Trading up, trading down – in pictures

Trading up: Rutland. On the outside this is a dinky £395,000 thatch near England’s largest inland lake in the conservation village of Empingham, near Oakham. But within a startling enormity of rooms unfolds: two sitting rooms (three if you decide the dining room is too far from the kitchen-breakfast room to lug trays), the study could become a fourth bedroom, and there’s a double garage, gravel driveway and fairytale thatched summerhouse. The fact the third and potential fourth bedroom are downstairs is no bad thing since the bathroom is on the ground floor, while the occupants of the two eaves chambers must trek down and through the kitchen for night-time relief.
Chesterton Humberts, 01780 758090
Photograph: Chesterton Humberts

Trading up: North Yorkshire. A self-contained one-bed flat at the back could assist your mortgage payments with rental income or else accommodate extraneous family once the other four bedrooms are spoken for. The house is in the village of Heslington on the outskirts of York, a two-mile walk from the city centre for the vigorous. The rooms are large, exquisitely refurbished with exposed beams and stonework, and there's a kitchen-dining room with filmic good looks. A home office has an outside staircase from the walled garden. Yours for £550,000.
Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01904 625033
Photograph: Jackson-Stops & Staff

Trading down: Cumbria. Elegant living on the edge of the village of Talkin, a swift drive from Carlisle. Your reduced circumstances can be gracefully and spaciously accommodated in a sitting room with an ornate fireplace and shelved alcoves, and a large kitchen. But you should lose any ideas you might have of a cottage garden behind that imposing facade – what you see in the front is all you get, although there are natural glories aplenty in the surrounding countryside. Cost: £275,000.
Smiths Gore, 01228 546400
Photograph: Smiths Gore

Trading down: Dorset. It’s just off Beaminster market square with views of the church tower from the walled garden and a Grade II-listing ensures it stays as quaint as its neighbours. Inside is a flagstoned floor in the dining room, fireplaces in both receptions and a wood-burning stove in the kitchen hearth. Quaintness has its downside, however – you could brain yourself on the sloping ceiling of the master bedroom – one of two. Yours for £275,000.
Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01935 810141
Photograph: Jackson-Stops & Staff

Bargain of the week: Wiltshire. If you are unfussed by dated décor and a very basic kitchen you can move straight in for £400,000, whereas ordinarily it would cost you nearer £600,000 for a four-bed berth on the green in the idyllic village of Biddestone. Even if you spent the £100,000 the agent reckons would refit, redecorate and reconfigure the rooms you’d still have spent considerably less than the going rate. From your stone mullioned windows you look over wide green spaces to a fringe of equally perfect cottages. There are two receptions and a respectably sized kitchen, but two of the bedrooms are so small you’ll probably want to expand into the attic. The size of the garden could come as a disappointment.
Chesterton Humberts, 01249 444557 Photograph: Chesterton Humberts