Trading up, trading down – in pictures

Trading up: Devon. Your mortgage repayments will be helped along to the tune of £400-£500 a month if you let the self-contained studio flat within this four-bed house in Kingsbridge. And £300,000 is a cheap way of acquiring a large residence just six miles from the millionaire’s playground of Salcombe. If it weren’t for the stingy yard and the traffic streaming down the one-way street outside the windows you’d be required to find more than £400,000. It is well-groomed with a dressing room and shower room off the master bedroom, and is close to the town harbour and sandy beaches.
Marchand Petit, 01548 857588
Photograph: Marchand Petit

Trading up: West Sussex. If you snapped up this property, chocolatiers may approach you to feature your home on their gift boxes. The four-bed, three-reception 18th-century cottage is dwarfed by its grounds – three-quarters of an acre with a well and an orchard. The allure is its location in the hamlet of Balls Cross near Petworth. The penalty is that this is stockbroker land and idylls don’t come cheap: £675,000 secures you an inglenook, wood-burning stove, bread oven and two garages, but you may not appreciate its other period details – the 1980s decor and fittings.
Smiths Gore, 01798 343 111
Photograph: Smiths Gore

Trading down: Suffolk. Shrinkage doesn’t come cheap in the beautiful village of Lavenham, but once you’ve mustered the £325,000 you’ll no longer need to splash out on vacations. This listed two-bed cottage is as quaint as any holiday let and surrounded by historic and natural glories. And it’s larger than it looks, with two sitting rooms – one of them large – a utility room off the kitchen/dining room and an upstairs bathroom. Permission has been granted for an extra storey to the extension, which could add a bedroom. The garden is small and paved but alluringly landscaped.
John D. Wood, 01245 344222
Photograph: John D. Wood

Trading down: North Yorkshire. You’re starting small – two bedrooms and an attic – but there’s scope aplenty to expand gracefully in this stone semi near Goathland. There’s a large garden with stone outbuildings at the back and untrammelled vistas over the wilds of the Yorkshire moors. Flagged floors, wood panelling and fireplaces grace the inside. It’s just you and your huddle of neighbours against the winter, however, for the nearest amenities are 1.5 lonely miles away. Cost: £225,000.
Smiths Gore, 01904 756303
Photograph: Smiths Gore

Dream home: Lincoln. For centuries this was an unrealisable dream for all but the Bishops of Lincoln whose palace it was. Now even the godless can make themselves at home within the cathedral close, provided they can muster the £800,000 asking price. Generations of churchmen have added to the 13th-century core, bequeathing seven bedrooms, five grandiose receptions and an integral two-bed flat, all set in 1.13 acres with a coach house, outbuildings and views of one of England’s finest cathedrals. There is a catch: it’s been used hitherto for official gatherings so you’ll want to reconfigure – for instance, the rows of loos – and its 8,493ft of accommodation could do with modernising.
Smiths Gore, 01780 484696
Photograph: Smiths Gore