Summer is well and truly upon us, and this week of sun has quite a few Brits visiting the glorious UK seaside. But if a visit isn’t enough, there are some affordable towns where you can look at snapping up a property of your own.
Homes in Saltcoats, Ayrshire have been named as the least expensive seaside location in a study conducted by Rightmove, with an average property asking price there of £114,365.
The holiday resort town has no shortage of things to do, with the Apollo Cinema, Basebowl Ten Pin Bowling, restaurants and cafés.
Visitors can learn about the history of the small town, which was founded by King James V in the 1500s at the North Ayrshire Museum, which is hosted in a church.
The town also has the Saltcoats Town Trail, where you can learn more about the town’s heritage.
On the other end of the scale, Sandbanks in Poole, Dorset has been identified as the priciest place to purchase a home by the sea out of over 200 locations surveyed. With house prices at a whopping average of nearly £1.6 million, these properties do not come cheap.
According to reports from Rightmove, you could buy nearly 14 homes in Saltcoats typically for the asking price of just one in Sandbanks. The affluent neighbourhood on the south coast of England is home to some familiar faces, with Harry Redknapp, Liam Gallagher, Rick Stein and Karl Pilkington all living there.
The area has been well-known for years, and at one point John Lennon and J.R.R.Tolkein both owned properties there at the same time. Sandbanks is notoriously beautiful year-round, with stretches of golden sands and breathtaking views.
The affluent area made headlines recently after residents voted in favour of a fan to ban overdevelopment. A one-off referendum allowed Sandbanks locals to have their say on limiting further development in their seaside town, with 96.6 percent voting in favour of restricting future work.
The action was taken by the Sandbanks Neighbourhood Forum in a bid to control the growing number of waterfront homes that were being built along the Poole Harbour. The increase of properties built along the coastline meant that the sea views of older properties were beginning to be increasingly restricted.
Because of the outcome of the referendum, the group will now have a say in planning decisions for their town. Chairman of Sandbanks Community Group, Norman Allenby Smith expressed his gratitude at the result, telling the BBC: “The result is very pleasing.
“It shows that the plan has the full support of the community and we can move forward with a strategy for Sandbanks that will make it an even more enjoyable place to live and visit. I think the reason the vote was so overwhelming was that there was a very thorough consultation process to determine what the community wanted.
“This now means that all future planning applications for Sandbanks will be decided in consultation with this plan, which is a legally binding document.”