Trading up, trading down

Trading up: Lincolnshire. Your enlargement begins in the driveway, which sweeps at aristocratic length past wide groomed lawns. This Victorian splendour near Lincoln city centre has been expensively updated, adding an oak-floored orangery off the kitchen, a wet room and a majestic period-style bathroom. Original fireplaces, stained glass and plasterwork survive in some of the three receptions and five bedrooms. French doors open on to the gardens. Cost: £560,000.
Chesterton Humberts, 01522 546444 Photograph: Chesterton Humberts/Chesterton Humberts

Trading up: Devon. All four bedrooms in this £475,000 former chantry building are doubles, and transport is housed equally capaciously in the garage and on the driveway. The house is in Ivybridge on the fringes of Dartmoor, a swift drive from the coast. The main reception will absorb extravagant family affairs, there is a second sitting room, a study, an office off the garage and a kitchen large enough for mass feasting. The walled garden is south facing.
Marchand Petit, 01548 831163 Photograph: Marchand Petit/Marchand Petit

Trading down: Kent. The main glory of this grade II-listed semi is the view to the front over Broomfield village pond. Buses pass near by on their way to the seaside pleasures of Herne Bay. There is a decent sized sitting room with a hearth, a dining area opening off the kitchen, and two of the three bedrooms are large doubles. Almost 100ft of secluded lawned garden unrolls behind and the car gets a garage. Yours for £239,000.
Kent Estate Agencies, 01227 367441 Photograph: Kent Estate Agencies/Kent Estate Agencies

Trading down: West Midlands. This brand new city centre perch is a stroll to the retail thrills of Birmingham's Bullring. It is a reinvention of a 1970s telecoms monolith, once deemed the ugliest building in Birmingham but now a swish complex of one- and two-bed flats with sunken baths and urban panoramas. There is a Malmaison cafe in the the lobby while restored canal paths deliver you to the Jewellery Quarter. Prices start from £145,000 for one bedroom.
Savills, 0121 633 3733 Photograph: Savills/Savills

Bargain of the week: Lancashire. Usually it's impossible to find a house in the mill town of Oswaldtwistle for less than £100,000. Now you can claim this two-bed end of terrace near the centre of town for £69,950. True, you'll want to set aside a few grand more to rescue it cosmetically, but it has a decent sized living room, a kitchen that can hold a dining table and a rear yard backed by trees. There is no chain.
Buy-the-house, 01254 326000 Photograph: www.buy-the-house.co.uk/www.buy-the-house.co.uk