Going coastal: Sky-high house prices are pushing Britons to seaside towns
Key Points
- Rising property prices and bills are pushing more people to affordable seaside towns.
- House prices in many seaside towns surged last year due to an increase in demand, and there has been a spike in flatsharers looking to stay by the coast.
- While remote work has driven some of this movement, a big component is affordability.
The rising cost of living in major cities and the prevalence of remote work has led many in the UK to seek cheaper property by the sea.
Housing is becoming increasingly expensive for many people across the country, and even in places like London where the price of housing is starting to fall, owning a property remains out of reach for most people and rents remain sky-high.
Add a cost-of-living crisis and rising inflation into this mix, and it is no wonder that so many Britons are leaving expensive cities for quiet seaside towns.
This is not only true for homeowners looking to buy affordable property, but also for renters.
Flatsharers, a class of renters generally more common with densely populated, expensive cities, are also moving to the coast as they are priced out of even sharing accommodation in major towns.
This has led to a situation where at the same time as house prices are falling in London, the price of homes in quiet seaside towns increased by up to 11% last year as people flee for the coast.
Surge in demand for seaside property
Recent data from online property platform Rightmove shows that affordable coastal towns saw a massive increase in demand over the past year, leading to significant price growth in these areas.
The seaside town of Bootle, just north of Liverpool, has an average house price of £141,680 – modest compared to the UK average of £378,304.
However, property prices increased in Bootle by 11% over the past year, reflecting the increase in the number of people moving to more affordable towns by the coast.
Most of these seaside hotspots were located in the North West of England and Wales, and in most cases the price of a property in these areas was below the national average.
It is not only prospective homeowners fleeing to affordable coastal towns, however. Renters and even flatsharers are leaving cities for the seaside.
Affordability drives flatsharers to the sea
Online flatsharing website SpareRoom recently saw a sharp uplift in the number of renters looking to share flats in seaside towns.
This interest is not driven by pure excitement over coastal living, but rather by affordability.
Searches for towns such as Weston-Super-Mare, Herne Bay, Burnham-on-Sea, and Paignton surged by more than 50%, while searches for flatshare in the more expensive Brighton fell by 21%.
The average room rent in the UK is now £747 per month, 30% higher than six years ago. As a result, flatsharers who are feeling their budget increasingly stretched are beginning to leave big cities seek more affordable options with different ways of living.
SpareRoom director Matt Hutchinson noted that remote work has allowed people to work from anywhere, allowing them to move to cheaper places without fast public transport links.
“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,” he said.
“People aren’t just chasing cheaper rents but a different way of living too.”
At the same time as more people flee sky-high prices for the coast, those already in these communities can expect greater competition for rental properties as newcomers compete with locals and landlords who are offering holiday lets.
