Cheltenham tops property price rise list

ITS horse racing spectacle and elegant Regency style make Cheltenham a frontrunner in the housing stakes.

Now the town has been named as Britain’s biggest property price ‘winner’ over the past year.

Nestled on the edge of the Cotswolds with a population of 120,000, Cheltenham saw the highest percentage rise in house prices of any town or city in 2017, a study shows.

Those eager to live near the racecourse will face house prices that increased at nearly five times the UK average. Prices in the Gloucestershire town, which is only 18 square miles, rose by an average of £36,033 to £313,150 – a 13 per cent jump compared with 2.7 per cent nationally.

Bournemouth saw the second biggest rise, with an increase of 11.7 per cent, while Brighton completed the top three with an 11.4 per cent jump.

Fifteen of the top 20 performers over the past year are in London and southern England, the study by Halifax found.

Huddersfield (9.3 per cent), Nottingham (8.9 per cent) and Lincoln (8.4 per cent) along with Stockport (8.2 per cent) and Swansea (7.7 per cent) were the top performers outside London and the South.

Halifax managing director Russell Galley said: ‘A number of towns and cities have recorded significant rises in house prices over the past year, with all of the top 20 performers recording growth of at least double the national average.

‘Unlike last year, the top performers are not exclusive to London and the South East, with the top spot now belonging to Cheltenham in the South West, and towns in East Anglia, East Midlands, North West, Wales and Yorkshire and the Humber also making the list.’

At the other end of the spectrum, 13 towns recorded declines in prices in 2017, with the largest fall in Perth in Scotland, at £10,126, or 5.3 per cent, down to £180,687.

Stoke on Trent, down 4 per cent, and Paisley in Scotland, which saw a fall of 3.6 per cent, completed the bottom three. The majority of price falls were in Scotland and Yorkshire.