Divorce is now responsible for one in ten sales of houses worth between £500,000 and £1m, a new report has revealed.

The figure produced by estate agent Savills far outstrips the six per cent recorded in 2009. Lucian Cook, director of residential research at Savills said: “The housing market saw a period of greater fluidity and price growth in the second half of 2009 and early part of this year, and this definitely seems to have allowed divorces to proceed.

“Traditionally we have seen a strong correlation between divorce rates and house prices.

"Common wisdom is that when house prices rise people feel they can afford to divorce.

"The freeing up of the market has undoubtedly triggered a number of divorce-related sales at the lower end of prime where the unfortunate truth is that a house sale becomes pretty much inevitable when assets are split.”

By contrast, for sales of homes worth over £2m, which have recovered an average ten per cent of their lost value over the past 18months, divorce accounted for just six per cent of the market in the first half of this year, compared to 14 per cent last year, bucking the trend that divorce related sales track the market. Giles Lawton, head of Savills residential team in Oxford, said: “At the very upper end of the market a divorce seldom triggers the sale of a property, particularly where a family home is involved. "That said, prime properties are considered a significant asset and their value can be keenly debated in a disputed divorce so the timing of a split, in relation to the property market cycle, can become significant."