Beach-hut prices
fall on Mudeford Sandbank
One shore beyond desire
by the Editor
On March 18th at auction (auctioneers Symonds and Sampson) a sleeping
beach hut failed to meet its reserve of £80,000, confirming local
knowledge that sales had stalled on the beach.
It is apparent from nearly two dozen “For Sale” signs before the Easter
holiday that although vendors are anxious to sell, buyers are currently
few and far between. This is most unusual.
Vendors have been keen to sell this Spring because the progressive transfer
fees payable to Christchurch Council rose on April 1st for a hut from
£15,000 to £21,000 as expected. Also licence fees have spiraled
to close on £2,000 per hut and although the beach has never looked
better, the old cheap and informal ways are being sup-planted by a new
ruthless profit-led and cost-driven worldliness.
A frenzy of articles on the sudden price slump appeared in the local
media and the national press and even an overseas newspaper just be-fore
Easter. Sales may yet recover if demand is restored. But this would
have to be in the face of vendors passing on the increasing transfer
fees to buyers. Historically, about a dozen huts have changed hands
on average each year over the last 30 years. There has been something
of a buying frenzy in the last dozen years, despite the rising prices.
The 354 huts contribute £630,000 in annual licence fees. In 2002/3
the transfer fee windfall to the council was £109,000. In 2004/05
it was £239,000. In 2005/6 it should be at least £309,000
in the council’s favour. The following year the rate (if not the total
as it depends on the number of huts being sold or transferred) should
increase by half again. The council want to gradually achieve a 50%
share of a hut’s profit on sale because it is the (council owned) land
that has the real value.
Also any recovery in sales would have to be in the face of uncertainties
over the beach lease from Bourne-mouth Council which is due for renewal
in either 2029 (or 2036 depending on who you speak to!)
But the fact that the huts have become a “golden goose” is an assurance
that the huts will continue to colonise this beach, as the values have
been rising at least until the 2005 “correction”.
On the other hand, it is still a paradise down here. And will be, people
know, for generations to come.
But efforts to reduce the transfer fees when passed down within families,
if successful, may reduce supply even more and force prices upwards
again. Publicity (even bad publicity over falling prices) has brought
a new clutch of Easter weekend visitors looking for an apparent bargain.
This is a perennial phenomenon it seems to me.
It is not just waves that encroach upon the shore.
It is an exciting time, not least because having sold my family’s sleeping-hut
(after three quarters of a century of occupation), admittedly at what
has been “the top of the market”, I am no longer “Beach Hut Man”. My
plan to buy back into a smaller hut more suited to my needs and based
on my sense of what I or my family would be prepared to pay is still
in question.
Objectively I would not be able to recommend “buy” or “sell” to anyone
else even if I have just more than doubled my new paper investments
in six months using the American NASDAQ stock market. (AAPL and PIXR
if you must know).
Distance from poverty does lend enchantment to the view, but it is a
cold wind that blows if you do not have a hut. The simplicity of beach
hut-life is a more enchanting prospect than that of hut-less financial
excess. Honestly.
I told would-be buyers of our hut not to buy expecting prices to continue
to increase, but to give themselves and their children a sanctuary from
the world. I believed they would be right to buy, for that reason.
They probably were right to buy in, for whilst the hut-strewn sea-front
at nearby Bournemouth has 100 arrests on average each year, our own
Mudeford Sandbank has had perhaps one arrest in the last 100 years!
Oh! for the simple happy childish days of my youth, in a sanctuary untroubled
by the grasping hand of greed, fear of being displaced by ruthless market
forces and troubling council policies.
But thank you to everyone who has made the decision to sell last August
less painful than it might otherwise have been. I currently may be found
(at least out of season) in a hired hut at the end of the beach plotting
my comeback. Due to council policies even that temporary solution is
under threat of becoming beyond my justifiable reach.
Absence has made the heart grow fonder. I recommend a trial separation
for anyone, however beautiful the “partner” you have. As Hart Crane
wrote, in his poem The Bridge, “the best shore is one beyond our desire.”
