Yahoo Finance The property hotspots where coronavirus made buyers go bonkers in 2020
The quaint celebrity hotspot of Bruton in Somerset saw the biggest surge in home buyers this year as the pandemic shifted priorities to picturesque rural areas with more space, new data shows.
Buyer searches in the town, which is home to 3,000 people, jumped 72pc year-on-year, according to property website Rightmove.
These home seekers might be hoping to follow former Chancellor George Osborne, who this summer bought a £1.6m Georgian mansion in Bruton. He joined a gilded list of locals that includes gallerists Iwan Wirth and Manuela Hauser and fashion designers Alice Temperley and Stella McCartney, who owns a farm in a nearby valley. Vogue has dubbed the town “the new Notting Hill”.
But Bruton’s appeal is not all about star power. Its surge in popularity is part of a national trend as buyers look to relocate to remote destinations after lockdown.
It was followed by Pitlochry in Scotland and Aylesford in Kent, where searches rose by 50pc and 48pc respectively.
Four of the 10 areas that have seen the largest growth in search interest over the past year are in the South West, including Salcombe and Dartmouth in Devon.
Richard Speedy, of Strutt & Parker estate agents, said the number of people who registered an interest to buy in the West Country tripled this year.
International travel restrictions and the resultant staycation boom have driven demand for coastal locations from first and second-home buyers, Mr Speedy said.
The shift to working from home has also been key, he added. Well-paid City workers in particular no longer need to commute so often.
“A rising number of relatively high net worth individuals and their families are heading to the South West in search of the rural or coastal idyll,” he said.
Those seeking a dream home may have been looking farther away but buyers who made successful offers strayed less far. Excluding Malmesbury in Wiltshire and Llanelli in Wales, all of the top 10 areas that saw the biggest jump in agreed sales were in the South East or East of England, within extended commuting distance of London.
In Welwyn, Hertfordshire, agreed sales in 2020 were 75pc higher than in 2019. Sales jumped by 69pc in Suffolk's Woodbridge, which was followed by Stockbridge in Hampshire.
Across Britain, sellers have raised their asking prices by 6.6pc in 2020. Vendors in the suburbs of Liverpool and Manchester were most optimistic. In Eccles, west of Manchester, asking prices rose 16pc year-on-year to hit £213,706.
The jump could also reflect a change in the type of properties being listed. Lockdown brought a surge in demand for larger homes.
In July, Chancellor Rishi Sunak temporarily removed stamp duty on the first £500,000 of a property's value, meaning buyers can save up to £15,000 in tax if they transact before March 31 2021. This also boosted demand for more expensive homes, which see the biggest savings proportionate to house price.
Within half an hour of the tax break’s announcement, web traffic on Rightmove had jumped 22pc. That day, Rightmove’s web traffic surpassed eight million views for the first time.
The market town of Barnard Castle in County Durham enjoyed a temporary 144pc spike in searches earlier in the year, after Dominic Cummings, at the time the Prime Minister’s chief advisor, caused a media storm by breaking lockdown to visit the area.
