From the £25,000 wreck to the £25m home with an indoor pool: what three house sales tell us about modern Britain
Statistics tend to define the way we think about property. As a nation, we buy and sell more than 100,000 homes a month – more than 3,000 a day. House prices went up 7.8% in the year to June 2022, taking the average property value in the UK to £286,397. The average deposit for first-time buyers is now about £75,000. People aged over 65, who represent less than a quarter of the population, own almost half of England’s housing equity.
But behind the numbers, each property transaction is a story with a cast of generally anxious characters. I set out to find properties worth £25,000, £250,000 and £25m – and speak to everyone involved in each sale and purchase. Taken together, the stories of three very different houses offer a snapshot of an industry that shapes all our lives and communities.
‘When I tell my friends the prices of the properties I’m selling, they can’t believe places like this exist’
The house at the bottom of a street in Easington Colliery is in a sorry state. The windows have been boarded up, the front door padlocked shut. A rusting skip waits to be collected on the pavement. Inside, broken glass covers the carpets. Even the bannisters have been ripped out. “Requires modernisation”, the online listing had said.
A couple of weeks before my visit in August, I watch six people bid for the three-bedroom house in an online auction. Russell Taylor, the managing director of Taylor James Auctions in Birmingham, says it is unlikely that any of them has even been to Easington Colliery, a coastal former mining town between Sunderland and Hartlepool.
After 22 bids made over a few hours, the house sells for £27,000 – slightly higher than the £25,000 Taylor had predicted. “She was overjoyed,” he says of the buyer, a beauty
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