seaside towns
Key Points
- Flatsharers are leaving big cities for UK seaside towns and market towns.
- Seaside spots like Weston-Super-Mare (+62%), Herne Bay (+55%) and Helston (+70%) saw huge search jumps.
- Waltham Abbey leads with +113% searches; rooms there are far cheaper than inner London.
- Brighton searches fell 21% as rents hit £730/month, while UK average room rent rose to £747.
- Remote work and older flatsharers drive the shift toward cheaper coastal/community living.
Britain’s flatsharers are turning their backs on the big city and heading to the coast.
Analysis of more than 241 million searches on flatshare site SpareRoom shows a sharp shift in where renters are looking for rooms, with seaside towns and historic market towns posting some of the biggest jumps in interest.
The young professional clinging to a Zone 2 postcode is no longer the archetypal flatsharer, and the numbers back it up.
Five seaside towns feature in the list of 28 areas where searches rose by more than half between 2024 and 2025.
Weston-Super-Mare in Somerset is up 62%, Herne Bay in Kent up 55%, Burnham-on-Sea up 54%, Paignton in Devon up 53%, and Whitstable up 53%.
Further down the coast, Helston in Cornwall and Bideford in north Devon have both posted 70% rises.
Brighton, by comparison, is heading the other way. Searches for the south coast city have dropped by more than a fifth, down 21%. The average room rent there now sits at £730 per month, well above every seaside town on the climbing list.
Topping the table is Waltham Abbey, the Essex market town where searches have more than doubled, up 113% year on year.
Rooms there go for an average of £784 per month, around an hour from central London and £2,328 a year cheaper than inner London’s £978.
Three other market towns make the list: Baldock in Hertfordshire (+62%), Corsham on the south west edge of the Cotswolds (+60%), and Sherborne in north west Dorset (+51%).
Relentless rent increases
The shift is happening against a backdrop of relentless rental inflation. The UK’s average room rent is now £747 per month, 30% higher than in Q1 2020, when it sat at £574. The average renter is paying £2,076 more per year for a room than they were before the pandemic.
Matt Hutchinson, Director of SpareRoom, says searches offer a reliable forward indicator of where the market is heading. “They indicate people aren’t just chasing cheaper rents but a different way of living too. Think panoramic views or the comfort of community.”
What’s striking is that the list isn’t just commuter towns with fast rail links.
“Some of these areas don’t have the fast public transport links that have long dictated where flatsharers, who trended towards young professionals, live,” Hutchinson says.
Remote working has loosened the geographic grip of the office, freeing up flatsharers to base themselves further from the major cities.
The demographic of the average flatsharer has shifted too. “Today we have more people flatsharing well into their 40s, 50s and beyond because years of rent rises have made buying and even renting alone unaffordable,” Hutchinson says.
There’s a catch for those eyeing a move to the coast. Holiday lets have stripped rental supply from many seaside towns, leaving flatsharers competing for a shrinking pool of homes.
Hutchinson argues the rising demand could push some landlords to reconsider. “For those landlords concerned about seasonal voids, and the impact of holiday lets on local communities, this rising demand from tenants might compel them to consider the rental market.”
