London, April 23:

There is no town in Britain where average property prices are below GBP100,000, according to research published today by Halifax.

Former pit villages in Wales, once-depressed industrial towns in Scotland and 1960s-builtnew towns in Northern Ireland are property hotspots, with some seeing gains of 55 per cent in the past year.

In December 2006 Lochgelly in Fife was the last town in the countryto have average prices below GBP100,000. But in March the town, which was devastated by pit closures in the 1980s, saw average prices climb to GBP105,000, fuelled by a regeneration programme and spillover from buyers priced out of the Edinburgh market. Two decades ago Lochgelly appeared to be irretrievably scarred by the miners’ strike and pit closures.

“The last pit shut down in 1990. It was hard to find a family in the town without some link to mining and the job losses,” says local councillor James Connelly.

Today developers are putting up executive homes facing on to a new golf course with price tags ranging from GBP183,000 to GBP435,000.

Connelly welcomes an influx of middle class buyers into the town, many of them skilled workers commuting from Edinburgh.

But the former provost of Lochgelly, Alexander Sharp, says that local residents in the town - still the cheapest place to buy property in the UK - face growing affordability problems.

“The last local community forum was dominated by the issue of affordable rented accommodation.

“It has become very difficult for local people to buy. Most people are on wages of GBP10,000 to GBP20,000 and can’t afford these prices.” Five years ago there were more than 200 towns across the UK where prices were on average below GBP100,000, says Halifax, but the once most-depressed towns now have the fastest growing prices.

Northern Ireland is experiencing an extraordinary price boom, reflecting growing confidence that decades of paramilitary violence are over. Average prices in Craigavon, a new town in County Armagh, are up from GBP119,000 in the first quarter of 2006 to GBP184,000 in the first quarter of 2007, a gain of 55 per cent.

A recovering economy, high levels of immigration and investors fromthe Republic have made Northern Ireland the fourth most expensive region to buy property in the UK, behind London, the south-east and the south-west.

The average price in Northern Ireland broke through the GBP200,000 barrier for the first time this year, and it has seen prices increase by 76 per cent since the first quarter of 2005, outstripping the UK average gain of 18 per cent.

Greater London tops the table for the highest average prices, whichare likely to push through the GBP300,000 barrier in the next quarter. Prices in the capital surged during February and March, fuelled by GBP19bn in City bonus payments.

Halifax said it has led to the re-emergence of a stark north-south divide. In Yorkshire and Humberside prices rose by 0.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2007 and are less than half the average in the capital.

The Bank of England base rate is expected to rise by a minimum of 0.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent on May 10, and some City pundits are forecasting rates rising as high as 6 per cent.

But Halifax says it remains confident that a price crash is not in the offing.

Martin Ellis, its chief economist, said: “We expect the higher level of interest rates, negative real earnings growth and above-inflation council tax bill increases to lead to slower house price growth over the coming months. Sound economic fundamentals and an ongoing shortage of housing supply will, however, continue to support house prices.”