Study also reveals the rural areas with the highest and lowest house prices
A new study has revealed England’s most beautiful or ‘Instragrammable’ rural counties and how much it would cost to settle in those places.
The study by money.co.uk analysed the number of Instagram posts for 21 rural counties to reveal the most beautiful among them based on how popular they are on the social media platform. The average house price for each county was then calculated from government data to discover, on average, how much it would cost to live in them.
Recognised as the most ‘Instagrammable’ rural county is Cornwall with 8.6 million Instagram posts – almost double the number of posts garnered by the second place in this list. Cornwall, packed with sandy beaches, as well as picture-perfect seaside villages, registered an average house price of £300,182.
Coming in second is Devon, which appears in 4.7 million Instagram posts. Recently, house prices have been rising in Devon, which, like Cornwall, has some great beaches, cliffs, and moorlands to explore. The average house price in Devon is £321,458.
In third place is Norfolk with four million Instagram posts. The East Anglian county is perhaps best known for the Broads, a network of rivers and lakes that crisscross the east of the county and form a national park area. The average house price in Norfolk is £277,736.
The rest of the top 10 places are Dorset (2.7 million Instagram posts, £348,876 average house price), Suffolk (2.4 million Instagram posts, £290,162 average house price), Somerset (2.1 million Instagram posts, £289,299 average house price), Cumbria (1.8 million Instagram posts, £184,830 average house price), Northumberland (1.5 million Instagram posts, £183,895 average house price), Isle of Wight (1.2 million Instagram posts, £277,924 average house price), and North Yorkshire (1.1 million Instagram posts, £267,888 average house price).
According to money.co.uk, the average house price in rural areas currently stands at £314,500. Five years ago, the average cost in these same areas was just £239,842. This means that rural property prices have grown by 31% since 2017.
The rural area with the cheapest house prices is County Durham, North East, where the average property price is just £122,818. The rural area with the most expensive house prices is Waverley, South East, with an average property price of £536,336.
