Moving house in Cambridge is not cheap. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, the average house price in the city was around £472,000 in March 2026, well above the average for the wider East of England. For many families, that price tag is putting them off moving altogether.
Instead, more homeowners across the city are choosing to stay put and build outwards or upwards. In streets across Chesterton, Cherry Hinton, Trumpington and Newnham, it has become a common sight to see skips on driveways, scaffolding going up and gardens dug out for new extensions. Rather than paying stamp duty and estate agent fees on a bigger house, families are investing that money into the home they already have.
A single storey rear extension, a loft conversion or a new garden room all need solid foundations to be built safely and to last. This is where concrete comes in. Even a modest extension usually needs a concrete footing dug and poured before any bricklaying can start. Get this stage wrong and the whole structure above it can be at risk, so builders tend to treat it as one of the most important parts of the job.
It is not only extensions driving the trend. With more people working from home at least part of the week, many households want a driveway to park a second car, a smart new patio for the garden, or space for a home office at the bottom of the garden. Older properties in areas such as Newnham and Chesterton were often built without off street parking, so converting a front garden into a driveway has become a popular way to avoid the daily hunt for a parking space. Every one of these projects usually starts the same way, with a solid concrete base.
For smaller jobs like these, homeowners and builders alike often need concrete quickly and in exactly the right amount. This is where local firms come in. Cardinalis Concrete, a supplier based in Longstanton just outside Cambridge, delivers ready mixed concrete to homes and building sites across the area. Because the company uses volumetric mixers, which measure out and mix concrete fresh at the point of delivery, homeowners only pay for what their project actually needs, rather than ordering a fixed load that might be too much or too little.
That flexibility matters for domestic projects in particular. A driveway might need a different amount of concrete to a garden room base, and a homeowner rarely wants a lorry blocking the street for longer than necessary. Suppliers offering this kind of service, such as Cardinalis Concrete, have become a popular choice for builders working on smaller residential jobs across Cambridge and the surrounding villages.
As house prices stay high and moving remains expensive, it seems likely that more Cambridge homeowners will keep choosing to improve rather than move. Behind almost every one of those projects, from a simple new driveway to a full extension, there is a concrete base holding it all together. Anyone planning a project like this can find out more about local supply options at the Cardinalis Concrete website.
