Stroll along Worthing seafront and you may sense that something is amiss. It's not the pier, a perfect example of Art Deco architecture. Or the vista, which stretches along the Sussex coast encompassing Brighton and Eastbourne. It's the buildings - specifically, the balconies.

Every other balcony is glazed in. Be it on a buxom Victorian terrace or a sad 1960s block, barely a balcony remains open to the elements. It's as if the residents want to see the sea but not feel it or even, through double-glazed panes, hear it. Like fish in a tank, they peer out at the world around them.

“Worthing does still have the stigma of being something of a retirement village,” sighs Paul Gates, a partner at the local Halifax Estate Agents. “We do have a very large over-sixties population but it's changing after nearly a decade of overspill from Brighton.” Worthing is the censorious and tutting great aunt to badly behaved Brighton - ten miles down the road but a world away. Opticians, dentists and mattress specialists dominate Worthing's High Street. Brighton has buggies, Worthing has wheelchairs.

“You can't really compare the two,” says Gates. “Worthing is more Eastbourne than Brighton.” You can, however, get a big family house in Worthing for the price of a small flat in Brighton. Those priced out of London-on-Sea live in Worthing but work and socialise in Brighton. They tend to buy in East Worthing because it's closer to Brighton (about a 20-minute drive). You get much more home for your money here.

Properties rarely sell for more than £1 million in Worthing, or even half that. In 2007 there were only 35 properties sold for more than £500,000, according to Savills Research. Ten times as many were sold in Brighton. “We're just a middle-market, middle-class town,” says Gates. “The most expensive area is High Salvington, where a detached house with five bedrooms could fetch anything from £435,000 to £750,000. Charmandean is similar.” At the other end of the market there is a glut of granny flats. You can get a one-bedroom retirement flat five minutes from the town centre for £65,000.

A dull but serviceable former council house on Meadow Road with three bedrooms, conservatory, dining room, front and back gardens and a parking space is for sale at £200,000. If you want a sea view, snap up a two-bedroom flat in the town centre for £225,000. The balcony is, needless to say, glassed in. Families flush from the sale of a Brighton pad tend to go for Navarino Road, Windsor Road and Alexandra Road.

“Buyers from Brighton have pushed prices up but overall they've dropped about 10 per cent in the past year,” says Gates. “The top end of the market has been hardest hit, especially new developments such as the Warnes building. Penthouse flats there were £635,000 last year but would now be lucky to make £550,000.”

Brighton is the first city to create a lottery for school places. Some say it's fairer because it stops richer parents effectively buying up places. Others disagree. Voting with their feet, many have bought in the Broadwater area of Worthing, the catchment area for Downsbrook Middle School and Davison Church of England High School for Girls.

One of the best schools, Thomas A Becket Middle School, is in one of the nicest areas: Tarring. Brighton has nothing to beat this unexpected gem. A tiny knot of quaint streets arranged around a 14th-century church, Tarring teems with charm: here a rose-fronted cottage, there a half-timbered overhang. It's the perfect antidote to the depressing postwar bungalows and Tudorbethan plague that afflicts most of the rest of Worthing.

Ambrose Place is the town centre's only notable niche. Apart, that is, from the pier, and you can't live on that. Sandwiched between two venerable churches, it's a beautiful balconied row of white Regency houses. Bells aside, it's silent - you can see why Harold Pinter came here to write The Homecoming. Unusually, the gardens are across the road from the properties. So prized are these well-tended plots that they open as part of the National Gardens Scheme. No wonder that residents refer to themselves as Ambrosians.

The roads of Worthing are still busy with Rovers driven at a stately pace. There isn't much new being built. Novelty is left to Brighton. Worthing is happy as it is, enclosed in its balcony overlooking the sea.

Fast facts

Mid-terrace 1950s houses in Broadwater, Worthing, with three bedrooms and parking, typically cost £220,000.

Handsome Victorian terraced houses with three bedrooms on city-centre streets such as Graham Road and Gratwicke Road cost from £210,000.

A six-bedroom family home on Warren Street with detached garage, two gardens and a conservatory, is £650,000.

Oscar Wilde found Worthing such a “charming town” that he spent the summer and autumn of 1894 there writing The Importance of Being Earnest.

Halifax Estate Agents, Worthing: 01903 214567.

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