Houses here run to about £402,500 at the median. Detached at £600,000. Terraces at £320,000. Flats at £245,000. Not cheap, not Brighton, and priced to keep the village exactly the shape it is.
About 556 homes changed hands in the twelve months to spring. The median sat at £402,500. Detached houses averaged around £600,000, semi-detached at £405,000, terraces at £320,000, and flats at £245,000. Of those 556 sales, roughly two in five were detached houses, and about one in five each were semi-detached, terraced, and flat. Detached and flat trade almost two and a half times apart at the median, which matters if the plan was to sell a family house here and rebuy a flat with the change, or do the same trick in reverse. What £245,000 buys is a one- or two-bed flat set back from the sea. What £600,000 buys is a detached house with a driveway, which is the entire ambition of a large slice of this market.
Council tax modal band is C. Only about one in eight homes sits in bands A or B. The rest are spread across C, D, E and higher, which is where most of the money in the village lives. A band-A property pays about £1,660 a year in council tax. A band-D property pays about £2,490. A band-H property pays about £4,970. Running costs on Rustington bricks are not the postcode's advertised advantage.
For renters, the numbers are quoted at the wider-area level. Typical private rent across the Arun area sits at about £1,220 a month, up about three and a half percent on the year. A one-bed rents at around £840. A two-bed at about £1,130. A three-bed at about £1,380. Four beds or more at just under £2,000. Rustington itself has few advertised rentals, because home ownership runs at four in five households. The rental market here exists at the edges of a market that is mostly owner-occupied and mostly not going anywhere.
Median household income in Rustington sits at around £52,000 a year. The median sale price is close to eight times that. No mainstream mortgage lender stretches to eight times income. This is a market for buyers arriving with capital from somewhere else. Sold-a-bigger-house money. Retirement lump sums. Inheritance. The market is not set up for a household of two on Sussex wages to walk in and start a family. What that same household can more realistically reach is a flat at £245,000, which needs a deposit that is still hard-won on a £52,000 salary but not impossible. The gap between what people earn in Rustington and what houses cost in Rustington is the single biggest fact about this market.
Houses in Rustington cost what an established coastal village charges to stay established. Priced to preserve the neighbours, not to recruit their replacements. Two and a half out of five on value, and that reads about right.