Snooping around: Rural, urban or renovation

Wreck of the week: Nottinghamshire. This three-bed 17th-century farmhouse in Old Cossall is a shell. You’ll need to start from scratch – at least £100,000 should revive it, but that's on top of the £225,000 asking price. The gardens, until recently part of the old manor grounds, are large and beautifully landscaped. You have to share a driveway with the manor folk.
Chesterton Humberts, 0115 950 5444
Photograph: Chesterton Humberts

In the country: Cornwall. Balanced on the waterfront at Mylor, near Falmouth, with its own quay and jetty, sits this three-bedder. It’s pretty small for the money – the two reception rooms are daintily sized – but the decked garden terrace absorbs the estuary views. Yours for £500,000.
Lillicrap Chilcott, 01872 273473
Photograph: Lillicrap Chilcott

In town: Devon. The Georgian air is a tease. These terraced houses in Kingsbridge are from the 21st century, and spacious for a central address. With a sitting room, a study, a kitchen/dining room, a utility room and a family bathroom this £339,950 four-bedder is not short on rooms, but it is exhaustingly distributed over four floors.
Marchand Petit, 01548 857588
Photograph: Marchand Petit

Dream home: West Sussex. When architect John Hawes built himself a house in Bognor Regis in 1898 he wanted a view of the sea. But a row of hotels stood in the way, so he built high and mighty with a roof terrace. There is one room to each of the four storeys, an original frieze round the 19ft sitting room (which has the third bedroom off it), and a slipper tub dominating the mint green bathroom. The beach is 50 yards away, there’s a garden with a picturesquely decomposing summerhouse, a conservatory and gated off-street parking. Cost: £350,000.
Strutt & Parker, 01243 832600
Photograph: Strutt & Parker

Over the sea: Mexico. When finished this resort will colonise a white sandy beach on the Gulf of Mexico, an hour’s drive from Campeche, which will soon receive direct flights from the UK. Two- and three-bed apartments are distributed among blocks strung along the 18-hole golf course and around a cluster of natural lakes and the marina. Each block has its own communal gardens and pool, and residents of the marble-floored, air-conditioned flats can avail themselves of the five-star spa hotel within the development. It is half an hour to the ancient charms and sky-high property prices of Cancun. Prices start at £242,400.
escapes2.com, 0800 567 7268
Photograph: escapes2.com