Bristol, Margate and Welwyn Garden City property hotspots

Bristol was the most searched for place on a property website this year outside London, while Margate saw the biggest asking price hikes and homes in Welwyn Garden City took the quickest time to sell away from the capital.

Figures taken from Rightmove's website show London was the most searched for place in 2015, as well as being home to property hotspots where houses are the fastest to fly off the market and see the biggest asking price uplifts.

But stripping London completely out of the figures, Bristol was the most searched for place for homes to buy or rent in the UK, followed by Cambridge.

%VIRTUAL-ArticleSidebar-property-guide%Rightmove also looked at asking price growth and the time it took to sell a property, this time looking just across England and Wales.

Outside London, the seaside town of Margate in Kent saw the price of property coming to market go up by 24.2% to £204,631 between January and the end of November, followed closely by Altrincham in Cheshire with a rise of 21.9% to £484,258. These were the biggest asking price hikes outside London recorded by Rightmove.

The average time for a property to sell across England and Wales was 62 days throughout 2015.

Properties in Welwyn Garden City sold fastest outside London, spending an average of 25 days on the website before being marked as sold, with nearby Hertford coming in second place with an average selling time of 26 days.

Rightmove's housing expert Sam Mitchell said: "This year saw demand reach record levels for home-hunters both buying and renting, and the ripple effect from London to the South East moved even further out to places like Essex and Hertfordshire, as you can see from how quick properties are selling in these locations.

"Usually January is Rightmove's busiest month but the new year rush stayed even longer this year, and we recorded our busiest ever month in March."

Here are the most searched for places to buy a home, followed by the most searched for places to rent, outside London in 2015, according to Rightmove's figures:

1. Bristol, Bristol.

2. Cambridge, Cambridge.

3. York, Manchester.

4. Milton Keynes, Birmingham.

5. Norwich, Leeds.

6. Bath, Nottingham.

7. Reading, Bournemouth.

8. Chelmsford, Glasgow.

9. Bournemouth, Milton Keynes.

10. Swindon, Reading.