For decades, the typical British property-hunter’s wish list has been pretty predictable: good schools, off-street parking, sunny garden...
Since Covid, an effective ‘work-from-home space’ has joined the list, and in recent years better insulation and heat retention have been high on the agenda, particularly as energy costs have soared, but also as we become generally more climate-conscious as a society.
Well, things are changing slightly – and they're changing because our climate and therefore our weather patterns are changing.
As summers get hotter and more unpredictable, a new question is cropping up from buyers and tenants alike. Whilst we still hear plenty of "will this home keep me warm in January?", there is now also a lot more of "will this home keep me sane in July?"
It's part of a conversation we seem to be having across every part of our business at WEST—The Property Consultancy, whether we're speaking to buyers or sellers, tenants or landlords, or even leaseholders and committee members in the blocks we manage.
With these sorts of prolonged hot spells set to become more frequent rather than less, it's only going to matter more over the next decade.
Rightmove published analysis following the record-breaking heatwave of the summer of 2022, which offers useful evidence of the change we are seeing.
In the days following that 40°C spike, buyer searches for homes with air conditioning more than tripled year-on-year. Tenant searches for air-conditioning rose by 75%.
The change in search behaviour was in many ways mirrored by estate and letting agents as time progressed – again, according to analysis by Rightmove.
In property listings, the term "ceiling fan" increased by almost 700%. Use of the word "airy" – something that estate agents were warned away from using as a so-called ‘danger word’ under the old Property Misdescriptions Act – rose by 600%. The word ‘shade’, too, appeared 500% more often.
In other words, estate and letting agents – being professional property marketers – were reaching for this sort of language around the coolness of properties, anticipating the needs of the buyers and tenants they were marketing to. Ceiling fans didn’t suddenly become 700% more common – they simply became far more relevant to a marketing effort.
That was four years ago. Since then, we've had more heatwaves, not fewer. In just the past three or four weeks, we’ve already had two back-to-back 30-plus-degree hot spells, with reports that retailers across the nation have sold out of portable air conditioning units.
This consumer attitude is reflected in the way that people are searching for properties online – and also how property marketers are changing.
Many new-build developers are making noticeable efforts to bring property cooling features and construction methods into the design of their properties and landscaping from the outset. One sustainability adviser at housebuilder Cala Homes, responsible for a number of developments in and around Oxford during the past decade or so, told Rightmove that thermal efficiency cuts both ways: insulation and triple glazing, usually promoted as ways to keep heat in during winter, work just as well at keeping it out in summer.
We're seeing this on new schemes across Oxfordshire, and not just from Cala Homes; more thoughtful orientation, shading, high thermal mass insulation and solar control glazing are becoming specified as standard. In Bicester, Greencore Homes – recent winners at the Oxfordshire Business Awards – are leading the way in carbon-negative, climate-positive housebuilding, constructing homes from natural materials to a Passivhaus standard designed to keep a constant, comfortable temperature throughout the year, without needing to throw open all windows to reduce temperatures inside the home. It is innovative, it is exciting, and it perhaps hints at how large constructors will build the homes of the future.
Older properties can't often be redesigned, but a genuine retrofit market is emerging to solve the same problems.
The Grantham Research Institute at LSE has argued that overheating risk is now widespread enough that buyers and renters would benefit from clearer information on a home's thermal performance, much as an EPC covers energy efficiency. That's not yet standard practice, but it points to a direction of travel – and sellers who can speak confidently about how a property copes in summer, not just winter, will have an edge with a growing share of buyers.
The same goes for the lettings market, and indeed the commercial market; any end user is going to appreciate the idea of being able to stay cool inside the properties they are looking to live or work in.
This is why, before rushing to replace kitchens and bathrooms to attract a buyer or tenant, it's worth considering what could be done to help them stay cool – it may be time and money better spent.
Air conditioning feels like a quick win to the general public. Portable air conditioning units selling out across the nation is something that grabs the headlines. Nevertheless, air conditioning itself is not the only answer.
For owners or tenants of period, conservation-area or listed properties – or anyone concerned about running costs or environmental impact – it's often neither easily achieved nor palatable.
There are other options, however; other things that people can do to help keep or make their homes cooler in extremely hot weather. Cross-ventilation, mature trees shading a south- or west-facing room, heat-reflective roofing, better insulation with high thermal mass, solar control glazing… all these do genuine work to bring down and regulate the internal temperature of properties, often at lower cost and less disruption than retrofitting mechanical cooling systems.
That is relevant in the residential sector but also in the commercial sector and in block-management, as we are experiencing ourselves across our departments at WEST-The Property Consultancy.
This changing attitude towards how properties perform in hot weather is something we're seeing across every department of our business – and it is shaping what we do to help our clients.
In residential sales, buyer preferences are changing, and this is showing in how we market a property. We now draw more attention to those cooling features such as shading, cross-ventilation and higher-quality glazing where they exist, especially when the marketing cycle coincides with warmer weather. Buyers are asking the question, so we lead with the answer.
In lettings, tenants are factoring summer comfort into their search just as buyers do, and are quicker to raise it when a property becomes uncomfortably hot. We can offer practical advice on ventilation, shading and blinds – but of course what landlords want is retention: the more comfortable tenants are, the longer they stay. Landlords who invest in better insulation, solar control glazing and heat-reflecting roofing are already at an advantage. As these weather patterns become the norm, such properties will let faster and command a premium – especially where they perform equally well in winter.
In commercial properties, occupiers and prospective tenants are asking how office and retail space performs in extreme heat – for comfort, but also because overheating affects productivity and increasingly features in ESG conversations. It's a live topic at lease renewal. Many tenants can install air conditioning under their lease where regulations allow, but it's a costly exercise – so landlords who take it upon themselves to install it, and offer it as part of the specification, find themselves in a commanding position when competing for tenants.
In block management, the picture is nuanced but no less interesting. More freeholders and Resident Management Companies (RMCs) are considering heat-reflective roof coatings, solar control glazing and improved insulation as part of planned major works – increasingly bundled into wider retrofit and building-safety programmes rather than treated as one-off jobs.
In London, something called the Flats Retrofit Toolkit was produced in 2024 for exactly this. Designed in partnership with the MCS Foundation and other sustainability-driven bodies, this local government-produced guide aims to help landlords and leaseholders, but critically also building managers, make blocks of flats greener, more energy-efficient, and cheaper to run. It details practical upgrades – like insulation and heat pumps – to cut carbon emissions and energy bills. These upgrades are usually funded through the service charge and sinking fund, following the formal Section 20 consultation leaseholders are entitled to.
You can see the direction of travel: as it takes hold in London, expect these conversations to extend elsewhere – not least in Oxford and Oxfordshire, where the local authority favours this kind of low-carbon initiative.
All very commendable, but of course it raises the obvious question: if the sinking fund doesn’t cover it and the service charge rises to pay for it, will individual leaseholders actually benefit? Weighed against the cost, yes – for reasons that go beyond simple comfort.
A cooler, better-insulated block is more comfortable to live in through a heatwave, typically supports a stronger EPC rating, and – like any well-executed capital works programme – protects and often increases the value of individual flats and apartments. It is increasingly linked to wider funding too: schemes such as the Cladding Safety Scheme can reduce what leaseholders pay for related building façade and fire-safety works that can be undertaken alongside these upgrades. Furthermore, grant support for whole-building retrofit is growing.
None of the above means that every property needs air conditioning units bolted to the walls to appeal to buyers, tenants and ensure their future value.
It does suggest, however, that the way in which a home, an office or a block of flats copes with heat is becoming as important to buyers, tenants and leaseholders as how it copes with cold, and that is a pattern seen across all disciplines: sales, lettings, commercial and block management.
It was an occasional conversation a few years ago, but is becoming a conversation we're now having as standard. It is a conversation that hibernates over the winter, perhaps, but it seems to be awakening stronger and more pressing each year – and this year, in particular, has given buyers, tenants and leaseholders alike plenty of reason to keep asking the question.
