Opinion
Comment: Comparing pricey properties is fun, even if they are all unaffordable
Comparing properties can be fun – even if they're out of your price range. - Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
I love a UK-wide property price comparison, and where better to start than with our own home of the week.
Whitewoods is a five-bed detached house set in an acre of grounds in Bricket Wood, and comes with a £2m price tag.
In Harpenden – never an area to shy away from high house prices – the same amount would currently buy a substantially smaller four-bed house on Fairway Close in upmarket West Common.
In the super-pretty-but-much-further-from-London Herts village of Much Hadham, it would stretch to an eight-bed Grade II listed semi with an outdoor pool.
The ultimate property porn is, as ever, in the capital where, in the finest areas, £2m will get you not a lot. A tiny three-bed mews house in Notting Hill, say. Or a two-bed flat in the swanky new Battersea Power Station development.
Further north, it's obviously a different story.
In Dumfries & Galloway, a £2m budget will stretch to a nine-bed Georgian mansion set in 40 acres a couple of miles from Gretna Green.
On the outskirts of Pontefract, West Yorkshire, there's an equestrian facility for sale, including three houses and eight acres of paddocks, for the same amount.
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It's not all amazing VFM north of Watford, however: a six-bed terraced house in posh Harrogate will set you back £2m, too. Seems a lot for Up North, even if it is "within a gentle stroll" of the town's upmarket Montpellier Quarter.
Ultimately, there are so many variables at play when pricing a property – even within our never-knowingly-affordable county – that each place must be viewed on its own merits.
A choice of houses in deepest Yorkshire, or just the one posh pad with relatively little land here in Herts? For all bar a fortunate few, this will only ever by a hypothetical decision.