The UK seaside town so beautiful even beach huts no bigger than sheds sell for £200k
EXCLUSIVE: Houses in this Suffolk seaside town are so sought-after locals can't afford to live there - even 'tiny' wooden beach huts sell for hundreds of thousands.
The seaside town of Southwold is such a desirable location to own property even its beach huts sell for up to £200,000.
This summer, Express.co.uk travelled to the picturesque holiday spot where visitors marvelled at Southwold’s “old fashioned… seaside feel”.
Peter and Marion Hollister, 80 and 74 respectively, decided to pop into the quaint town on the way home to Brighton for the “nostalgia” the place boasts. Peter first visited in 1963.
Their sense that Southwold operates in another time was shared by almost all the locals and visitors this website spoke to, none more so than 77-year-old Monica Gerhold.
Sat in her rented beach hut, while her family played on the sand below, she beamed: “Everybody seems to be family orientated. There’s not a lot of litter. You’re sort of happy to leave the door open; there’s hardly any crime.
Much like Peter and Marion, Monica concurred that the town was “like it used to be” in the rest of the UK.
Referencing her white beach hut, aptly carrying the message “take it easy” over the door, Monica said: “We rent this one. We’ve had it for three years and it’s absolutely marvellous. But most beach huts are just handed down from generation to generation. They’re about £100,000 now. You need to be very rich [to buy one].”
Monica was correct that only the wealthy can afford to purchase Southwold’s beach huts, but she was only half right when she said prospective buyers need £100,000 to own one.
Express.co.uk spoke to two separate local estate agents, neither of whom wanted to be named, and each of them revealed that the wooden huts, which are “about the size of a small summer house”, fetch between £70,000 and £200,000.
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One of the estate agents, situated a few hundreds yards from the seafront, said: “In 2022 we sold a beach hut on North Beach and that completed for £85,000.
“Beach Hut 100, so that’s on sort of North Parade - that completed in 2021 for £175,000… one that sold on Gun Hill… we sold one there in 2021 for £200,000.”
Despite the lofty prices, the huts aren’t well-equipped.
“Some of them are bigger than others. They can vary”, the agent said. “They’ve usually got a little veranda, double doors on. They’re about the size of a small summer house, I suppose. You can’t sleep in them overnight. They don’t have water, they don’t have power.”
The other estate agent, found further inland up the High Street, agreed that the huts are compact. “They’re not much bigger than a garden shed to be fair”, she said. “Certainly the ones on Gun Hill… some of them are tiny.”
Despite the eye-watering prices, the huts go like hot cakes, said the seafront agent: “There’s a demand. We usually do sealed bids.”
As well as the beach huts, residential and holiday properties go for more than healthy prices too.
Asked for her cheapest properties, the High Street agent said: “I’ve got a one-bed flat [at] £285,000. One at £295,000. I’ve got a two-bed flat at £450,000.”
“You wouldn’t expect anything to come up in Southwold below £275,000.”
Her most expensive property? "The biggest one we sold was £2.8m last year. That was a big one." You don't say.
