Last summer, just as a £50m apartment was sold on Prince's Gate, London, Gavin Pierpoint moved into a house in Cobridge, Stoke-on-Trent. Although 160 miles away and less grand – Cobridge is a post-industrial area with a canal, old industrial buildings and terraces that had become a bit forlorn of late – Pierpoint's century-old two-up, two-down with a little yard cost the sum of £1. That wouldn't have bought the doorknob in Prince's Gate, where the grand stucco houses overlook Hyde Park. "I moved out of rented accommodation in Stoke and it's been a great opportunity for me," says civil servant Pierpoint, 28, who found himself successful amid a surfeit of applicants for Stoke's £1...
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