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The wealth gap between housing hot spots and the rest of the United Kingdom grows ever wider

The wealth gap is widening. If you want to sell your detached £200,000 four-bedroom family home in Sedgefield, Co Durham (Tony Blair’s former constituency) and invest in the opportunities and optimism offered by the capital, think again. Your money won’t stretch to more than an average-sized bedroom in one of London’s prime areas — and that’s without an ensuite.

Figures compiled by Savills estate agency, using data from the online property website Globrix, show that the gap between traditional property hot spots and the rest of the country is growing. The average price per square foot in England and Wales may be £220, but in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, it is £1,396 — 10 times that in Ipswich, Suffolk.

Despite signs of recovery in the housing market, this gap is predicted to widen further. “The higher-value areas are likely to attract the more affluent buyers and therefore see higher price growth in an environment where mortgage finance remains constricted,” says Lucian Cook, director of residential research at Savills.

Outside the capital, values drop dramatically, but there are “wealth corridors” and favoured locations such as Bath, Poole, in Dorset, Harrogate, in North Yorkshire, and Alnwick, in Northumberland, where prices average more than £220 per sq ft. By contrast, it is hard to get even £100 per sq ft in blighted locations such as Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, and in the borough of Blaenau Gwent, in the valleys of south Wales.