Yes, provided you like your commuter village with the commuting taken out. Seven in ten own their homes. Nearly four in ten work from home. Hardly anyone gets the train. The station is kept for the days head office summons them.
The houses are unshowy and mostly built in living memory. The council-tax valuation list has 29% detached, 26% semis, 20% terraced, 15% flats and 6% bungalows, and only 14% of homes were built before 1930. If you came for a beamed cottage, you're in the wrong decade of stock. The upside of all that post-war and later building is that energy certificates look healthy: 73% of certificated homes are rated A to C, and only 6% are E or worse. Three quarters of homes run on mains gas and about 8% are heated by electricity alone, so ask which one you're viewing before you fall for the kitchen.
Prices depend on what you're buying, and the median hides that. The Land Registry recorded 145 sales in the year to May 2026 at a median of £396,500. Split by type, the 25 flats went for a median of £160,000, the 36 terraces for about £356,000, the 44 semis for £435,000 and the 40 detached houses for £551,000. A flat and a detached house in the same village, £391,000 apart in the same year, and the headline figure lives in neither. Council tax clusters in Band C, and only 13% of homes sit in the cheapest two bands, so the bills don't do you many favours either.
Renting here is a minority sport. About a quarter of households rent, and the typical private rent across the Horsham area is about £1,450 a month as of April 2026, up about 4% on a year earlier. That's a figure for the whole council area, not for Billingshurst's own streets. The letting market is thin enough that you shouldn't count on picking from a long list.
Safety is unremarkable, which is the right answer. Billingshurst's published crime rate runs at about 58 per 1,000 residents over the twelve months from June 2025 to May 2026, level with the Horsham district's 57. Anti-social behaviour and public-order offences take a bigger slice of the total than they do nationally, about 20% and 10% against 16% and 7%, which is what happens when a place has a high street, a run of pubs and a Friday night. Across its whole force area, Sussex Police charged about 10% of crimes in that period, below the national 12%. That's a force statistic, not a Billingshurst one, but it's the one you'd want to know.
The broadband does the job the railway was built for. Gigabit connections reach about 81% of premises and superfast about 99%, and every postcode gets a mobile data signal from at least one operator. Billingshurst Rail Station and Pulborough Rail Station are both on hand, yet only 2% of workers commute by train and 48% drive. Buses reach 32 stops, averaging 11 weekday departures per stop and about one an hour at peak, with weekend services at 96% of stops. The Department for Transport's 2019 modelling puts the nearest hospital about 39 minutes away by car and 88 by public transport, so the car stays in the plan.
Flood risk needs a closer look than the river maps suggest. In the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones, none of Billingshurst's postcodes sits in Zone 3 and about 1% sit in Zone 2. But 29% of postcodes are high risk on at least one flood indicator once surface water is counted. The rivers aren't the problem here, the rain is. The Environment Agency counts eight properties at high risk from rivers and the sea, six of them homes, and the last recorded river flood was in 1982. Green space makes up for a lot: the average home is about 112 metres from a green space, with around 24 within a kilometre and water about 290 metres away. Nobody here has to plan a trip to find a field.
Heritage rules affect some homes, not most. There are 52 listed buildings, one Grade I, two Grade II* and 49 Grade II, including the Parish Church of St Mary and Ye Old Six Bells Inn, plus one conservation area covering the old core of Billingshurst. If you buy inside it, expect the council to take a close interest in your windows. Outside it, the usual planning rules apply, and the area logged 393 planning applications in the twelve months to June 2026, so whatever extension you have in mind, someone on your road has probably put in for it already.
The people are settled. About 71% own their homes, the typical resident is 41, and modelled household income averaged about £65,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023. Forty-one is roughly the age when people stop saying they'll move back to London one day. Billingshurst FC has played since 1891 at Jubilee Fields, and a village whose football club outlived the Wey and Arun Canal's working life has its priorities sorted.
This page also covers the villages around it: Wisborough Green, Kirdford, Loxwood, Plaistow and Ifold. They're smaller and quieter, and for most of them Billingshurst is the place with the station.
It suits households who work from home most of the week, want a garden and a semi or detached house without paying for somewhere more fashionable, and are happy to drive most places. Couples with children and a car each will find the village built around them.
It suits you less if you need a daily train into town, want a period house, or don't drive. The same goes for anyone who wants a buzz on a Tuesday night. Billingshurst doesn't do Tuesdays.
Its past residents were more colourful than its present reputation. Diana Dors lived in Billingshurst, which is still the most glamorous sentence anyone has written about the place. The actor Paul Darrow lived here, as did Edward Enfield, the broadcaster and journalist. Edith and Ellen Beck, suffragettes and local philanthropists, did more for the village than any parish council minute ever recorded.
Billingshurst is a good place to live, and better than average for the people it's built for. Its real strength is the green space around it, with fields and water a short walk from almost every door. The weak spot is flood risk, surface water rather than the rivers, so check the exact address before you commit. Everything else is quietly competent, which is the one thing its residents came for.