House prices in northern hotspots up 50 per cent in a year

The north of England is in the grip of a property boom that has seen prices rocket by about 50 per cent in some towns over the past year, Halifax bank said yesterday.

In the past 12 months, prices have jumped a third across the North, Yorkshire and the North-west, the UK's largest mortgage lender said.

The top property hotspot was the Cheshire town of Macclesfield, where the price of the average home leapt 51.2 per cent, from £135,410 to £204,744 - a gain of £189 a day.

This outstripped the national average of 22 per cent growth and was more than three times that of London, where prices rose by 11.5 per cent. The capital has slipped to the bottom of the regional league table.

Mark Hemingway of the Halifax said: "With the exception of Macclesfield, these are not fashionable areas, which indicates people have been priced out of cities like Hull, Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield. They have gone to the next town along and it is almost a case of bargain hunting driven by high prices. It is a traditional ripple effect."

In some cases, the boom has taken hold in some of Britain's most deprived former industrial towns. The top 10 also include the former mining towns of Pontefract and Barnsley, in Yorkshire, and the fishing port of Grimsby. "These have now effectively become new commuter towns and that is down to better road links and people's willingness to work in one place and live 30 miles away," Mr Hemingway said.

Milan Khatri, chief economist at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, said northern regions had not been as affected as the south by the stock market crash and were probably benefiting from increased public spending. "There is no doubt speculative investors have moved north but there are also fundamental economic reasons for these rises," he said.

In Macclesfield, known as an affluent town, there was little surprise at the surge. "It's close to Manchester, near the airport and it is good for the environment and quality of life," Andy Turzynski, Macclesfield council's economic development officer, said.

He said high levels of disposable income - it came fifth in the country in a recent survey - and a tough green-belt policy combined to push up prices. "The downside is a lack of affordable housing, so people starting out can't get on to the housing market and will have to move elsewhere," he added.

In Wigan, the authorities are keen to dispel the images of grimy cobbled streets. "We have a range of properties from terraced houses up to £1m homes," Kealey Mulligan, investment manager for the chamber of commerce, said. "It's great from a lifestyle point of view as you're an hour from the Lake District and you get a four-bedroom house plus land for the price of a one-bed flat in parts of Manchester."

The boom contrasted with the south, where some towns - Swindon, Stevenage and Poole - experienced zero price rises over the past year. But the average price in London, at £218,404, is still more than double the average price tag of £90,807 in the North.