Most property hotspots in UK are in London

Nine out of 10 property hotspots in the UK are in London with Sutton named in the latest index that monitors the number of properties sold in comparison to those on sale.

The south west London borough has seen a 67% demand for property with the previous top spot of Bexley pushed down to sixth position with 62%, according to the index from online estate agent eMoov.

The two London Hotspots are joined in the top 10 by a number of other outer London boroughs and commuter friendly towns, with quick and improving transport links into the heart of the capital.

They are Cambridge at 66%, Watford at 64%, Bristol and Reading both at 63%, Guildford at 59%, Aylesbury at 57%, Havering at 57% and Hillingdon at 56%.

Some parts of London have seen demand drop severely, for example Wandsworth at 32% has seen a fall of 11% since December 2014 and has dropped out of the top 50 hotspots.

With a property demand of just 12%, Nine Elms is the coldest spot in the UK. The firm says this is a surprise as the area is due to benefit from the planned extension of the Northern Line.

But it seems that those already selling their property in Nine Elms, may have jumped the gun and increased the price in anticipation. The resulting inflation in house prices looks to be a factor influencing the low demand in the area at present, it is also contributing towards the decline in property demand for Wandsworth as a whole.

Although outer London and the surrounding commuter areas have continued to enjoy a strong demand for property, it is in fact the North West that has seen the most marked improvement. The hotspots that have enjoyed the biggest turn around in demand since December are mostly located in the North West.

Sefton has seen the greatest improvement in demand, up 80% since December, followed by Huddersfield up 56%, Trafford up 24%, Bradford up 23%, Stoke-on-Trent and Bolton both up 21% and Warrington up 19%.

Half of the top 10 coldest spots in the UK are in the north east. North Tyneside with a current demand percentage of 13%, is the second coldest spot across the UK and has seen the biggest decrease in demand for property since December, falling by 43%.

It is closely followed by County Durham, where demand declined over the course of 2014 and has continued to do so, dropping by a further 37% on December’s hotspots index.

‘It’s almost a tale of two halves in the North alone, let alone the North and South. The North West seems to be flourishing as demand for housing increases almost across the board. It is however a very different picture in the North East, as it accounts for a number of the coldest spots in the March Hotspots Index,’ said Russell Quirk, the firm’s chief executive officer.

‘As we predicted last summer, commuter towns around the capital seem to be in particularly strong form. I think it will be a long, long time before we see prices in central London become affordable enough to reverse this trend, if at all. Nine Elms is probably the shock pick of the bunch. It just goes to show, people are trying to anticipate what the market will do and get a jump on it, rather than pricing their property to reflect the market at the time,’ he added.