The UK is one of the top ten most densely populated countries in Europe. According to available data, it has 30 million dwellings housing its nearly 70 million population, and if the British government has its way, millions more homes will be built. However, amongst the existing millions and those in the pipeline, one type of property is hardly ever constructed, and that is traditional, single-storey detached bungalows.
Due to advancements in healthcare, the UK, like many other countries, is seeing its population living longer, which, in turn, is putting strain on the country’s old-age care system. Sadly, throughout the United Kingdom, state-funded old age care is becoming increasingly difficult to access, some would say impossible, and the alternative of going private, which currently averages £5,064 per month for residential care and £6,112 per month for nursing care, is clearly beyond most people’s reach.
I am a child of the ’60s, and in the ’70s, 80s and even the 90s, there was an obvious, sensible path for those of more advanced years, which was to move into a bungalow as they were single-storied, which overcame the “The mind is willing, but the body isn’t” problem and provided high-quality, independent living.
In the 1970s and 80s, bungalows were relatively easy to buy. Although precise numbers are difficult to come by, social commentary from that time indicates that bungalows made up approximately 12-15% of new builds. However, it is important to note that those classified as bungalows were a mixture of detached, semi-detached and terraced properties.
Why the Need to Know?
A little over five years ago, my wife and I decided to have a traditional detached single-storey bungalow built for us in a village in Lancashire, with a view to us moving to it in our older years. However, a certain virus came to town in 2020, and with scant information to hand, we decided that prevention rather than cure was our best option and moved into it from our much larger house, which was situated in a more urban area.
Recently, my wife and I decided a change was in order, and we invited a respected estate agency firm to come over to talk about placing our bungalow on the market. As is my way, I decided to do some prior research to help establish a value, and as part of this, I wanted to ascertain whether a new-build property like ours was a rarity.
The most obvious place to start my investigation was the Internet, and after many hours of searching, I knew little more than when I had started. Try as I might, finding information on the number of bungalows in the UK, particularly detached and unmolested (still single-storey), was proving extremely difficult.
The only way I could work towards any figures was to sit down with a cup of tea and devote half a day to searching through everything I could find online, collating it, and making some assumptions.
The Research
Estimating the percentage of UK properties that are traditional, still single-storey detached bungalows required me to piece together many housing data sets and read opinions and commentaries, as there was no single, up-to-date source.
My mission to establish a number started well by uncovering that, as of 2025, the UK currently has around 30 million dwellings. With that information under my belt, I decided to delve into the 2021 UK Census, which would provide me with a solid baseline from which to work.
The Census revealed that 77.9% of households (19.3 million) lived in houses or bungalows, with the rest in flats or temporary structures.
Bungalows are listed as a subset within this, separate from multi-storey houses. Although specific data on the number of bungalows is sparse, the 2021 Council Tax stock from the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) does provide some insight.
It showed that there were 2.43 million bungalows in England and Wales combined (out of 26 million total properties at that time), equating to roughly 9.3% of the housing stock. Assuming Scotland and Northern Ireland follow similar patterns—supported by their rural demographics and older housing stock—the UK-wide bungalow count (of all forms) might be around 2.7 million of the estimated 30 million-ish total dwellings.
However, my goal was to establish the number of authentic, single-storey detached properties in the UK. Unfortunately, this proved difficult as bungalows can be detached, semi-detached, or terraced.
More confusing is that many of the traditional bungalows now have the addition of stairs and loft conversions, which means they no longer fit the conventional definition of a bungalow.
Further investigation of housing surveys suggested detached properties comprise 22-25% of all UK dwellings. However, this data includes both bungalows AND houses.
Bungalows are often detached—historically, the term derives from single-storey detached homes in Bengal—but as mentioned, the data does not differentiate between detached, semi-detached and terraced variants.
Try as I might, I couldn’t find any definitive data on the splits, but estate agent insights and older studies (e.g., pre-2000 construction trends) do suggest that 60% of bungalows are detached. Land economics favoured single-storey sprawl in the 20th century before multi-storey builds dominated.
In addition, VOA data showed that 60% were built before 1983, so trimming the range to traditional detached bungalows (including chalets and dormers) gives me a rough figure of 3.3-4.5%.
Conclusion
Given the research, it is clear that newer-built, detached, traditional, single-story bungalows are amongst the rarest property types in the UK. I estimate that, at best, 2.5% of UK properties are still traditional, single-storey detached bungalows. Without a fresh, granular survey in the UK, this is only a plausible but not definitive assumption.