It is getting easier to become a millionaire but moving into a luxury mansion still seems to depend not on what you're worth but where you live.

Figures released by the Land Registry covering the sale of mansions in Sussex last year revealed a tale of two counties.

While the property boom has created a multitude of millionaires in affluent West Sussex, homes worth seven-figure sums appear to be rare in East Sussex. As house prices continue to rise across all levels of the Sussex property market, the number of sales is falling.

The Land Registry figures suggest there were 760 £1 million-plus property sales in the UK during the last three months of 2003 - about one in 400 of the total houses sold.

Some 15 of these were in West Sussex, suggesting there are 1,154 properties in West Sussex worth more than £1 million.

A league table ranking counties according to the number of houses sold for £1 million or more last October to December places West Sussex behind London with 524, Surrey with 80, Buckinghamshire with 25, Hertfordshire with 24 and Essex with 16.

However, East Sussex joins Bournemouth and several counties in the North and Wales where there were no £1 million-plus sales.

By 2010 there will be 760,000 millionaires in Britain, a threefold increase on 2001, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research. ore than 90 per cent of these increases can be attributed to property price inflation.

To have a home in West Sussex now worth £1 million, you would have to have invested just £584,795 in the property market in 1999.

In East Sussex you would have had to have paid out £571,428.

For many new millionaires, the moment of realisation comes when they have an estate agent round to value what they considered to be a modest home.

East Sussex is home to many millionaires, including property tycoon Nicholas Hoogstraten and Sir Paul McCartney, whose wealth is estimated at £725 million.

Millionaires buying property in West Sussex included oil magnate and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, whose personal wealth has recently been estimated at more than £7 billion.

Those with shallower pockets, however - virtually everyone else in the country - would find it more difficult to buy a new home, according to the figures.

Five years ago a detached house in West Sussex cost an average of £189,411 in the last quarter of the year and there were 1,715 sales during that period. But in the final quarter of last year the same property cost £325,707 and sales dropped to 1,410.

The middle-market boom has been even more striking in East Sussex, where 1,400 people bought detached houses for an average of £161,422 in the last quarter of 1999.

During the corresponding period last year the price was up to £281,966 and sales were down to 991.

Property expert Simon Pattenden, of Massey estate agents in Western Road, Hove, said areas like Hastings brought down the average property prices in East Sussex.

However, the prestige properties at the top end of the market were also much less common than further west.

He said: "When you look around East Sussex you would struggle to find a £1 million-plus property.

"Brighton and Hove has the odd one in Roedean perhaps but certainly in Eastbourne and Hastings it would be very difficult to find anything in that region. If you go inland you have the same problem.

"In the west you've got Horsham and the nicer properties in Worthing just about hit £1 million. It's all down to location. The discerning buyer wants quite a lot for £1 million - and Brighton and Hove doesn't have it."