Yes, as long as you never want to change anything about your house. Three in four households own their home. The typical resident is in their fifties. Crime runs well below the Horsham average. Half the villages sit inside a conservation area, and the planning officers have long memories. It's a comfortable, safe place, and the heritage rules decide what happens to your house long before you do.
The housing across the Pulborough area is detached country. About 35% of homes on the council-tax list are detached, and bungalows at 19% are level with semis at 19%, which tells you exactly who the post-war builders had in mind. Terraces make up 13% and flats 12%, so anyone hunting for a starter flat is shopping in a small aisle. Only about 19% of homes were built before 1930, which rather undercuts the timber-beam image. Among homes with an energy performance certificate, 44% are rated A to C, 36% sit at D and 20% are E or worse. About 65% of homes are on mains gas and roughly 6% rely on electric-only heating. In a spread of villages like this, ask how the house is heated before you fall for the inglenook, not after the first winter bill.
Prices match the driveways. The Land Registry's twelve months to May 2026 recorded 303 sales at a median of £487,500. Detached houses went for a median of £697,500, semis for £415,000, terraces for about £335,000 and flats for £198,000. Band G is the most common council tax band in the area, and only about 10% of homes sit in bands A or B. The council tax letter lands the same week as the gutter quote, and nobody warns you about either.
Renting is harder to pin down locally. The Office for National Statistics puts the typical private rent across the Horsham area at about £1,450 a month as of April 2026. That is a district-wide figure, not Pulborough's own, and with about a quarter of households renting here, the choice in any given month is thin.
Safety is where the area does best. Police records for June 2025 to May 2026 show a published rate of about 42 crimes per 1,000 residents, roughly 27% below the Horsham district average. Anti-social behaviour makes up about 22% of recorded crime against 16% nationally, which in villages like these usually means someone has had words about a hedge. Nobody moves to West Chiltington for the thrill, and the numbers make sure nobody gets one.
Getting about means driving, whatever the estate agent says about the station. Pulborough Rail Station sits in the middle of the area, with Billingshurst, Amberley, Arundel and Christs Hospital stations nearby. At the 2021 census about 1% of workers commuted by train, 49% drove and about 41% worked from home. The area has 324 bus stops, averaging 13 weekday departures each, and fewer than one bus an hour at peak times. Broadband is patchier than the house prices suggest: gigabit reaches about 52% of premises and superfast about 91%. For a population that mostly works from the spare room, the router matters more than the railway.
The Arun valley is part of the deal. About 12% of postcodes are flagged high risk on at least one flood indicator, surface water included, while the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zone 3 covers about 1%. Put simply, the river worries fewer people than the rain running off the fields and down the lane. Green space is close, at an average of about 360 metres, and open water is closer still at about 275 metres. Nobody here is short of a view. Some of them just have a little too much water in it now and then.
The heritage count is where the dream extension usually dies. The area holds 1,066 listed buildings, 30 of them Grade I and 36 Grade II*, alongside 29 conservation areas and 71 scheduled monuments. Pulborough has two conservation areas of its own, at Church Place and Lower Street, and Stopham Bridge, Parham Park and the motte and bailey castle in Pulborough Park are all on the lists. The Domesday Book recorded the place as Poleberge in 1086. The planning department treats your side return with much the same seriousness.
The people who live here are settled and comfortable. About 76% of households own their home, the median age is 53, and median gross household income was about £64,600 in the financial year to March 2023. The whole area has the feel of people who have already done their big move and are staying put, which is a fine quality in neighbours and a poor one if you want a lively pub on a Tuesday.
This page covers more than the village itself. Storrington, with its single high street at the foot of the Downs, is the area's other centre, and Ashington sits out on the main road towards Horsham and Worthing. West Chiltington, Washington, Fittleworth, Bury, Sutton, Codmore Hill and Abingworth fill in the rest. They share a price bracket, a postcode and a strong interest in what the neighbours are planning to build.
It suits buyers who work from home, want a detached house with space around it and plan to stay for years. Retired couples downsizing into a bungalow will find plenty to pick from, and so will families who have been priced out of somewhere busier and want a quiet life.
It does not suit anyone who needs a daily train commute, a buyer on a first-time budget hoping for a flat, or someone planning to knock through walls in a listed cottage. If your plans for a house include the words "open plan" and "just a small glass extension", the conservation officer has a different future in mind for you.
The area has attracted quiet, private people for a long time. The artists Clara Christian and Ethel Walker shared a cottage on Toat Lane, two miles north of Pulborough, in the mid-1890s. In 2019 two fragments of an Iron Age torc turned up near the village and went to the Barbican House Museum. Things round here have a habit of staying put, and that includes the people.
Pulborough is a good place to live for people who want to be left alone. Its real strength is safety: crime is well under the district average and the streets are quiet. The weak spot is the freedom to change your home, with the listed buildings, conservation areas and monuments packed so tightly that the house you buy is close to the only one you'll ever have. You get calm, space and a drive of your own. You pay for it in planning refusals.