The outdoor features house buyers will want in 2021

The past 12 months has seen a huge shift in our priorities when it comes to our homes and what we want from them.

The Covid-19 lockdowns have taken their toll, particularly on those living in cities, who have been left yearning for more outdoor space in particular.

So, we’ve taken a look at the most searched-for outdoor features buyers are craving, as well as the most popular outdoor trends for 2021…

The top 15 outdoor features house buyers want

It seems buyers are setting their sights high, with a huge 392% increase in searches for ‘houses with pools’ in May 2020 compared with May 2019, before the pandemic took hold.

City-dwellers, meanwhile, many of whom may own or be renting a flat or apartment already, appear to have outdoor space firmly on their minds. Searches for ‘balcony garden’ (238%), ‘flat with balcony’ (191%) and ‘flat with garden’ (191%) all saw huge increases in May 2020, with those in Norwich and Plymouth most desperate to bring the outdoors in.

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Ranking	Search term	Searches: May 2019	Searches: May 2020	% Increase	City searching for the most
1	houses with pools	590	2900	392%	Norwich
2	balcony garden	1300	4400	238%	Norwich
3	flat with balcony	110	320	191%	Plymouth
4	flat with garden	110	320	191%	Norwich
5	greenhouse	110000	301000	174%	Bristol
6	sheds	165000	450000	173%	Bristol
7	decking	90500	246000	172%	Bristol
8	communal garden	480	1300	171%	Norwich
9	cottage garden	5400	12100	124%	Norwich
10	balcony	8100	18100	123%	Bristol
11	houses with gardens	1300	2900	123%	Norwich
12	garden	90500	201000	122%	Bristol
13	conservatory	74000	135000	82%	Bristol
14	bifolding doors	60500	110000	82%	Bristol
15	roof terrace	2400	2900	21%	London

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The top 20 outdoor trends for 2021

Children (and maybe adults, too), were clearly keen to take advantage of 2020’s lovely spring weather, as searches for paddling pools rose by an astonishing 1012% compared with the same time in 2019. With swimming pools closed during the tightest restrictions, it seems many homeowners and renters looked to entertain the kids with a splash about in the garden.

And with pubs remaining closed for much of the spring, the desire for a cold pint sparked a huge 650% increase in searches for ‘pub shed’, as DIY fans looked to potentially create their own watering holes in the back garden.

Searches for hot tubs, meanwhile, peaked in Belfast, while Liverpudlians focused on fire pits to give their properties’ outdoor spaces a lift.

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Ranking	Search term	Searches: May 2019	Searches: May 2020	% Increase	City searching for the most
1	paddling pool	74000	823000	1012%	Bristol
2	pub shed	880	6600	650%	Norwich
3	hot tub	201000	1500000	646%	Belfast
4	boho garden	260	1600	515%	Bristol
5	balcony ideas	2400	12100	404%	London
6	fire pit	165000	823000	399%	Liverpool
7	balcony decoration	590	2900	392%	Norwich
8	permaculture gardening	210	1000	376%	Norwich
9	garden fireplace	1900	8100	326%	Bristol
10	balcony planters	6600	27100	311%	Nottingham
11	balcony garden	1300	4400	238%	Norwich
12	balcony furniture	6600	22200	236%	London
13	garden summer house	12100	40500	235%	Bristol
14	garden pergola	9900	33100	234%	Bristol
15	cottage garden plants	6600	18100	174%	Liverpool
16	man cave	8100	22200	174%	Bristol
17	white garden	590	1600	171%	Norwich
18	kids garden house	1900	4400	132%	Southampton
19	treehouse	27100	60500	123%	Norwich
20	wild garden	720	1600	122%	Norwich

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Top garden design features

Interior design trends always command a large number of searches online, but with buyer and renter focus switching to that desire for outdoor space, May 2020 saw a huge number hunting for outdoor design trends.

Fire pit designs topped the list, with a massive 656% increase in searches when compared with May 2019, while outdoor sofas (309%), rattan garden furniture (233%) and timber decking (174%) also suggest a switch of focus to the outdoors.

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Ranking	Search term	Searches: May 2019	Searches: May 2020	% Increase
1	garden furniture with fire pit	1600	12100	656%
2	garden rugs	6600	40500	514%
3	outdoor fire pit	8100	49500	511%
4	garden furniture sofa	1900	9900	421%
5	outdoor fireplace	5400	22200	311%
6	garden furniture paint	6600	27100	311%
7	outdoor sofas	18100	74000	309%
8	rattan garden furniture	165000	550000	233%
9	trellis fence	22200	74000	233%
10	luxury garden furniture	2900	8100	179%
11	iroko decking	260	720	177%
12	wicker garden furniture	5400	14800	174%
13	timber decking	8100	22200	174%
14	cast iron garden furniture	3600	8100	125%
15	sunken garden	880	1900	116%

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Top allotment searches

The coronavirus pandemic has also seen a huge switch towards sustainability and the big outdoor trend to emerge last spring was growing your own fruit and veg – as well as baking banana bread, of course!

Searches for ‘home allotment’ grew by 170% in May 2020, alongside ‘garden allotment ideas’ (243%), ‘allotments near me’ (235%) and ‘how to get an allotment’ (213%) – with searches peaking in Plymouth, Norwich, Bristol and Southampton.

Searches for ‘growing vegetables on balcony’ also increased 420% from May 2019 to May 2020 – proving again that those in flats or apartments were aiming to make use of the outdoor space they had.

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Ranking	Search term	Searches: May 2019	Searches: May 2020	% Increase	City searching for the most
1	home allotment	30	170	467%	Plymouth
2	garden allotment ideas	140	480	243%	Norwich
3	allotments near me	5400	18100	235%	Bristol
4	how to get an allotment	320	1000	213%	Southampton
5	allotment for rent	480	1300	171%	Norwich
6	allotment shed	720	1900	164%	Norwich
7	allotment ideas	3600	8100	125%	Bristol
8	allotment	22200	49500	123%	Manchester
9	allotment raised beds	480	1000	108%	Norwich
10	private allotments near me	210	390	86%	Norwich

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The top 20 foods the UK is growing

While baking banana bread has been the pastime of choice for many during the Covid-19 lockdowns, many people have looked to combine that kind of sustainability with getting outdoors.

There’s a healthy feel to our list of the top-20 foods we’re growing during the pandemic, too, with searches for ‘growing radishes’ 519% higher in May 2020 than they were 12 months earlier. Searches on growing butternut squash, lettuce, peppers, spring onions, cucumbers, courgettes and potatoes all saw more than a 400% increase, too.

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Ranking	Search term	Searches: May 2019	Searches: May 2020	% Increase
1	growing radishes	1600	9900	519%
2	growing butternut squash	1900	9900	421%
3	growing lettuce	1900	9900	421%
4	growing peppers	2400	12100	404%
5	growing spring onions	2400	12100	404%
6	growing cucumbers	6600	33100	402%
7	growing courgettes	6600	33100	402%
8	growing potatoes	9900	49500	400%
9	growing spinach	1900	8100	326%
10	growing beetroot	2900	12100	317%
11	growing sweet corn	2900	12100	317%
12	growing cauliflower	1300	5400	315%
13	growing aubergines	2400	9900	313%
14	growing coriander	2400	9900	313%
15	growing peas	4400	18100	311%
16	growing carrots	3600	14800	311%
17	growing onions	3600	14800	311%
18	growing tomatoes	12100	49500	309%
19	growing broad beans	2900	9900	241%
20	growing chillies	2900	9900	241%

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Further reading…

This year is looking like another year of change for the property market in the UK, as we navigate our way through the coronavirus pandemic.

Find our everything you can expect from the market in 2021 by taking a look at our guide.

And with more and more buyers looking to switch from the city to a rural property, here are the best places to look for your next property.

Methodology: Martin & Co used Google Keyword Planner to pull the search volume for all outdoor-related searches across five different categories. We then took the May 2019 volume as well as the May 2020 volume and worked out the increase or decrease to give us our percentages. For the regional data, we pulled the individual search volumes for our top terms for each category across the 18 biggest cities in the UK. We divided these numbers by the population of those cities in order to find who was searching for those terms the most per capita, which gave us our regional rankings.