HOVE’S BN3 postcode has been listed as the most valuable outside of London, with sales exceeding £206 million since the start of the year according to a recent study.

Research from Keller Williams identified the postcode as number eight on the list, behind notoriously expensive areas such as Kensington and Chelsea’s W8 postcode.

The study measured the value of the postcodes based on the total volume of sales from the beginning of the year up until the end of May.

The data was sourced from Land Registry sold house data.

Hove’s volume of sales over those five months was £206,087,089.

The highest amount of sales was in Camden and Barnet’s NW3 postcode with a total of £262,487,046 worth of sales.

Why is Hove in such high demand?

The Argus: The Barn in Hove. (cc: Hamptons)The Barn in Hove. (cc: Hamptons)

Hove is much sought after due to its spacious parks, good schools in the area and variety of leisure activities.

It is extremely popular with families, with one estate agent claiming the demand from people looking to get out of London has grown massively since the first Covid lockdown.

“Our London database of applicants has quadrupled, we have four times as many Londoners than we have normally had looking since pre-lockdown”, said Paul Taggart, head of sales at Hamptons’ Brighton and Hove branch.

The Argus:

He added: “You can’t get [in Brighton] what you get in Hove, that’s the thing. Brighton itself is the older part of the city and grew up around the centre.

“What you get is a lot of smaller rows of terraces and you don’t get the big gardens or driveways.

“When people realise you can get that and more in Hove, it becomes the area of choice.

Mr Taggart said that Hove will always be more desirable for families than Brighton due to the comparative amount of space.

He said: “For family buyers, Hove is far more requested and far more popular.”

However, the city as a whole offers one thing that London cannot.

He continued: “What Brighton and Hove has to offer which London and the outskirts don’t is that we have got the seaside.

“There is so much going on in Brighton and Hove, you can verifiably call it ‘London by the sea’.”

'London by the sea' 

While this may seem like just a current trend, Brighton and Hove historically has been a popular escape for Londoners craving the seaside since the 1780s, when George IV arrived from the capital.

His presence in the city helped transform Brighton from a quiet seaside town into hotspot for people from London.

Soon after his arrival, Brighton was nicknamed "London by the sea".

George IV lived in one of Brighton’s most famous attractions, the Royal Pavilion, which started as a modest villa.

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