Buyers these days won't give an inch in their search for value for money.

Are you one of those people who are literally obsessed with how much square footage you have and exactly the square footage that you ‘must’ have?

The most common reason for moving home is either to have more or less space.

While most of us claim that we really must have that extra bedroom, or even fewer rooms, there are a growing number who are now stating the exact square footage they require. We are becoming preoccupied with size and square footage. It is emerging as one of the features of househunting during this recovery.

This rocky climate is leaving us all incredibly value minded. We want the best house in the best street, but also, we all want our money to stretch that bit further.

Agents are telling us that in the last few months, a new trend is emerging within the UK.

If a property’s basement has been excavated, creating a 3,000 sq ft house, although this vast underground kitchen is lit to the gunnels, it may be seen as a substandard area. It may be seen that the price of the ‘redone’ area should come in at a lower price than the rest of the house above.

The British obsession with amount of bedrooms rather than overall size has meant that we have the smallest new-builds of any country in Europe.

During boom times, inner city developers built tiny micro flats, with bedrooms barely able to squeeze a double bed in. At the end of last year these were all sold off, some with discounts as high as 60 per cent. The area obsessed are waiting for a survey to be produced that is calculated by the average price per square footage for each location.

If you are to exit the District line at Sloane Square, walk down the street there, the average price per square foot is £1,369 . If you were to go west down the same line to Ealing, the price drops to £384; go east to Barking and it is £183, below the £220 average for England and Wales. In Harrogate, which is closer to Bath than Barnsley, the average is £296. The increasing insistence among buyers on quality and value seems likely to widen these divides.