Johanna Lowery in her Frinton-on-Sea beach hut – one of four she and her husband rent out to holidaymakers - Daniel Jones
“I’d sell my house before selling my beach hut,” says Johanna Lowery, owner of her own hut in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. She’s since bought several more, and has built up a business renting them out.
“Lots of people who rent mine are returning people,” Lowery says. “It’s their hut as much as it’s my hut. They often ask me if I’d sell it, but the answer is always, ‘I’m really sorry, but I’m never selling’.”
Beach huts will often be kept as prized possessions in families for generations, yet there are signs that Britain’s long-held love of beach huts might be cooling off.
“We are seeing a real shift in demand for beach huts,” says Charlie Warner, partner at prime buying agent Heaton & Partners. “Pre-pandemic, buyers wanted nothing more than to purchase a seaside getaway, but over the past couple of years this has dramatically switched in favour of campervans.”
Warner predicts a further decline in beach hut sales next summer – and more campervans. “When presented with shelling out over £100,000 for a beach hut in Sandbanks [a popular beach hut location in Poole, Dorset], or investing significantly less in a vehicle with more facilities that they can travel across the Continent in, buyers are choosing a campervan and mixing up which beach they head to for the day,” he says.
“With all facilities on board and the capability to travel, it’s perhaps more likely that next summer we will see beach car parks even more full of campervans.”
Johanna says many of the people who rent out her beach huts are returning customers - Daniel Jones
Sales on the slowdown
According to property portal Rightmove, beach hut sales hit their peak immediately after the pandemic but have since slowed down, while average asking prices are steadying.
“During the peak of the 2021 and 2022 pandemic years, beach huts were hotter property than an ice cream van on a sunny day,” says Tim Bannister, property expert at Rightmove. “As people sought seaside escapes, they were confronted with scarce supply and, unsurprisingly, prices accelerated upwards.”
Certain hotspots remain where a shortage of stock means sellers can afford to aim high, such as the elegant Suffolk seaside town of Southwold.
“Sale prices are high as there has always been a short supply of beach huts and they tend to be passed down through generations of the same family,” says Anthony Pearce of Stacks Property Search in Dorset. “Overpriced huts often make the headlines. A little blue and white number made well over £250,000 recently.”
In the past couple of years, more beach huts have become available in popular areas like the South West and South East, which has stabilised prices, albeit at those elevated pandemic levels. Bannister adds: “While beach huts remain cherished and often held on to for generations, more options are now available than during the peak pandemic years, meaning more choice for those looking for a seaside bolthole.”
James Law, also of Stacks Property Search, agrees that recent demand is definitely slower.
“It’s hard to determine exactly why, but there are several factors that may come into play,” he says. “Beach hut owners are often of the older generation, and there’s a question as to whether younger buyers, with different holiday preferences, are drawn to the prospect of a traditional English beach holiday.”
Huts in upmarket Mudeford Spit can fetch almost £500,000 - ianwool/iStockphoto
Mudeford Spit in Christchurch, Dorset, 14 miles along the Solent coast from Sandbanks, is generally held to be the Biarritz of upmarket British beach huts. Local agency Denisons markets well-kept brightly-painted cabins for up to £480,000 (plus annual licence fee, typically £2,000-£4,000, and council tax rates of around £600), but the bonus is that all the 346 huts lining this curving sweep of sand can be slept in overnight between March 1 and October 31.
At the other end of the scale, there are beach hut bargains to be had on the Lincolnshire coast, including Number 4 Bohemia Parade, Sutton-on-Sea, to be sold with a guide price of £7,500 by live stream auction on September 25 (unless sold prior) through The County Property Auction.
Interestingly, the English region with one of the lowest numbers of beach huts currently for sale is also the most expensive, says Rightmove. This underlines the argument that once the investment is made, the hut stays within the same ownership and prices stay high due to limited supply.
There are just five beach huts for sale on Rightmove in the South West, where Teignbridge in Devon is another high-value location, with the most expensive asking price of a hut at £175,000, according to the property portal.
However, not all agents list on Rightmove. Beach huts also change hands not just at auction but privately or off-market, so these are indicative for-sale figures.
What does the future hold for beach huts?
Climate change – and accompanying unpredictable weather – is also scaring seaside investors. After the summer of 2022, the warmest on record with temperatures of 40-plus degrees Celsius, the last two years have been something of a damp squib. Or downright dangerous.
The sight of three beach huts being swept into the sea and smashed like matchwood at Castle Beach in Falmouth during the ferocious winds and tidal surges of Storm Kathleen in April this year, was chilling.
In May, North Norfolk District Council issued a warning that rows of colourful beach huts lining the seafront at Sheringham, Mundesley, Cromer and Overstrand could become a thing of the past, due to spiralling repair and maintenance costs caused by extreme weather.
A report for the council’s overview and scrutiny committee said: “If adverse conditions become more frequent to the point it is no longer viable, officers may recommend that no beach huts leases are made available.”
Many of England’s estimated 20,000 beach huts/beach hut sites are not for sale, but council-owned and available on long leases – and, despite the waning popularity, there are still huge waiting lists. The wait time for a council-leased hut at Sheringham East, for example, is currently 10 years.
In North Norfolk it’s a five-year lease, at a cost from £913.74 per year, with owners having to provide their own hut – companies exist to build bespoke creations.
Huts are also available directly via the council to holidaymakers for weekly hire. Last summer’s wet weather, plus the cost of living crisis, also left the council out of pocket because fewer people wanted to hire them, the report said.
A week’s hire in peak summer season (June 29 to September 6) at Sheringham or Cromer is £215.
‘There is something magical about beach huts’
Despite slowing sales figures and fears for the future, many people are still very attached to their beach huts – and do a roaring trade renting them out.
Johanna Lowery and her husband Chris, both 51, bought their first beach hut in the genteel Essex resort of Frinton-on-Sea in 2007 for £19,000. She’d spotted it for sale via an estate agent and pulled the cash together – beach huts are non-mortgageable.
Lowery now owns four beach huts in Frinton-on-Sea and Mersea Beach, further down the Essex coast towards Southend. Along with an additional hut belonging to her sister, she rents them all out as a business, Cool Coastal Huts, designing the interiors herself.
Johanna in her own beach hut – at Frinton-on-Sea in Essex - Daniel Jones
But her heart belongs in her own hut, number 343 at Frinton-on-Sea, which the Colchester-based former City of London bank worker estimates to now be worth around £65,000. “There is something magical about them that is, in fact, priceless,” she says.
She believes that, since Covid brought beach huts back to life, the wider availability of privately owned, well-appointed properties for rent (Cool Coastal Huts’ daily hire is from £75 a day off-peak, October to March) may be a factor in any slowdown in people buying their own, although she hasn’t seen a reduced demand this year from buyers in either Mersea Beach or Frinton-on-Sea.
Lowery herself certainly has no plans to stop spending time at her beach hut, and hopes her family will continue to make use of it for many years to come.
As a child, she loved spending days at the seaside with her late father, Dave. She took him to her own beach hut before he died in 2017, and believes that special memories are made because every family member has to hang out together in one room – especially when it rains.
Her two daughters, Ruby, 18, and Poppy, 15, learned to ride their bikes at the family beach hut, and would “sell” pretend ice-creams out of the window.
“They grew up here,” she says. “The huts here are year-round, so we have put up Christmas decorations and been here on Boxing Day. People come for New Year and have champagne on the beach.
“As for the next generation – as soon as I’m a granny, it will be straight down to the beach hut.”
