Find the biggest house for your budget with this smart new online tool

last updated 23 June 2022

If you're sick of living somewhere where there's no room to swing a mouse, let alone the proverbial cat, may we present Mansion or Maisonette. The tool, created by Hillarys (the window treatments people) is designed to help anyone struggling for space – or conversely, overwhelmed by the number of rooms at their disposal.

The only snag? You'll need to be flexible about where you live!

To use the tool, simply pop in your budget and you'll be given two options – the smallest and the largest home available at that price point. We decided to try a few different price points to see exactly what our money could get us. And as you'll see, some of the results were quite surprising.

Incidentally, we should make it clear Ideal Home doesn't condone swinging animals of any size, feline or otherwise...

If you have £100,000 to spend...

sloping roof house with red brick walls and wooden door

Looking for more space? Move to Sunderland, where £100,000 could get you a five-bedroom home! Possibly not as grand as this one, but you certainly get plenty of bang – or should that be bedrooms? – for your buck! Or you could downsize significantly to a studio apartment on Brighton Marina.

If you have £400,000 to spend...

sloping roof house with red brick walls and white windows

We're off to Kingston Upon Thames, where £400K can get you a small but perfectly formed one-bed flat in a new-build development. And if you have a brood resembling the Von Trapp family, you could head to Preston in Lancashire. Here, amazingly, your budget could stretch to a handsome 12-bed (!) detached Victorian property that previously served as a nursing home.

Rose Terrace is for sale through Farrell Heyworth.

If you have £600,000 to spend...

white multistoried building with rectangualr semiarched windows and black doors

While £600,000 might sound like a small fortune, the most it will stretch to in Bayswater, London, is a one-bedroom apartment – albeit on the very smart Gloucester Terrace (above). It's currently on the market with Chancellors.

Head north, however, and you could be lording it up in an 8-bedroom property in Cardiff.

If you have £1million to spend...

You'd think one million pound would go a long way... and you'd be right if you relocate to Peterborough. here, you can currently buy a 14-bed property, on the market with City & County. In London, however, you'll have to make do with a modest two-bedroom flat in Vauxhall.

More help with house hunting: These are the cheapest places to live in the UK in 2018

'We all know that there can be huge price differences in property across different regions,' says Tara Hall, spokesperson for Hillarys. 'But it’s interesting to see these differences represented as square footage and see just how far a budget can stretch in certain areas.'

Ginevra Benedetti has been the Deputy Editor of Ideal Home magazine since 2021. With a career in magazines spanning nearly twenty years, she has worked for the majority of the UK’s interiors magazines, both as staff and as a freelancer. She first joined the Ideal Home team in 2011, initially as the Deputy Decorating Editor and has never left! She currently oversees the publication of the brand’s magazine each month, from planning through to publication, editing, writing or commissioning the majority of the content.