West Midlands towns' homes in sales top five

Three towns in the West Midlands were today named in the top five for house sales in the country.

Bilston was declared the top home sales hotspot, with a 30.7 per cent increase in sales last year.

But while the number of homes being sold soared, the report for Lloyds TSB found house prices in the town actually fell by 3.2 per cent.

The report put Rugeley in Staffordshire as second in its survey, with a 30.6 per cent increase in the number of homes sold. Wednesbury was in fifth place with a 19.4 per cent rise.

The three towns bucked a national trend that showed the number of areas recording an annual rise in home sales had fallen to its lowest level since 2008, with just 40 per cent or 202 out of 500 towns tracked in England and Wales.

Cheap housing in Bilston is believed to have contributed to the rise in the number of sales.

It, Rugeley and Wednesbury have also benefited from workers coming to the region for developments springing up such as Amazon in Staffordshire and the forthcoming arrival of JLR at the i54 site in Wolverhampton.