Portals track how buyer aspirations are changing through Covid

Both Rightmove and Zoopla have issued new data showing how the market is changing as buyers’ aspirations alter.

Zoopla has looked at where family homes have seen the biggest increase in price per square foot. 

Family homeowners in both the East and West Midlands have seen the biggest increase in the price per square foot of their property over the past four years. The East Midlands ranks in first place, with a price of £212 psf, an increase of 25 per cent, while the West Midlands comes in second place with an increase of 24 per cent. 

For buyers prioritising space, Scotland offers the overall best value for money with £142 being the average price psf of a family home. 

And in England, the North East offers the best value for money for families, with an average price per of £171 psf. 

At a local authority level, family homes in the district of Merthyr Tydfil in Wales have seen the biggest gains, with the price psf now standing at £123, an increase of 38.2 per cent. 

Meanwhile Rightmove has revealed a surge of interest in the Cotswolds as increasing numbers of city dwellers look for rural alternatives.

Rightmove’s data analysts found that searches for homes to buy in the Cotswolds more than doubled in the second half of last year, compared to the same period in 2019.

The demand for this particular area has significantly outstripped the national average, with buyer searches across Great Britain increasing by only 50 per cent during the same timeframe. 

The number of sales being agreed by agents in the Cotswolds also outperformed the South West region as a whole, peaking in September with a 100 per cent annual rise.

The Cotswolds outpaced the rest of the wider south west area for six consecutive months in terms of the annual growth in the number of sales being agreed.

The Rightmove study also found that Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire is where property prices increased the most in the Cotswolds in 2020. Average asking prices in the leafy market town were up 14.8 per cent on 2019, an annual increase of £38,290.

The place with the biggest annual increases in buyer searches in the Cotswolds was Chipping Norton, up by 109.5 per cent, followed by Burford (up 82.3 per cent) and Chipping Campden (up 68.5 per cent).