Property hotspots are moving northwards, data from the Halifax shows, with Hartlepool in Cleveland seeing the largest rise in house prices.

The year on year rise for the first quarter for Hartlepool is 59% with the average price of a home in the area now £109,068, up from £68,669 last year.

The Halifax top ten property hotspots is dominated by northern towns, the South having completely dropped out of the league table:

• 1 Hartlepool, Cleveland: 59%
• 2 Darlington, Co Durham: 58%
• 3 Swansea, South Wales: 55%
• 4 Blackburn, Lancashire: 51%
• 5 Newark, Nottinghamshire: 48%
• 6 Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland: 44%
• 7 Pontefract, W Yorkshire: 43%
• 8 Rotherham, S Yorkshire: 41%
• 9 Chesterfield, Derbyshire: 40%
• 10 South Shields, Tyne and Wear: 40%

Meanwhile the South saw a significant slowdown in house price inflation with London slipping from 19% to 9%, and the South East sinking from 26% to 7%.

The average price of a house in London is now just over twice that of its equivalent in the North.

East Anglia, the South West, and East and West Midlands also saw falls in the rate of house price growth.

The average house price in the top 10 performing towns, which outside the north-east comprised Swansea, Blackburn, Newark, Pontefract, Rotherham and Chesterfield, was still below the UK average of £147,785.

The hot spot movement has caused Yorkshire and the Humber to become the last English regions to push the average price of a property over the £100,000 barrier, with homes now costing an average of £106,421.

But Scotland and Northern Ireland have yet to reach this threshold with average prices still at £85,212 and £93,692 respectively.

However, the house price rises in the north are expected to slow down. Halifax chief economist, Martin Ellis said, "We expect the gap between the North and South to narrow further during the remainder of 2004, although house price inflation in many areas outside the South is likely to slow."