This month marks five years since the first Covid lockdown. Even though the Zoom quizzes are a thing of the past and many workers are routinely back at the office, the pandemic has had lasting effects on everything from the economy to the health service and education.
It’s left a lasting impression on the housing market, too. As soon as the housing market reopened in May 2020, it saw the start of an extraordinary “race for space”, with buyers clamouring to get out of cities and urban areas into the countryside.
Coastal areas saw some of the most frenzied levels of demand, especially in Wales. Of the 10 areas that saw the fastest price growth between the end of 2019, before the pandemic hit, and the end of 2022, when the country had more or less returned to normal, five were in Wales.
Our analysis of Office for National Statistics and Land Registry data show that prices soared by 36% in Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire in that time, and by 35% in Ceredigion; 34% in Bridgend; and 33% in Pembrokeshire. Among the other coastal areas that saw prices shoot up by over 30% between 2019 and 2022 were Scotland’s Argyll and Bute; Torbay, in Devon; Hastings, in East Sussex; and Cornwall.
Other areas saw even higher levels of growth. Many of these were in cheaper northern areas of the country with more affordable property prices. In Salford, Greater Manchester, property values soared from £153,460 in the second half of 2019 to £218,060 in the second half of 2022, a rise of over 42%.
However, since the market peaked in the second half of 2022 the Covid bounce has fallen flat, mostly due to the rise in mortgage rates since September that year, which began with the “mini-Budget”.
Aside from the City of London, Kensington and Chelsea, and the City of Westminster, where average prices tend to fluctuate, coastal areas have seen the biggest comedowns from the race for space. The previous top 10 performers all saw negligible or negative house price growth in the two years to the end of 2024. The biggest faller over that time was Hastings, where prices declined by 8%.
However, for all locations, while some of the gains made during the pandemic were lost, in no cases were they completely wiped out. In Hastings, prices were still 22% higher at the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. In Salford, prices rose by just 1.2% between 2022 and 2024, taking total five-year price growth to 43.8%.
As a demonstration of how much the race for space has been flipped on its head, over the past year, the 10 postcode districts with the fastest price growth have all been in cities or city suburbs. The top performer is the M8 postcode district in Manchester, with growth of 16%, followed by L27 in Liverpool (14.2%) and LS2 in Leeds (13%).
Liverpool and Leeds also have two other postcode districts in the top 10; all the top performers are cheaper locations popular with first-time buyers, who have driven the housing market over the past year.
