"People have to scrimp and save for decades to scrape together enough to buy a modest London home, so why not look further afield and buy something that truly rewards all of those years of hard work and sacrifice?"
GetAgent has analysed the changing value of the UK’s most out-of-the-ordinary home types - from castles to houseboats - to see what extraordinary properties London buyers could afford if they decided to leave the capital city.
The research shows that UK castles are managing to fend off a cooling property market by increasing in value by 27.8% in the past year.
The average price for a castle is currently £2.1 million compared to £1.7 million last year. This increase of almost half a million means castles is now 650% more expensive than your average UK home.
Anyone with extraordinarily deep pockets might want to consider this £1.9m castle currently for sale in Wooler, Northumberland. While wildly expensive, this is still dramatically less than you’d currently pay for a terraced home in Kensington which averages £2.6 million.
But with castle living out of reach for all but a handful of mega-wealthy buyers, it might be worth taking a look at the next best thing - a fort.
The average price of a fort has fallen by -19.3% in the past year to sit at a current value of £700,000. While this is 143.5% above the average UK house price, it remains significantly less than the average price of a flat in Prime Central London.
This £700K sea fort in Hampshire dates to the 1800s and comes at a snip compared to a flat in Kensington & Chelsea which currently costs a whopping £1.1m.
Buyers who are looking to leave London for a taste of country living could grab themselves a barn conversion for an average of £470,723, although prices have climbed by 10.1% since last year.
This means you could pick up this 4-bed barn conversion in Yorkshire for only slightly more than you’d currently pay for the average flat in London.
However, for an average price of £894,618, you could forgo the barn conversion and fully commit to country living by purchasing a farm.
Farm prices have increased by 14.1% in the past year, but you can still get something like this seven-acre gem in Devon for a paltry £650,000 - less than you’d pay for a semi-detached home in London.
The most affordable type of unusual home remains the houseboat, the price of which has fallen by -10.9% in the past year to currently sit at an average of £100,144.
This makes them the ideal purchase for anyone who is looking to get a foot on the property ladder with a budget too small for London’s market and is willing to take the captaincy of a vessel like this 40-foot floating home.
Co-founder and CEO of GetAgent.co.uk, Colby Short, commented:
“London’s housing market is uniquely expensive, so why not split from the capital and buy something unique in a much better way?
"These weird, wonderful homes don’t play by the same rules as the traditional housing market because the more unique a property is, the less its value is tied to the ebb and flow of the nation’s economic fortunes.
"People have to scrimp and save for decades to scrape together enough to buy a modest London home, so why not look further afield and buy something that truly rewards all of those years of hard work and sacrifice?”
