What can you get for £150,000? In the era of €1 Italian ruins, a disused London staircase selling for £20,000 and Monte Carlo penthouses and Californian mega-mansions fetching north of £200m, it’s not a question with an easy answer. Back in 1988, when the Observer investigated the very same question, it was a similarly mixed – if vastly more encouraging – picture across the world.
UK readers should take a deep breath before reading on. The article explained that £150,000 was ‘three times the national average house price’ (it’s currently £285,000) ‘and a third more than the average for a home in one of the central London boroughs’. With that budget, you were, regrettably, priced out of Knightsbridge and Belgravia, but ‘It is still possible to find, for example, a good one-bedroom flat in Chelsea or a three-bedroom maisonette in a modern block in Holland Park, W11.’ For reference, the average house price in Kensington and Chelsea is currently £1,275,716. You could also get a ‘47-acre deer park complete with a five-bedroom house’ or 11 unmodernised two-up, two-downs in Hull.
