The best places to invest in housing in the next decade will be areas of “large scale, skilled and successful regeneration” in urban centres, according to an analysis from leading London and country agents Savills.

Says Savills Research Director Yolande Barnes: “Some of the biggest climbers in the housing hit parade will be districts in which large-scale regeneration boost local economies.

“Our tips for the top include Camden in north London where the regeneration of King’s Cross will have an upward impact on values, and places like Liverpool where continued regeneration should lift them from lower parts of the league.”

The survey of some 375 local authority districts across England and Wales says the decade from 1995 saw two distinct trends in the housing market: in the first half (1995-2000), old industrial areas of the north fell far behind other regions as they suffered prolonged industrial decline.

Then, from 2000, some of these old industrial areas staged a strong recovery – along with east London boroughs benefiting from improved transport links and booming central London property prices, and suddenly back-in-fashion south coast towns like Brighton and Hove.

Says Yolande Barnes: “If the first half of the decade was about post-industrial decline, then the second half has been about countryside revival.

“The years since 2000 have seen remote areas of the country such as Cornwall, Devon and the Lake District shoot up the league table, largely on the back of second home ownership and retirement moves, both of which bring city money into rural economies.

Some of the “losers” since 2000, says Savills, have been the areas among the “winners” in the previous five years like Reading and other centres in the ‘golden triangle’ west of London between the M4 and M3 motorways.

In the next decade, Savills warns, the quality of local housing stock will often become a key determinant of market trends. This hardly bodes well for “less affluent and least aspirational new towns” like Harlow and Crawley.

As the post-industrial malaise which hit the north in 2000 gradually spreads south, some “middle England” manufacturing towns could also be facing a grim decade ahead, says the survey, if they lose existing jobs in heavy industry and fail to attract new money and better-paid professional jobs.

Says the survey: “Locations with dated, deteriorating stock, poor local facilities and inadequate infrastructure (eg schools, transport, open space) will find themselves slipping further down the league table.”