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The house price recovery remains a London and South East phenomenon, with house prices almost everywhere else still well below levels recorded in 2008.

House prices remain at least 5% below peak levels in more than half the country and there are few signs of this changing, according to analysis by property services group Countrywide.

And in 20% of the country, prices are at least 10% below 2008 levels.

Land Registry data showed that only 71 out of 326 local authority districts in England have surpassed their 2000 peak, roughly one in five.

Once inflation is taken into account, which totalled 14% in the last five years, prices only rose in 11 local authorities in real terms, all in London.

The North-South house price divide has continued to widen.

In the 74 local authorities where prices are at least 10% below 2008 levels, prices grew just 0.1% in November.

That compares to 1.2% growth in the 17 local authorities where house prices are 10% or more above their previous peak, equivalent to a 14% increase over the year.

Outside London and the South East, house price growth has been strongest in more affluent areas. Yet prices have exceeded 2008 levels in only Richmondshire, Warwick, Cheshire West, the Isles of Scilly and Cheltenham.

Even in more affluent districts such as York, Bristol and Gloucester, house prices remain below 2008 levels.

House prices across much of the country remain more affordable than in 2008, at an average 95% of peak levels.

At current rates it will take more than five years for prices to return to 2008 levels in the hardest hit local authorities of urban northern England.

Average London house prices are 9.3% above 2008 levels, rising to 40% in Westminster, some £200,000 higher. Rapidly gentrifying Hackney has seen the largest increases outside central London, with average house prices £67,000 higher, or 24% above their 2008 peak.

Affordable pockets remain, with prices still below 2008 levels in the three eastern Boroughs of Newham, Barking & Dagenham, and Havering.

Countrywide group chief executive Grenville Turner said: “While house price rises in London have attracted considerable attention, in many places outside the capital little has changed since 2010, and house prices remain well below their 2008 peak.

"To talk of a house price bubble would be to ignore the four-fifths of local authorities where prices remain below 2008 levels and in some cases are still falling.

"There are only five local authorities across the whole of the North East, Yorkshire & the Humber, North West, East Midlands, West Midlands and South West where house prices have surpassed 2008 levels.

“The gap between the South East of England and the rest of the country continues to widen. Increases in house price across London are running at around seven times those outside the capital.”

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