NEVER mind Sandbanks. If you want to witness a rise in your house price, check out Dorset’s new property hotspot…Christchurch.

The BH23 postcode, which includes the town plus surrounding areas, as well as Highcliffe, Burton, Ringwood, and Winkton beat every other Dorset postcode to see a year-on-year average price rise in properties of 3.7 per cent.

According to analysts, Propdex, who research actual prices paid and recorded with the Land Registry, the average price you can expect to pay for a property in booming BH23 is £350,909.

However, prices going up doesn’t mean that sales will, with year-on-year sales actually DOWN by nearly a quarter in the area, with a drop of 23.6 per cent – also the largest volume drop in the south west area, although it saw the eighth highest number of sales of the south west’s 267 postcodes. Prices are also rising in all postcodes in the New Forest.

The Propdex report is based on analysis of over 890,000 housing transactions using the latest data from HM Land Registry.

The government reports that house prices have risen in the last year by three per cent in England and 4.2 per cent in Wales.

However, said Propdex: “This will be cold comfort for people in the 515 postcodes where prices are significantly falling.”

The median postcode price for a house in the south west region is £252,000. This compares to £349,000 in the south east, which includes London.

The most expensive house prices in the south west region are currently to be found in the BA1 postcode of Bath, where properties cost nearly £400,000 and which, along with EX 4 in Exeter, Devon, were the only places in the South west to see year-on-year sales increase.