The latest Jackson-Stops annual Waterside Review shows high end demand is, in effect, creating new waterside plots.
Our latest review of the market for properties attractively close to lakes, rivers and the sea, has reasserted the tremendous premium that a good waterside property can command (96% in the case of Brighton seafront houses) and the growing appreciation of estuary locations, which are often more protected and interesting. It has also highlighted how some areas, such as the north Norfolk coast, are so defined by the sea, that the ‘coastal premium’ extends far inland.
Much the same could be said of the leafier parts of the Ribble Valley in Lancashire. There, the river and its tributaries cast such a spell across the valley as a whole that a waterside house within it, can be three times the price of one beyond its charms. In comparison to these established patterns, one recent trend has really stood out this year: the value of large and luxurious waterside homes has risen to the point at which plots and restoration projects previously seen as uneconomic, have become viable.
Coastal sites previously written-off as requiring prohibitively expensive groundworks, are being developed. Difficult, sometimes Listed buildings are being given a new lease of life and there is a much more active market for collections of buildings which work best under single ownership and operation.
For example, this former Northamptonshire mill (now sold) set in 20 acres has over 11,000 sq ft of accommodation spread across four buildings, all now immaculately renovated and equipped. As well as obvious ‘wow’ factor and lots of space, both of which high end buyers enjoy, it also offers a degree of flexibility which they welcome, be that for multi-generational families, entertaining, hybrid working or, with relevant permissions, commercial uses.
Away from riverbanks and the sea front, a waterside setting can also, with enough investment, be created.
Upmarket demand is thus prompting owners of development land with a healthy natural water supply, to consider if it might be the key to much higher value, and owners who had seen their waterside land or property as having no development potential at all, to realise that the opposite might be true. In effect, and contrary to Mark Twain’s famous dictum, the high end demand for glamorous waterside homes is, almost literally, making more land.
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