During a recent radio show appearance PrimeLocation.com was corrected on a small but significant piece of property history by the London Evening Standard’s no-nonsense planning correspondent, Mira Bar Hillel.

The mistake had been to claim that Margaret Thatcher (pictured above, before she became Prime Minister) and her 1979 Conservative government had sparked the home ownership revolution that rumbles on today.

Mira, shaking her head vigorously from across the studio, pointed out that it was an earlier Tory administration, not Thatcher’s. Instead, in 1957  Harold Macmillan abolished rent controls and it was this, after rents subsequently soared, that persuaded millions of us to embrace ownership.

Even though Mira was right to assert this, for many people Margaret Thatcher’s ‘right to buy’ council homes scheme (brought in soon after her 1979 victory) was a seminal moment in Britain’s property market, enabling some two million or more people to buy their local authority homes, often at a very substantial discount.

But as many of us queue to see the film Iron Lady starring Meryl Street (pictured above), how has the property market changed since her triumphant, ‘the lady’s not for turning’ speech?

Like today, the economy was in difficulties and Thatcher had to bring in harsh policies to correct the downturn. Nevertheless, in those days first time buyers required just £25,000 to get on the property ladder (compared to £155,000 or so today); a million pounds bought a huge 2,000 acre country estate; and mortgage rates were running at 17%, something we haven’t had to endure this time round.

According to agent Jackson-Stops & Staff, wealthy commuters could buy a good six bedroom family home in the stockbroker belt of Surrey with an acre of garden for £250,000 – today it would cost over £2 million.

And Dawn Carritt, who heads up JSS’s country house department, also remembers how “loans would not be considered for anything more than two and a half times a person’s salary” and mainly came from building societies and that only a few years before women would have needed to get their father’s or husband’s consent to get a mortgage in their own name.

Tax was also in its own bracket in the 1970s, as many rock stars famously grumbled about at the time – including Mick Jagger. Inheritance Tax (then known as Capital Transfer Tax) was 75% and income tax for high earners 83 per cent, though it was reduced by Thatcher in 1979 to 60 per cent. Basic rate tax was 33 per cent but fell to 30 per cent in the first Thatcher budget.

The properties that make Britain great are to be found all over the UK. Cue wisteria choked-cottages, sharp-shouldered rectories, ship-size Georgian mansions and teetering townhouses, all designed grandly and all probably once featured in Country Life magazine.

These architectural clichés are hard coded into our national psyche and by comparison Americans are mostly bereft of anything old, Australians have to do with identical modern neighbours and the French hate their drafty old chateaux and prefer new build bungalows.

But is that true – what homes do we British really have the property hots for? After trawling through the million or so properties listed on our site for sale and rent and looking at search patterns among our two and a half million users, all can be revealed.

A majority of us, our research shows, seek a detached property with a large garden in the heart of walking country and overlooking beautiful countryside. As Kirstie and Phil would say, such a tick list is not easy to fill.

Properties like the one pictured below are not even one to the dozen. So it’s no surprise that they are hugely in demand and are twice the national average house price (or £523,866 to be exact).

Britain's most desired home? This 18th/19th century stone farmhouse outside Avonbridge in Falkirk has outstanding views over the local countryside and comes with part ownership of a local nature reserve.

But the main truth our research has revealed is just how much we are nation of urban and suburban dwellers which pines for the countryside. It’s why programmes such as Kirstie Allsopp’s Homemade Home, which sells the satin-quilted bucolic dream, or Escape to the Country, are so popular.

Some 90% of us live in cities and more than half (57%) surveyed in the PrimeLocation.com Desirability Index said their dream house would be detached, in the countryside (33%), have good views (64%) and be near nice places to walk (44%).

During tough economic times you might expect everyone to feel the pain in the housing market as, broadly speaking, economic uncertainty drives down confidence and activity across the board.

But not so, our house price index show. The nation’s fiscal difficulties are rapidly splitting the UK housing market in half as house prices in the ‘general market’ edge downwards but the Prime, top end of the market continues to rise.

Last month Prime properties increased nationally on average by 0.5%, the seventh monthly rally in this market which has pushed the average prime property asking price to £472,340.

Prime property is the top 25% of any property market whether it’s Mayfair or Motherwell and our figures show that in villages, towns and cities across the UK the gap between the Prime and ‘general’ market has been widening since our index was launched four years ago. And it show no signs of stopping.

When the index was launched, the average prime property was on the market for £157,255 more than the average UK home whereas today that figure is now just over £250,000 or 115% more than an ‘average’ home.

It’s not just been Prime properties continuing to rise in value – the general housing market has been dropping away too. During September general house prices dropped by 0.2%, the second monthly drop in a row.

So what’s going on, you may ask. The straightforward explanation is that the recession has yet to significantly impact people who buy homes in the top 25% of the market and, to add fat to the fire, the supply of homes coming on to the market has slowed down, driving greater competition among Prime buyers for the properties that do come up for sale.

Venture outside London to find your ideal prime location to live in and no better guide exists than our research into the nation’s £1million home hotspots, published late last week.

It reveals that Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire has the highest proportion of £1 million homes for sale (at 47%) locally, out pacing the 13% of similarly-valued homes on the London market.

Million pound home hotspot: a mansion on one of Beaconsfield's leafier lanes.

Other millionaire property hotspots identified include Virginia Water in Surrey and Much Hadham and Radlett in Hertfordshire, where more than a third of all properties for sale had seven-figure asking prices.

On a regional level, Surrey contains the most ‘millionaire towns’, with ten of the 41 hotpots based there. Hertfordshire is represented six times, while Buckinghamshire is represented five times. Overall, some 3.5% of properties on the UK market are valued at more than £1m, our research shows, and some 41 towns across Britain have a higher percentage of their homes for sale over £1m than London.

But though this tally of house prices may strike many as fascinating but not surprising, remember that Britain’s million-pound home market was, not that long ago, tiny by comparison.

Reading Country Life magazine recently we spotted an article revealing how, in 2001, some one in every 559 homes in England and Wales had an asking price of £1m+ while five years later it had increased to one in every 223 homes. And to give you an indication of the enormous wealth Britain’s property market has helped create recently, a further five years down the line (today), that number is now one in every 29 properties.

So we wonder what percentage of homes will be worth £1m or more in a further five years time?  One indicator might be London, where one in every eight properties is on the market for £1m or more. And where London leads, sometimes the rest of the country follows.

It’s been clear for some now that house prices at the top of Britain’s property market have survived the economic down better than the general market.

And in particularly this is true for the nation’s grand country estates. The latest example is to be found in the wilds of Lincolnshire, a hall that’s risen in price handsomely even though it’s a long way from the sought-after streets of central London or the white hot countryside of Surrey.

Holywell Hall - for sale with its estate in Lincolnshire

The Holywell estate includes a large Grade II* Georgian manor house, lavish and large gardens revived and redesigned by Bunny Guiness plus cottages, a fishing temple and lake, orangery, outbuildings, arable farm (with farmhouse) and shoot. Also, the main hall’s West Wing can be used as a stand-alone home.

But as well as a long list of features, Holywell also has a long and extraordinary history. This includes 11^th century origins and mentions in the Domesday Book before it was bought by Lady Mary Barnardiston for her nephew Samuel Reynardson in 1728. It then stayed in the family until the 1950s and has only had three owners since.

The orangery, for sale as part of the Holywell Estate.

The first of those is undocumented, but in 1994 the estate – which had fallen into disrepair  – was bought for £4 million by Jean Shanks,  who made a substantial fortune setting up a large clinical pathology business based in the London that was later floated on the stock market.

While studying chemistry at Oxford she worked alongside Margaret Thatcher and, after setting up her business, married a Russian prince and was also known as Princess Yuri Galitzin. Using both names she gave away millions to philanthropic causes including medical research and music.

And the Hollywell Estate’s superb condition today is largely down to Shanks, who lavished a fair slice of her £17m personal fortune on the property and gardens.

This included rebuilding the entrance, adding lavish chandeliers to the hallway, decorating the five reception rooms, ten bedrooms and eight bathrooms and upgrading the 810-acre estate.

One of the five reception rooms within Holywell Hall.

It was then bought in 2003 by Robert and Sally Gillespie for £7 million, an appreciation in price of over £300,000 year. But the Gillespie’s have done even better and, if they can sell it for their asking price, will have made nearly a million a year on the property which is probably a relief for the couple, who have carried on the improvement work of Jean Shanks, including adding land to the estate.

Holywell Estate is now on for sale with Bidwells for £14.5 million.

If someone were to ask you what sort of home floats your boat, then these properties in Shoreham-on-Sea in Sussex might be the ideal answer.

Although some of the boats bobbing up and down border on the farcical (one has a Reliant Robin poking out of the roof) the market here has been appreciating fast. Boats that once went for thousand of pounds now sell for £150,000 or more – for a good reason.

While most floating homes come with either leasehold or permit-based moorings, the slippery slices of river bank in Shoreham are bought and sold freehold – which explains the prices.

For example at the moment there’s Gitana, which has been renovated to live on and is for sale at £160,000 but although she’s nothing more than a gilded tub, it’s the mud she sits on you are paying for.

But despite the occasional sale, many people have lived here for years. Fred Cole, 65, and his wife Polly arrived in 1980 and bought their plot for their sturdy barge, Lunasea, in 1986 for £ 1,600. But their vessel, which was used in the D-Day landings, fell to pieces in the water a few years ago.

But Fred Cole, who is a retired car mechanic, was able to just replace her with a giant German battleship, Fische.

This huge vessel, which has a half finished concert hall inside her complete with stage and piano, is now worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

“I bought Fische for £800, but the freehold of the riverbed is worth a lot more. [The market’s] gone out of all proportion really,” he says. ”It’s a unique situation because you can tow any home you like on to your land, which seems better than having to move house.

Prices on the river bank rival those of nearby residential homes that look on to the river. But people are not just buying mud. There’s a unique community lifestyle here including floating yoga schools and party boats as well as community pub nights and even opera concerts.

Lucas Heathcote, who lives on Verda, says: “Like any free market the prices have risen in accordance with what people are willing to pay. The freeholds alone are worth around £120,000 now. ”Houseboats are constantly depreciating, one day they will all fall apart and be worthless, but the riverbed is yours permanently.

All pictures copyright: Eddie Mitchell/Rex Features

Which towns in the UK are the most affluent? One indicator is the proportion of million pound homes locally – and we’ve compiled the top 100. See below for the full list – is your town on it?

Whenever Primelocation has been shopping in around Knightsbridge in recent years it’s been obvious that something big was cooking within the huge construction site on the junction where the Brompton Road, Sloane Street and Kensington Road converge, slowly replacing a drab office building.

Richly relaxed: The lounge of One Hyde Park's £140 million penthouse apartment

From its early days the name of designers Christian and Nick Candy were headlined as the stylists behind the project, which soon had a name, too – One Hyde Park – as well as the involvement of architect Richard Rogers, best known among other things as the designer of Channel 4’s striking HQ near the Houses of Parliament.

But what has really made this apartment development famous are the prices being demanded for its properties. As early as February 2008, when the site was still rubble and diggers, prices for the largest of the penthouse apartments were being reported as in excess of £100m and while the housing boom continued sales were healthy – Nick Candy claimed to have sold properties worth £767 million in the first phase and, after the lull that followed the near collapse of the world banking system, more last year pushing up the total to a billion.

High expectations: The front of One Hyde Park, from which residents have views of Hyde Park, Knightsbridge and Harrods,

So for the people who have already bought here, or those that may be considering it, what’s on offer? The 86 apartments within the site are best described as super prime and are within four blocks or ‘pavilions’ all with spectacular views over Hyde Park, Sloane Street, Harrods and the London skyline.

The complex, which is being operated by hotel chain Mandarin International, includes a private cinema, 21m swimming pool, saunas, steam rooms, squash court, gym – and at the less prosaic end of the luxury market, a golf simulator, wine cellars, library, 60 on-site staff and their own Rolex shop.

Million pound menu: the dining room

Such luxurious surroundings mean even the smallest, one-bedroom apartment starts at £6.5 million – as much as a five-bedroom detached house a couple of miles away in the richer suburbs of the capital – and rapidly rise to £140 million for the most expensive penthouse apartment, although this hasn’t stopped some of the world’s richest people buying, including the prime minister of Qatar.

Too many for sale? How can there be so many homes for sale but no buyers?

After this blog last month started a healthy debate both here and on Twitter, let’s take it to the next level. House price analysts say a glut of homes on sale and falling numbers of buyers are causing small price drops now, with perhaps more to come.

But if people buy and sell at the same time, as most surely do, why are demand and supply out of line?

The mismatch
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors says in mid-2007, before the credit crunch, estate agents typically sold 45% of their stock every three months. That fell to 15% in mid-2008 before rising to 30% early this year.

But now, with more homes on sale, the sale-to-stock ratio is back down to 24%.

Exploding a myth
This increased supply suggests that in reality selling and buying do not necessarily happen simultaneously. There is a small but important time gap.

Research by Santander says 1.1m homes in Brtain were put on the market in the year to  August but did not sell, often because would-be buyers could not get a mortgage.

Some estate agents say that as a result, more sellers now wait to find a purchaser before registering as buyers themselves to avoid spending time and energy finding a dream home only to lose it because they cannot sell their old property.

“Supply and demand balance over time but there’s always a lag, never an exact balance. A year ago there were more buyers but fewer homes, so prices rose. Now it’s the reverse” says Lucian Cook, research guru at estate agent Savills.

In addition the new-build sector, which slumped in 2008 and 2009, is recovering and adds 120,000 new properties on sale per year without creating new buyers.

Dying, divorcing but not buying
A further factor is probate sales; elderly owners die and their properties are sold by relatives who already own homes – so they inherit the proceeds and do not buy. Land Registry figures show that in 2007 some 7% of deals were probate sales. But now, with home sales halved but death rates static, they account for 15% of the market.

There are also 120,000 divorces a year. Analysis by Savills shows that in a third of cases the couple sell their home and, at first, each person rents before buying later.

In the past these ‘sell-but-not-buy’ figures have been balanced or outweighed by first time buyers, who purchase with nothing to sell. But tougher mortgage conditions and average deposits rising to £35,000 mean FTB numbers are 50% of the level in 2007.

Let’s see if that starts a debate.

Homeowners in the London Borough of Greenwich woke up this morning to the happy news their addresses are now officially ‘royal’.

It has been announced that the Greenwhich  to become a Royal Borough as part  the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations which are due to start later this year. The move celebrates the borough’s links to monarchy, which include the Royal Observatory and its Greenwich Meantime; Royal Arsenal; and Royal Naval College – plus both Elizabeth I and Henry VIII were both born within its borders.

Given the borough’s blue-blooded history, which goes back to the Middle Ages, it’s a surprise royal recognition has been so long coming. But during the ‘interregnum’, as Britain’s brief and bloody republican experiment is known, Cromwell seized crown lands in Greenwich to make way for his family manor house. Memories are long within the royal household, it would seem.

An aerial view of Greenwich including the Thames, former Royal Naval Hospital and Park

Today’s excitement at the name change is focused on the new impetus Greenwich’s recently-stalled gentrification may receive. Although awash with upmarket restaurants and boutiques these days, Greenwich’s property market has endured price slides recently as City bonuses have dried up; a situation not helped by the glut of new homes for sale to the east of the Cutty Sark dock area.

But agents in the borough are hoping that royal endorsement will help propel the area up the popularity stakes again, particularly as it is only the fourth borough to be honoured this way, alongside the Royal Boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Kingston upon Thames, and Windsor and Maidenhead.

“Greenwich has always taken tremendous pride in the borough’s long history of royal connections with Greenwich, Woolwich and Eltham dating back almost 600 years and which continue so strongly right up to the present day,” says Greenwich council leader Chris Roberts.