What will £325,000 buy you in the UK property market?

This cottage in Ceredigion. It’s a short drive from this house near Cardigan to the National Trust beach of Mwnt. Not that you need a car to taste wilderness – there are four private acres of it, including an orchard and pasture, surrounding the house, and the option to buy another acre with lapsed planning permission for eight homes. The ground floor is quarry-tiled, there's a wood-burning stove in the sitting room, and four bedrooms.
Click here or call West Wales Properties, 01239 240013 Photograph: West Wales Properties

This four-bedder in Cornwall. Wide bays, elegant fireplaces, wooden floors and panelled doors give this three-reception room house in Hayle a period stateliness. The small bathroom is gentrified by a free-standing roll-top bath, there’s off-street parking and no onward chain. The artistocratic air ends at the small brown conservatory, for the back garden is short and undistinguished.
Bradleys, 01736 756363 Photograph: Bradleys

This quaint house in Dumbarton. Perch this four-bedder on a remote lochside and you’d be needing nearer half a million, the agent reckons. As it is, a sewage farm and a railway line down the steep hill between it and the water and the modern tentacles of Dumbarton round about it are minor impediments to bliss. On the plus side it is set in large grounds on the very edge of town with lofty panoramas over the Clyde and a boat store. A conservatory opens off the second reception and a study could be a fifth bedroom. Solar panels on the roof should generate a small income.
Click here or call Allen & Harris, 01389 717002 Photograph: Allen & Harris

This four-bedder in Essex. You have to admire the commitment that went into disguising this modern house as an antiquity. The wood-burning stove is set into an inglenook fireplace in the sitting room and a wooden beam and (rather new) red brick partition divides it from the dining room. The floors, if you don’t look too closely, appear to be exposed wood. Modernity intervenes in the form of two smart bathrooms (one an en suite), a utility room and an integral garage. The village of Great Oakley is close to the coast and six miles from Harwich.
Fenn Wright, 01206 763 388 Photograph: Fenn Wright

This one-bedder in London. Clapham’s early Victorian streets, close to the shops and the Common, require deep pockets and compact households: £325,000 buys you a basement in this gentrified part of the capital. Admittedly it’s a very smart berth in a strikingly pretty little house in Clapham Manor St. The illusion of space is created by having the kitchen area in a corner of the reception room, a side effect being that you share your elegant shower room with the washing machine. The lack of outside space is mitigated by the short walk to the Common.
Marsh & Parsons, 020 7501 3666 Photograph: Marsh & Parsons

This terrace in Newcastle. A 25ft kitchen has been added to this four-bedder in Jesmond, and the loft has been converted into a master suite. The whole place has been wired for sound and window shutters have been installed to complement the surviving Victorian features. All is spacious swankiness until you reach the back garden, which is a small courtyard.
Sanderson Young, 0191 2130033 Photograph: Sanderson Young