Beach hut prices dip as foreign travel returns – but they’ll still cost you £27,500 on average

While the spring sunshine is set to disappear this week, the recent stint of warm weather will have many of us dreaming about long summer days by the beach and now could be the perfect time to invest in a beach hut.

That’s according to the latest research by hoo, the hotel room offer platform, who found the price being paid for beach huts has fallen -24% since last year, when a summer of staycations drove up market values. Although they’ll still cost you £27,500 on average, with the cost of renting one also climbing year on year.

hoo analysed the beach hut property market looking at both the asking price of sale stock advertised, as well as the cost of renting a beach hut in five popular staycation locations.

The research shows that the current average cost of renting a beach hut sits at £1,190 per month, around £40 per day, having increased by 1% in the last year. However, in Dorset’s Mudeford, this cost climbs to a huge £3,792 – around £126 per day.

To put this cost into perspective, the average daily rate of a hotel currently sits at £67 and even in London, this climbs to just £112.

Or, you could pay the average monthly rent in Kensington and Chelsea (£2,712) and still have some change left compared to the monthly cost of renting a beach hut in Mudeford.

hoo also analysed the asking price of beach huts currently listed for sale on the market and how this compares to a year ago.

Last year, hoo’s research found that the prospect of another summer of staycations had driven up beach hut house prices by 41%, as Brits looked to secure their own piece of real estate by the sea. However, with travel restrictions now lifted and foreign travel back on the cards for 2022, the tide seems to have turned.

hoo found that where current beach hut for sale stock is concerned, the average asking price sits at £27,500. This marks a -24% drop on the previous year, however, it is still some 8% higher than in 2020.

Prices do vary though and one beach hut currently for sale in Swanage Bay is listed for £100,000!

hoo Co-founder, Adrian Murdock, commented:

“Beach huts are quintessentially British and some of them command extremely high market values due to little more than their location, with the average cost coming in just shy of £28,000. While this value has dropped in the last year, this has been largely due to a return to relative normality after pandemic restrictions and is no reflection on the popularity of beach huts.

Last year we were staring down the barrel of a second summer of staycations and so there was an unusually high demand for beach huts which drove prices up considerably. Now that foreign travel is back on the cards, this demand has returned to what can be considered normal levels, but beach hut prices still remain higher than they were in 2020. So it’s fair to say that there certainly seems no sounder investment when it comes to seaside real estate.”