If you hope to sell your home during the downturn, it pays to invest in a top-quality kitchen, according to property experts. Lucy Young, an assistant to the cookery writer Mary Berry, has just had a new kitchen built in her cottage in Cookham Dean, Berkshire. Taking pride of place in her new kitchen is her blue Aga. Lucy says I was interviewed by Mary over two decades ago at the age of 20, and I said I had never cooked on one. She said she would teach me in a morning. She did, and I was hooked. Lucy, who runs courses for Aga novices, says Agas dont wear out, they go on for ever. A lot of people inherit one. They buy a house and find one sitting there. It is a different way of cooking. It is a British iconic product. If you are in Wandsworth it is the trendy thing to have. If you are in Herefordshire it is the traditional thing to have. Now Agas have moved into the modern age too. There is an Aga app which means you can text it on Sunday evening to tell it you are coming back from Cornwall and ask it to warm up, she says. Another big attraction for would-be home buyers are kitchen islands. Often glamorous kitchens have a circular island as a central feature. At Badby Lodge Farm, in Northamptonshire, Claire and Simon Martin-Redman created a stunning kitchen island made of maple and designed around a central Aga. I didnt want conventional cupboards round the walls, says Claire. The island creates a party atmosphere, says Claire, who wanted her island to include a tap that produces instant boiling water. We never have to wait for a cup of tea or for pasta water to boil. I couldnt live without the tap now, says Claire.