A five-bedroom detached home in Corbridge, complete with a purpose-built studio summerhouse, has come to market at £825,000 — a listing that, on the surface, is a routine addition to the North East's country house circuit. Look closer, however, and it offers a useful barometer of where genuine demand sits in today's higher-rate mortgage environment: not at the entry level, where affordability remains stretched, but in the premium bracket of well-connected, lifestyle-rich market towns that continue to attract equity-rich buyers relocating from London, Surrey and the wider South East.