The price of an average house in the UK has stretched above the £200,000 mark for the first time, according to Nationwide Building Society.
An average home in the south costs £313,670 while a house in northern England averages £150,917, making a typical house in the north less than half the price of one in the south.
Property values went up 0.8% in March across the UK with the annual rate increasing by 5.7%.
Nationwide said that the 3% stamp duty surcharge now in place for buy-to-let investors will have pushed up prices as buyers raced to beat the deadline for the higher tax rate.
Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said the growth in prices may start to slow now that the changes have come into force.
But he added: “It is possible that the recent pattern of strong employment growth, rising real earnings, low borrowing costs and constrained supply will keep the demand/supply balance tilted in favour of sellers and maintain pressure on price growth in the quarters ahead.”
The strongest performance in the first three months of 2016 was in the outer metropolitan London area with prices up by 12% on a year earlier to reach £344,371 on average.
The outer metropolitan district covers areas such as central Kent, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Luton, Medway, Reading, Slough, south Buckinghamshire and the Chilterns, south Essex, St Albans, west Kent, Windsor and Maidenhead, and Wokingham.
London was the second in performance with an 11.5% increase, making the average value £455,984.
Property fell in value in just two regions, Scotland and the north of England, leaving the average in Scotland at £139,911.
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