Between January and April we completed eleven sales in N16 within eighty thousand pounds of the million mark. Laid side by side they answer a question people ask us constantly and we usually dodge: what does a million actually get you here.

The short answer

Four bedrooms, if you accept a kitchen you will want to replace within five years. Three bedrooms and a garden of any real size. Or two bedrooms, done properly, on one of the four streets people write down before they start looking. You are choosing which of the three you can live without.

The eleven splits cleanly. Six buyers took the space and the dated kitchen. Three took the street. Two took the garden and are still, by their own admission, arguing about the loft.

What moved the price

Not square footage, which surprised us less than it should have. The two strongest results per square foot were both south-facing at the rear, both on streets without a bus route, and both had been lived in rather than let. The weakest was a technically superior house that backed onto a school car park.