In This Article:
Back in the early months of Covid lockdowns, all the talk in property circles was of would-be housebuyers plotting a move to coastal and rural areas as city dwellers prioritised a bigger garden, access to nature and more room for home working.
But, five years on, the reshaping of the housing market sparked by the pandemic has gone into reverse, with homes by the sea seemingly losing some of their lustre and fewer people looking to escape from cities, data shows.
The property website Rightmove said that, while much had changed since 2020, one constant was a desire among many would-be buyers for a home with more space.
Spool back to early 2020, and among the areas estate agents were naming as the new property hotspots were locations such as Port Isaac in Cornwall, Margate in Kent, Clevedon in north Somerset, the East Neuk of Fife on Scotland’s east coast, and Canford Cliffs, a suburb of Poole in Dorset.
Rightmove said that in 2025, “many short-term trends brought about by the unique circumstances of lockdown have reversed”.
It added: “Coastal homes are taking longer to find buyers, and price growth has stabilised as more supply has come on to the market – some likely from movers heading back to the city. At the same time, fewer people are looking to escape cities as life has returned to normal and the debate continues about remote versus office working.”
Discussions about where you should be allowed to work from have become increasingly heated as a growing number of employers demand that staff attend the workplace more often, which has big implications for where people live.
Related: How looser affordability rules may widen home ownership in the UK
Rightmove said that by March 2021 Cornwall had overtaken London as the most searched-for area on the website for the first time. At the same time, under half (47%) of potential homebuyers in London were looking to stay in the capital, down from 59% a year earlier.
Things look very different now: London is once again the most searched-for location on the website, and the majority (58%) of people living there are looking to stay rather than to leave.
Homes near the sea are now taking longer to sell compared with the period immediately after the start of the pandemic. In coastal areas, the time it takes to find a buyer has gone up from an average of 52 days then to 73 days now.
In addition, house price growth in coastal locations has cooled. Looking at a sample of more than 100 areas, Rightmove found that the average asking price for a home near the sea increased by 4.5% during the first year of the pandemic, well ahead of the average for the country as a whole.