Working from home drives buyer behaviour for bigger homes

The latest market analysis from Rightmove highlights the shifting attitude towards more spacious properties among the UK’s prospective house hunters.

According to their latest report, there has been a 326% jump on the site in the use of the terms ’office’, ‘workspace’ and ‘working from home’ in property listings, reflecting the huge numbers of Brits who no longer go to the office.

Between June and October this year, 28% more new properties came to market compared to the same period last year with agents also reporting an increase in demand for people looking for outbuildings and annexes where people can set up a home office.

Home-hunters using Rightmove to search for ‘outbuilding’ is up 90% on this time last year and is up 89% for ‘annex’ or ‘annexe’. People using the site to search for properties with ‘no chain’ is also up 110%, likely as people look to buy quickly to take advantage of the temporary stamp duty holiday ending in March.

The desire for more space has helped four and five-bed homes emerge as the biggest winners of the property market this year. Back in March, five-bed detached houses were taking an average of 92 days from being first listed on Rightmove until they were marked as under offer or Sold Subject to Contract by an agent. That time has reduced by 30 days to now taking 62 days. Coming in second is four-bed bungalows, going from taking 86 days to now taking 59 days, a drop of 27 days. Third on the list is four-bed detached houses, followed by four-bed semi-detached houses.

Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s Director of Property Data said, “Over the past eight months, with the requirement for many people to work from home, we’ve seen workspaces evolving from laptops balancing on the end of the bed to fully equipped home offices in the garden shed, and everything in between.

“Many home-movers have determined that their current property doesn’t offer enough space for effective home working and have been trading up – either within their local area or looking further afield for that bigger home. Agents I’ve been speaking to have said that they’ve been inundated with requests from prospective buyers for properties with an extra reception room, an extra bedroom, or an extra building outside that they can turn into a functioning office.

“Working from home is here to stay for many, perhaps not full-time but certainly a few days a week, and so it looks like the trend of home-hunters settling for a make-shift place to perch a laptop seen back in March has been replaced with a more permanent need for space being added to their property checklist.”