House prices are plummeting in the seaside town of Broadstairs, Kent (Image: Getty)
The housing market in a seaside town could reasonably be assumed to be in a state of perpetual boom – but rapidly falling prices tell another story.
Property value in Broadstairs, a coastal town just an hour outside of , fell more quickly than almost anywhere else in the country last year, with the finger of blame pointed at second home owners fleeing rising council tax.
More than three quarters of properties in the Kent and East Sussex area declined in value in 2024 according to property agent , with prices in Broadstairs cut by an average of £15,300.
Councils will be able to charge double the council tax premiums on second homes around the UK from April 2025 – forcing buy-to-let Band D owners in the wider Thanet region to shell out around £4,604 for their properties, according to .
It will apply to over 2,000 properties on the southeast coast, which proves lucrative for local government, but property experts are worried the change will cause house prices to plummet even further than last year’s initial anticipatory dip.
Second home owners appear to be abandoning towns like Broadstairs in droves (Image: Getty)
“Following an increase in DFLs [Londoners moving to the Kent coast] after , we are now seeing a cooling of that trend,” Tom Ross-Basin of Wards estate agents said.
Despite claiming that overall demand remains “consistent” across the region, he added that “sensible and accurate pricing” was key to its longevity.
Zoopla has also linked the downward trend in southern England to “the fading pandemic boom” alongside “the increase in second homeowners selling in the face of a doubling of council tax from April, which is impacting pricing across many coastal towns”.
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Figures paint a clear divide between northern and southern property markets, with one in five homeowners in the north east seeing their property value increase by over £10,000 last year and 63% of homes in the north west rise in price by 1% or more.
“The housing market returned to growth in 2024 but the pattern of home value changes across Britain is far from uniform,” Richard Donnell, executive director at Zoopla explained.
“There is headroom for prices to increase in markets where housing is affordable compared to incomes which covers many parts of northern England and Scotland. In contrast, affordability is more of a constraint on price rises in southern England where the market continues to adjust to higher borrowing costs,” he added.
“We expect more people to move home in 2025 than 2024 despite uncertainty over the economic outlook and broadly static rates.”