Are buyers still flooding in?

Italy is amazing. My partner and I have enjoyed many holidays there, particularly along the beautiful Amalfi coast, with walks among lemon groves and picturesque villages on cliff top edges. With a climate we Brits can only dream of, weather conditions ought not to be a contentious issue, but over breakfast the conversation usually turns to the temperature expected that day. Twenty-nine degrees Celsius, or thirty-two? Or possibly more? Who cares once it’s above twenty anyway?

Here in the Lake District, discussions about weather involve temperatures ten or fifteen degrees lower, with a much wider degree of deviation, and of course they include precipitation - mostly rain.

The Lake District has earned its name with good reason. We do have a lot of rain, more than 2600mm (102inches) in the 12 months to the end of August (Seathwaite, only nine miles from Keswick, actually has 50% more!) Of course, those millimetres are not spread evenly throughout out the year but descend in great bucketfuls, swamping our waterways, highways and byways.

With the wonderful scenery tempting buyers to live or invest here, we do also run the risk of occasional floods. And yet, properties continue to be bought and sold in the most beautiful locations, even if flood-prone. Why, a visitor might ask, would I risk buying a property that may flood?

As a local estate agent, who has sold more flooded properties since 2015 than any other agents in the locality, we have a wide knowledge of this problem and how people have coped. The Environment Agency is undertaking vast programs to improve flood resilience by planting schemes, clearing waterways, and increasing and improving flood barriers in specific locations. Attention is being paid to the height above ground at which new houses are being built, and existing properties are benefitting from specialised door and window seals, non-return valves to protect drains, advice about garden walls and similar simple prevention steps. Thanks to the Government’s ‘Flood Re’ scheme, flood insurance is widely available and affordable as part of a home insurance policy for those who want to make the Lake District their permanent home.

The Lake District may be the wettest place in the United Kingdom, but it is also the most beautiful (in my humble opinion). Why would you want to live anywhere else, even if the temperature rarely reaches thirty degrees Celsius? Talk to us, the estate agent rooted in the community, who understands life in the locality.

Hannah Sims – Manager of PFK Estate Agency, Keswick.