Can you afford property prices in NI town named best place to live?

Portstewart was recently named the best place to live in Northern Ireland by the Sunday Times, so we’ve decided to see how much it might cost to move there.

Belfast Live has scoured a number of property websites to find out what might be available to buy in the picturesque seaside town.

The lowest priced house we found was a one-bed apartment with an asking price of £99,500 and the most expensive property was a detached, five bed bungalow with a £750,000 asking price.

Read more: Portstewart ‘so friendly’ and ‘scenery is beautiful’, locals say after town named NI’s best place to live

Read more: The Sunday Times reveal the best places to live in Northern Ireland 2024

There was one property with an even higher asking price, however. A new development, which has not yet been completed, at the Promenade includes a two bed apartment with an asking price of £895,000.

Other apartments in the same ‘six west’ development are listed in the range of £415,000 to £795,000 by estate agent Armstrong Gordon.

The listing states: “The location of these properties is unrivalled and the homes are sure to capture the vibrancy, beauty and tranquillity that comes with coastal living in Portstewart.”

For the £895,000 apartment, a typical mortgage with a 10% deposit, 30-year repayment term, and a fixed interest rate of 4.55% would see monthly payments of £4,105.32.

Away from the promenade, several detached houses are listed in the Nursery Mews development for between £575,000 and £625,000.

A typical mortgage for the £625,000 property, with the same terms as above, would see monthly payments of £2,866.84.

The cheapest of the 59 properties listed by the Property News website, which includes several possible development locations and some properties with Portrush addresses, is an apartment in the Lever Park estate with an asking price of £99,500. A typical mortgage here would see monthly repayments of £456.40.

There were a total of six more properties with Portstewart addresses that were listed for less than the average residential price of £195,760 for Northern Ireland, according to the latest house price index from Halifax.

This included a townhouse listed for £175,000 in the Old Mill Grange estate, an area popular with students, a semi-detached bungalow in the Millfield Village area with the same £175,000 price, and a flat on the Portmore Road listed for £149,500.

Almost all properties in Portstewart are listed for well above the £195,760 Northern Ireland average.

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