It’s safe to say that many of us have really felt the heat this year. From weeks of intense heatwaves and even official droughts, it can be tricky to stay cool, especially when we’re indoors.
Whether you’re struggling to sleep in the stuffy, humid weather or feeling hot and bothered as you try to relax, cook, or work from home, it’s no surprise that many of us have been searching for solutions online – and this has even influenced those of us who are searching for a new home.
The latest property insight from Rightmove has revealed that online searches for homes for sale with air conditioning have more than tripled in a single year (234 per cent), following the UK’s record-breaking hot summer. This is despite the fact that homes with air conditioning only make up less than one per cent of the available properties on the UK housing market.
Notably, on 19th July – which marked the hottest day on record in the UK with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees – searches for homes for sale with air conditioning nearly quadrupled (+280 per cent) and nearly tripled in the rental market (+180 per cent), compared to the same day in 2021.
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‘During the hottest days of the year we’ve seen people across the UK jump straight onto Rightmove to see where they could live with the luxury of air conditioning. Though they make up a very small portion of the current property market, homes with air-con and other features that keep a home cool could attract even more interest in the future if we experience similarly hot summers, and these features rise up the priority list,’ says Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s property expert.
There has also been an increase in estate agents highlighting other features and using key terms in listings to describe how a home may stay cool in the summer. Mentions of ‘ceiling fan’ have increased seven times, ‘airy’ six times and ‘shade’ five times.
So which search terms have been trending on Rightmove this summer?
The top 10 ‘cool’ terms
- Ceiling Fan +629 per cent (increase in mentions in property listings compared to July 2021)
- Pergola +629 per cent
- Light and Airy +548 per cent
- Airy +526 per cent
- Awning +428 per cent
- Swimming Pool +407 per cent
- Shade +405 per cent
- Air Conditioning +369 per cent
- North Facing +355 per cent
- Breeze +255 per cent
‘We expect that the increased search volumes for air conditioning are from people living in older properties, as new homes are well insulated and therefore more thermally efficient,’ Oliver Cooney, Group Sustainability Advisor at Cala, explains. ‘People often associate thermal efficiency with keeping warm, but it also works to keep heat out during the summer too.
‘So, as we continue to build new homes more sustainably, with better insulation and features such as triple glazed windows, their thermal efficiency will continue to improve.’
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