Instant Access Properties

Of all the cities in the UK which have boomed in recent years, Brighton is significantly different from the rest. While London gets on with being London and provincial cities project themselves as offering an alternative to the capital, the Sussex seaside location lives off its similarity with the capital.

Describing this phenomenon, Charlie Snell, a director at local estate agency Brighton & Hove Family Homes, said: "It's one of the only places outside London that sort of maintains a London feel to it and where you don't feel like you are in a provincial town."

This was one of the reasons, Mr Snell stated, for the popularity of Brighton with Londoners. Others he noted included the sea air, open spaces and of course the speedy rail connection provided by Thameslink. Given the higher price of London properties, Brighton offers an alternative to living in outer London suburbs, he added.

All of this has prompted many to dub Brighton "London-on-Sea", but Mr Snell rejected this, arguing that it still has its own characteristics, from independent shops to a "funky" atmosphere.

Nonetheless, the appeal of Brighton seems clear enough, something which may grow further once the new South Downs National Park, whose boundary skirts the edge of the city, is established.

Yet despite this, local paper the Argus recently ran a story suggesting local house prices were about to fall. The response from local estate agents was clear, with two of them telling the paper such a notion was "scaremongering".

One agent, Cliff Weatherstone of Weatherstone Properties, said: "We have a buzzing city which people want to move to all the time and the businesses are doing well. Down here there's a shortage of property and they're not making more land." The lack of available building space was also mentioned by Barrie Alderton of Barrie Alderton Estate Agents, who commented: "There's no reason why the property market will crash here. In Brighton you have no spare land."

The arrival of the national park may have a further impact on this problem, preventing northward expansion. (Only news that Falmer, on the edge of the city, would not be included in the national park enabled plans for a new football stadium to be built to be approved last year).

At the same time, city status appears to have helped Brighton and Hove, formerly two towns which were merged into the new borough as it was awarded its queen's charter in 2000. It was not the best performing millennium city for house prices (Inverness has taken that title), but figures from Halifax in September last year showed that the rate of price increase in the city had been 132 per cent since the new status was conferred, 24 per cent faster than the south-east regional average.

The very latest evidence indicates this is still going on. Brighton was the most searched-for city in relation to its number of households of any location in Britain on the propertyfinder.com website this month, with four times the UK average. Brighton, it appears, still rocks.