Mortgage rates hit 6% and buyers are asking "where to buy a house": where money goes furthest

The average five-year fixed mortgage rate has hit 6% for the first time in three years, and the number of sub-5% fixed deals fell from 1,494 at the start of September to nine by 5 October. Searches for "where to buy a house" are up 10% on August, up 70% on three months ago and up 103% on September 2025 (Google Trends, UK).

With borrowing costs rising, buyers are looking harder at where their money stretches furthest. Muve has analysed ONS and HM Land Registry data across 313 local authorities in England and Wales to show them. Its Emerging Hotspots Index ranks areas equally on affordability, house price growth, new-build activity, transaction volume and life satisfaction.

The headlines:

• County Durham is the UK's top emerging hotspot, with an average price of £138,767. That is roughly a ninth of Kensington and Chelsea (£1,272,760).
  
  
• Nine of the top ten areas have average prices below £300,000.
  
  
• 28 of the top 50 are in the North of England. Prices there rose 3.5% on average over the year, against -0.1% across the South.
  
  
• Preston saw the biggest annual price rise in the study at 10.6%, followed by Caerphilly (10.5%).
  
  
• Leeds is the standout big city, ranking 20th overall with 220 mortgage sales, second only to Birmingham.
  
  
• North Somerset (9th) and West Suffolk (19th) lead for the South.

David Jabbari, CEO of Muve, says:

"It's great to see a diverse range of credible moving locations across the country, from the overall index leader, County Durham, to Birmingham, where the number of new builds popping up creates less competition for homeowners. It's the combination of both factors that signals genuine opportunity for buyers: somewhere still affordable but with enough new housing being built to suggest that the area is on a developer's radar, and increasingly on a buyer's shortlist too."

Published: 15 October 2026