Four of the fastest moving local areas for million pound property sales outside London are in Hertfordshire.

St Albans, Berkhamsted, Hitchin and Hertford all feature in Rightmove's countdown, which ranks areas of Britain according to the speed at which their £1m-plus homes found a buyer between July 2020 and June 2021.

Thames Ditton in Surrey was fastest at 26 days, while Berkhamsted was fourth at 40, followed by St Albans, Hertford and Chelmsford, Essex, tied at 41, and Hitchin in ninth place at 42.

Radlett was third in a separate countdown of the biggest increases in the proportion of stock selling for over a million pounds – up from 34 per cent pre-pandemic, between April 2019 and March 2020, to 45 per cent in the year to June 2021.

The East of England was also named the British region with the second-fastest millionaires' property market, with million pound homes taking an average of 63 days to find a buyer in the year to June '21, 23 days faster than pre-pandemic levels and second only to Scotland's 25-day increase to 61 days.

Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s director of property data, said: “Prime sales growth has outperformed the wider market over the past year, as many people across Great Britain have chosen to take a step up the property ladder, potentially moving further out to afford a bigger property, or finally making the move to their forever home.

"Whilst London is still home to a significant portion of the prime market, some millionaire movers have turned their city commute into a rural route. These dynamics have helped push swathes of the UK’s property stock into the higher price brackets, and have led to a broader geographical spread of million-pound properties.”