If the word “cottage” fills you with longing for a cosy country home, with a thatched roof and an idyllic rural life (think home-baked bread and local jam made by the neighbours), you are not alone.
In a year when average property prices in most countryside locations fell, cottages beat the rest of the market.
However, cottages usually outpace the market. In part this is because, as with the terraced house in urban locations, they are often an affordable first step on to the market or an upgrade to a family home. They also evoke nostalgia for a quintessential British lifestyle.
As David Fell, a research analyst at Hamptons International, points out, their popularity may have much to do with the picture they paint of a different, perhaps simpler time. “Most cottages were built for blue-collar workers, so many places have a strong agricultural, mining or manufacturing heritage.”
Knight Frank reports that the price of cottages rose 4.1 per cent last year compared with the average countryside property price, which fell by 0.4 per cent. The estate agency defines a typical cottage as a home that “has about one acre of land, is detached and has three or four bedrooms”, also citing thick walls, low ceilings and beams as common features.
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The average prices of farmhouses and manor houses, which are defined as larger, with more land, fell by 1 per cent and 2.5 per cent respectively. Savills noted a similar disparity, with the price of cottages up 14.8 per cent in the past five years and 4.8 per cent since the 2007 peak. Meanwhile, the price of a rectory is down 8.3 per cent since its 2007 peak; the price of a manor house is down 15.5 per cent.
“Country cottages are still one of the most sought-after types of house in the countryside,” says Damian Gray, a partner at Knight Frank. “A ‘roses round the door’ cottage with a pretty garden within walking distance of a good pub is very high on the wish list for buyers. They often sit in prime, enviable locations in the heart of the village, so the owners can easily become part of the community. They are also not too big to manage if owners are using them as a weekend property, and they have relatively low-maintenance gardens.”
Planning restrictions, Gray adds, make it almost impossible to build a property in locations in which many cottages are situated, so this adds to demand. A proper cottage does not have to have beams, but most do, says Charles Wellbelove, a director at Hamptons International. A cottage is really all about the size, he insists. “If it has quaint, little rooms, it is a cottage; if it has big, cavernous rooms, it is a house.”
So who buys them? “The typical cottage buyer is obsessed with the character of the place,” Wellbelove says. “A thatched cottage will appeal to a buyer who likes the history behind it and isn’t at all interested in practicality. This buyer is prepared to compromise
with character and location. Cottages don’t provide flexible living spaces because of the often disorderly layout of the rooms.”
A cottage buyer might say, “we’ll make it work with two and a half rooms”, instead of looking somewhere else or changing style for the sake of more space.
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Like the terrace in urban locations, the cottage is often the first step on the ladder outside towns and cities because of its size. It is also of interest to anyone stepping down the ladder. Research by Hamptons International suggests that almost half of cottage buyers (48 per cent) buy with a mortgage, and that nearly three quarters of them (71 per cent) are owner-occupiers.
“Cottages generally aren’t the most profitable rental investments and landlords shy away from buying them,” says David Fell, of Hamptons. “The premium owners are willing to pay for their good looks doesn’t always translate into higher rents, while high running costs are a turn-off for some tenants.”
It is the features that make cottages so popular — low ceilings, thick walls, rural locations — that make them less of an appealing investment. Only 14 per cent of cottages are bought as second homes and 6 per cent by landlords, according to Hamptons.
You can find cottages across the country, but there is a magical triumvirate to look out for in terms of lifestyle and investment. “Buyers tend to look for cottages in a village with a great pub, a village shop and a primary school,” says Damian Gray, of Knight Frank. The Chilterns and the Cotswolds are still the most sought-after areas for this combination. Although if you buy there you will have to be aware of how important it is (and how expensive it can be) to maintain a property using the right materials, such as lime mortar for pointing and chalk-based paints that help the thick walls to breathe (other paints could contribute to damp issues). A three-bedroom Cotswold stone cottage in a popular village could set you back between £500,000 and £1 million.
The areas where cottages (as defined by Hamptons) make up the largest proportion of sales include Llandovery in Carmarthenshire, where cottages make up 43.6 per cent of all homes and where they cost on average £189,601. Stoke-sub-Hamdon in Somerset is also filled with cottages (40.7 per cent) and the average price is £292,767. On the Isle of Skye cottages make up 33.3 per cent and cost an average £234,000.
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Although a cottage garden will be far smaller than that of a manor house or farm, it is a big part of the appeal and tends to have quite a relaxed feel. Louis de Soissons, of the Savills Norwich office, calls the traditional cottage garden “the antithesis of formality and order”, a place where delphiniums, roses, hollyhocks and herbs are all thrown together.