Local Market and Open Market explained

The Local Market is the bulk of the island's housing. To live in it you need a Permit or Certificate under the Population Management Law, usually tied to a job or to family or residency history.

The Open Market is a separate register of properties. Anyone can live and work in Guernsey indefinitely if they own or lease a dwelling on that register. No job required, no employer sponsorship, no skills shortage test.

That is the whole trade. The Open Market buys you freedom, and it costs a great deal more.

Local Market: 816 homes sold in 2025 at an average of £595,820. In the first quarter of 2026 the mix-adjusted average was £604,094, up 4.1% on the same quarter a year earlier and 18.5% higher than five years previously.

Open Market: 72 homes sold in 2025, up from 68 in 2024, at an average of £1,723,922. In the first quarter of 2026 there were 28 sales at an average of £1.49m, compared with 16 sales in the same quarter of 2025.

Note the volumes. The entire Open Market is somewhere around 70 to 100 transactions a year. It is a small, quiet market where the same handful of agents and advocates handle most of it.

The mix-adjusted average Local Market rent was £2,170 per calendar month in the first quarter of 2026. That is 4.9% higher than a year earlier and 44.9% higher than the £1,498 recorded in the first quarter of 2021.

Read that five year figure again, because it is the number that tends to reset people's expectations. Rental growth here has consistently outpaced retail price inflation.

This part matters more than people expect. Open Market Certificate holders can accommodate immediate family, and Part A Certificate holders can also house extended family. Long Term Employment Permit holders can live in either market and accommodate immediate family. Short Term Employment Permit holders can only live in lodgings and cannot accommodate anyone.

So before you look at a single property, work out which permit you will hold and who is coming with you. The permits page covers this in more detail.

The Open Market is genuinely a good route for people who can afford it, and the properties at the top end are lovely. But at an average approaching £1.5m to £1.7m, it is not a solution to a housing problem, it is a different life decision.

For everyone else, the practical reality is a competitive Local Market with rents that have risen faster than wages for five years. Budget on current figures rather than what you remember hearing about the island.