Inner cities, wealthy suburbs and fast-growing towns topped the list of house price surges in the first month of the federal government's expanded 5 per cent deposit guarantee.

A deep dive into the numbers from data company Cotality shows that homes below the price caps for the first home buyer scheme grew more than 20 per cent faster than homes above the caps — 1.2 per cent compared to 1 per cent for the month of October.

That is not unprecedented, since this lower end of the housing market has been steadily outperforming the top end for nearly two years. But the October result is in the top sixth of those recorded for the last 16 years.

And a handful of areas saw more pronounced gaps, including inner Melbourne and Perth, northern Brisbane, Darwin, Geelong, the Central Coast, Wide Bay,

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