Folkestone among best areas to buy a home in 2020: good-value Kent seaside town has outstanding schools and fast London commutes
This seaside town was dying the same quiet death as so many cast-off Victorian holiday resorts until billionaire Roger De Haan, whose father founded the Saga empire, decided to invest millions in reviving his home town.
He has already established a thriving new creative quarter on the Old High Street with live/work/sell spaces for artists and designers, plus some nice cafes and bars.
He is now turning his attention to the town’s desolate harbour and seafront, and has planning permission to revamp the whole area with a boardwalk, linear seafront park and around 1,000 homes, all masterplanned by Sir Terry Farrell.
Trains from Folkestone Central to St Pancras International take from 54 minutes, and an annual season ticket costs £5,812.
And schools are a huge selling point, with The Harvey Grammar School and The Folkestone School for Girls rated “outstanding” by Ofsted.
Why Folkestone is tipped as one to watch in 2020
Folkestone is cheap, now, but its increasing profile is starting to drive up prices as more Londoners discover there is life beyond Brighton.
According to Land Registry figures Folkestone, and neighbouring Hythe, have seen the best price performance during 2019 with prices up almost six per cent. In posh commuter magnet Sevenoaks they were down two per cent.
Pros: a real sense of arts-led, quirky grass roots regeneration pervades Folkestone, from the street food outlets set up in shipping containers at the harbour to the public sculptures dotted around town.
It has a growing reputation as a foodie hotspot, with restaurants such as Rocksalt, dramatically cantilevered over the harbour and with two AA rosettes, and new arrival Market Square. For natural beauty, its on the doorstep of the Kent Downs.
Cons: all the Tracey Emin sculptures in the world can’t disguise the fact that Folkestone has serious issues with deprivation and local unemployment. The town’s flagship Debenhams will close next year, leaving a gaping hole in the centre. The beach is pebbly not sandy, and it’s nothing like as pretty as, say, Whitstable.
Average house prices in Folkestone — and what there is to buy
An average home in CT4 costs £244,000, according to Rightmove, up from £181,000 five years ago, an increase of just over a third in five years.
One of the town’s rambling Victorian, Edwardian or Thirties villas would cost between £750,000 and £800,000, and for that you will get five or six bedrooms and a great-sized garden.
For £350,000 to £400,000, which is less than the average London first-time buyer spends, you could buy a smart two-bedroom sea view flat or a four-bedroom period terrace house.
There is not – yet – a huge amount of housebuilding in the town but at Taylor Wimpey’s Shorncliffe Heights you can buy a three-bedroom townhouse from £338,995.