Manchester is famous for its football teams, music scene and innovative urban redevelopment schemes but it now has something else to be proud of.

Because its top-end property market,  helped by the city’s up-and-coming ‘villages’ such as Worsley and Didsbury and suburban wealth hotspots  including Alderley Edge, Hale, Hale Barnes, Wilmslow and Altrincham, is on a roll.

Prime homes in Manchester are rising in price faster than their counterparts in London, increasing by 11 per cent over the past year compared to 4.75 per cent in the capital, according to the latest Prime Index.

Also, the monthly index, which tracks the top quarter of the property market by value, reveals that the average prime property asking price in Manchester is now £319,111, almost double the asking price for an average home in the city (£161,276).

And at 11% Manchester’s prime market has outpaced the city’s broader property market to a large degree, as prices in Manchester’s overall general market have risen by just 0.9% over the past year to £161,276.

Average asking prices for Manchester’s prime platinum properties (the top 10% of the market) have been rising ever faster by 14.28% over the past year, while London’s prime platinum properties have risen by just 3.22%.

But this good news at the top means the gap between up-market homes in Manchester and their ‘general market’ counterparts has opened up significantly (see table above), highlighting a national as well as a Manchester trend of average house prices slipping way behind Prime ones as the recession bites at the bottom and middle of the property market, but bypasses the top.

The house at 498 Finchley Road in North London may look like just another suburban mini mansion but its striking facade and neo-Georgian stonework (pictured below)  hide a simple but unusual fact.

It is the first time this property has come on to the market for nearly half century and, despite the intervening decades, it’s the same agent selling the house today as did in 1966.

Leaf through the yellowed pages of the original brochure (pictured, bottom) and it feels like a different world rather than a different decade. Nothing is swinging or fab in the formal sales brochure (unlike the current one’s more relaxed approach) although the 1966 property market was fairly ‘radical’ compared to today’s.

That year’s average house price was £3,465 and values were rising by 6% a year. Today it’s £219,533 rising by just 0.9%.

But what’s changed most dramatically is the way homes are sold. We all take it for granted that property is bought on the open market by ‘private treaty’ using estate agents, but back then most were sold at auctions instead, and most ‘estate agents’ were in fact auctioneers.

“In 1966 it might have been advertised in a magazine but more likely it was marketed by hand written letters being sent out to potential buyers prior to an auction at a local pub – Jack Straw’s Castle in Hampstead – which in fact is now a block of flats,” says Phillip Green of local estate agent Goldschmidt & Howland.

But what has changed most is the Finchley Road, which has been transformed from a quiet thoroughfare into a busy main road clogged up these days by traffic from central London travelling to the bottom of the M1.

“In those days you were lucky if a family had one car but now it’s normal for them to have two or three around here,” says Phillip Green.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the property’s interior, which has been preserved in aspic since Goldschmidt & Howland last photographed it – most noticeably the beehive yellow parquet flooring, original cornicing and light fittings.

For more information phone Goldschmidt & Howland on 020 8209 9300.

Property descriptions sometimes stretch reality to the limit to sell a home but the apartments launched recently in central London need only mention the bare facts to get jaws dropping.

Your neighbour is called Elizabeth, but she’s the Queen and likes to fly the flag when she’s in. If you tire of being cooped up at the weekends then there’s some greenery nearby, called Hyde Park. And the nearest tube station for the commute to work? Well that’s Victoria.

And should you get bored and fancy some bright lights then Trafalgar Square and London’s theatre land are a short stroll up The Mall. And finally security? Luckily your neighbour changes the guard every day at 11am.

So are there any downsides to this ultimate address? Price is one of them, although given the location it’s a steal for the international millionaires who might consider buying one of these apartments overlooking Buckingham Palace Road. And gardens are thin on the ground – although there is a central courtyard with some shrubbery and St James’s Park is two minutes away on foot.

These compare well with the £5m being asked for a one-bedroom apartment at One Hyde Park, the Candy Brothers’ apartment complex in Knightsbridge and, although Palace View properties offer a less exciting view of the Queen’s indoor swimming pool and gym over the road, you are in one of the most sought after locations in London.

The building, which used to be 21 offices, was refurbished to designs by upmarket architect Eades Hotwani, who recently designed the boutique Ferrari showroom within the nearby Berkeley Hotel on Wilton Street.

There is also outstanding rental potential here. During the Royal Wedding this year two-bedroom apartments were being offered at between £10,000 and £15,000 for the wedding week although two bedroom apartments around here often go for £4,000 a week or more.

Prices at Palace View start at £595,000 for a studio, £895,000 for a two bedroom apartment and £1.475m for a three bedroom property.

For more information contact selling agent Hamptons International on 0207 758 8434.

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.

There’s a problem in London created almost entirely by its success as a global capital city. Many of its central and northern suburban prime homes stand empty for months on end creating what are, in effect, billion-pound ghost streets lined with the second (or third) homes of the world’s nation-hopping super-wealthy from Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Bahrain, Russia and Kazakhstan.

Many agents say up to 60% and sometimes even 70% of sales in central London have been to foreigners in recent years, astonishing figures created by both the favourable exchange rate, London’s status as the must-buy destination for the world’s wealthy, and the ever-booming Square Mile.

But despite rarely being home to their registered residents, the streets look busy. So what gives?

The answer is that the owners of these luxury properties usually turn to others to run their homes, which means directly employing staff. It’s a sort of modern day upstairs-downstairs but rather than straight-laced ladies and gentlemen from the country these staff are often their Thai or Philippine counterparts.

One extreme example of this is a large house with over ten bedrooms to be found near Kenwood House in north London owned by the ruling family of Bahrain.

It’s kept as one of their London address “should things get sticky back home”, one local told us. So every morning the Thai house sitters dutifully clean and air the house, turn the limo’s engine over and then retire to the kitchen for a green tea, ever hopeful that their employers may one day pay a visit.

But for those who don’t want ‘live ins’, a small industry of linen and house cleaning, chauffeuring, security and ‘gofer’ firms has sprung up to fill the occupational gap. One example is The London Management Company.

For either a fee of £3,300 a year or £45 an hour its staff look after every aspect of a pied-a-terre’s welfare including basic home maintenance and cleaning, taking deliveries, picking up post and emails, servicing the family Bentley, keeping the huge American-style fridge stocked as well as pets fed and walked.

One advantage of this, the firm claims, is that a property looks ‘lived in’, helping to deter burglars and – as unemployment in the capital hits half a million people – being a good way to keep a small army of helpers employed.

PrimeLocation.com has developed a property search app for Android phones and we’re launching it today. The app is for the millions of smartphone users in the UK using Android handsets – such as the HTC Desire or Samsung Galalxy IIS  - and offers a clean and simple way to find your next prime location while on the move.

The app offers both traditional postcode or area name searches as well as a one-touch ‘my location’ search too. To download go to the Android Market on your phone and search for ‘primelocation’ and the app is free to install.

If you don’t have an Android phone but want to search while out and about then one alternative is the PrimeLocation.com iPad app, launched last year to much acclaim and already downloaded 150,000 times.

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?