Trading up, trading down

Trading up: North Yorkshire. To the unassuming eye it looks like a row of terraced cottages in the village of South Duffield, near Selby. But if you have £525,000 the whole lot is yours, along with nearly an acre. And if three receptions, a banqueting-sized kitchen and six bedrooms strike you as stingy you can apply to expand into the adjoining store rooms. There are also more outbuildings at the back dating from its days as a farm house.
Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01904 625033
Photograph: Jackson-Stops & Staff

Trading up: West Yorkshire. This once served as the vicarage to the 900-year-old church which looms over the large lawn, and its later career has added many secular luxuries to the period framework: African slate flooring, a chic kitchen, an en suite bathroom and a dressing room in one of the five bedrooms. It’s in the village of Kippax, close to the motorway network and to Leeds city centre. On the market for £599,950.
Fine & Country, 0113 397 1118 Photograph: Fine & Country

Trading down: Buckinghamshire. Sample the rustic dream within city confines: this two-bed 16th-century cottage is one of the oldest in the village of Simpson, lately swallowed by Milton Keynes. The spreading green grasslands surrounding the village are actually urban parkland, and the ancient core of the village is buffered by new builds, but the rustic illusion remains intact beneath your thatch in the form of thickly beamed walls and ceilings, an inglenook, wood-burning stoves and a pretty cottage garden. Cost: £260,000.
Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01525 290641 Photograph: Jackson-Stops & Staff

Trading down: Manchester. City roof tops are arrayed below the covered glass-walled terrace of this two-bed, two-bathroom flat on the fifth floor of the Crosby building on Deansgate. You get 1,196 sq ft of city centre living with the elusive joy of a parking space. It’s a mere stroll to Harvey Nichols and all the other metropolitan seductions. On the market for £250,000.
Hunters, 0161 244 9643 Photograph: Hunters

Bargain of the week: London. Rejoice in the launderette conveniently beneath you, and the busy A-road outside. But for them this £450,000 flat in SW6 would cost nearer £575,000. This counts as a cheap way to acquire three double bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining/kitchen and a large reception all elegantly styled and spread over three floors in swanky Fulham. The tube at Fulham Broadway station is a walk away.
Chesterton Humberts, 020 7471 2020 Photograph: Chesterton Humberts

Dream home: Herefordshire. No need to renew that National Trust membership: this Georgian house in Pencraig, near Ross-on-Wye, has all the ingredients of a stately home – large and multitudinous rooms beautified with alcoves, arches, mouldings and marble – and more than three-and-a-half acres of grounds plus croquet lawn and stables. Many of the seven bedrooms and three receptions absorb the vast views over the river Wye to the hills. It’s been used as a hotel, so while you redomesticate it you can live in the three-bed cottage that’s thrown in. All yours for £875,000.
Knight Frank, 01432 273 087 Photograph: Knight Frank