Black Country house prices rose by up to £11,000 over the last year

Across the UK property prices have risen by 4.7 per cent to an average of £240,860, but this figures is hugely unbalanced by the price of properties in London and the South East.

In the West Midlands, on the border of the north/south property divide, the average is £186,351 and has risen 5.2 per cent in the last year.

The latest figures from HM Land Registry show the biggest winners in October were homeowners in Sandwell, Walsall and Cannock Chase, with the largest price rises.

In Sandwell in October the average price of a house was £142,567, up 8.4 per cent or £11,000 on October last year.

In Walsall prices were up 7.4 per cent to £158,250 while in Cannock Chase house prices were up 7.1 per cent to £161,229. In both cases that amounts to a rise of around £11,000.

In Stafford, however, prices rose just 3.3 per cent to £192,024 – a rise of around £6,000.

Wolverhampton sat on the national average, with prices up 4.7 per cent to an average of £141,219, up around £6,000. In Dudley prices were up around £7,500 on average to £164,004, a rise of 4.8 per cent.

Across Staffordshire prices were up just 3.3 per cent to £183,802, which was still a rise of £8,000 over prices a year ago.

But the most expensive homes in the area are still in South Staffordshire, where prices rose by 3.9 per cent, or around £8,000 to an average of £218,180 in October.

The figures from the Land Registry show that in October 201 the most expensive area to live in was the London borough of Kensington & Chelsea, where the cost of an average house was £1.2 million.

In contrast, the cheapest area to purchase a property was Burnley in Lancashire, where an average house cost £76,000.

The statistics also show a first-time buyer in Britain faces paying 4.2 per cent more for a home than they did a year ago, with average prices in this sector at £188,173 in October.

Commenting on the figures, Richard Snook, a senior economist at PwC, said a stamp duty cut for first-time buyers announced in the recent Budget "is likely to provide a small boost to the market in 2018 but today's data suggest that uncertainty linked to Brexit may be leading to a wider market slowdown".

Howard Archer, chief economic adviser at EY ITEM Club, said: "Housing market activity is currently muted and faltering."

But Mark Harris, chief executive of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, said: "Despite the uncertainty created by the Brexit negotiations, many people have got on with buying and selling property regardless.

"Borrowers have also been able to benefit from some of the cheapest fixed-rate mortgages ever seen, and as we move into 2018, we expect to see more of the same."

Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the figures show house prices were falling on a monthly basis even before the Bank of England base rate was increased to 0.5% in November, pushing up costs for some mortgage borrowers.

He said: "The impact on prices from the recent increase in mortgage rates won't emerge in the official data for some time, but we know from several surveys that market conditions have worsened recently."