The 2026 market: less supply, slower decisions, steadier prices

Market notes about small coastal markets are usually worthless, because the sample is too small to say anything. Nine transactions is not a trend. What nine transactions can tell you is what buyers and sellers currently believe, and this year those beliefs have moved in an unusually clear direction.

Supply is the binding constraint

Between them, the four practices building on this coast will complete perhaps eleven houses this year. Planning consent on open ground has not been granted here since 2019, so almost everything new is a replacement or a conversion on an existing footprint. That ceiling is structural, not cyclical, and it is the single most important fact about this market.

Decisions have slowed, and offers have not

The average time from first viewing to offer has moved from five weeks to eleven over three years. Buyers are visiting twice, and often in different seasons, before they commit. The offers themselves, when they arrive, are close to asking — within three per cent on seven of the nine transactions we have visibility of.

What we would tell a seller

• Prepare before announcing. A house that appears with a complete construction record sells materially faster than one that does not.
• Do not price against a headline. The coast's headline sales are headland houses; a valley conversion priced against one will sit.
• Expect a second viewing in different weather, and be glad of it. Buyers who see the worst of a house and still want it do not renegotiate.

What we would tell a buyer

There is no urgency premium worth paying in this market, and there is no reward for speed. There is, however, a real cost to not being registered: private placements accounted for four of the nine sales, and none of those four was ever advertised.