A familiar car pulls-up outside and a collective groan echoes around the office. It’s the sort of terminally resigned sound you might imagine emanating from an expiring pensioner, moments before the beneficiaries start ringing estate agents for valuations.
‘Now there’s someone that weasel of a warden could happily issue a ticket to.’ Announces assistant manager T to nods of universal approval, as the object of our scorn looks furtively up and down the high street before activating the hazard warning lights – surely a metaphor for his approach – and hurrying towards us.
‘What do you call a surveyor at the bottom of the sea?’ Asks negotiator S with a pleasing chest-chuckle and I prepare to humour her, only trainee F jumps in before me.
‘A revenge attack from an agent whose sale he keeps trashing,’ rushes F with the sort of haste that indicates a good deal of forethought. ‘Someone who kidnapped him in an empty house, tortured him with heated-up paperclips, then tied a weight to his feet before dumping him off-shore.’
We all look at F askew, as the oblivious surveyor approaches the door.
‘Actually the answer is: a good start.’ I tell him warily, making a mental note to go easier on the fool at his next appraisal and maybe allocate the stationery ordering to S for a few months. F just glowers at the un-loved man as he breezes in, and fiddles ominously with some unseen objects in that muli-compartment tray we all have sitting in the desk top-drawer,
‘Morning troops.’ Announces the surveyor all false bonhomie. He’s sporting a pasted on grin that could easily morph to a leer. The sort of blank-eyed look you see in police mug shots of perverts and paedophiles. He’s wearing fawn coloured trousers, which his mother he doubtless still lives with, would call slacks, and a checked faux-landowner shirt, twinned with a tweedish jacket featuring leather elbow pads. If it wasn’t for the cobwebs in his hair you might think he spent his time supervising pheasant shoots on his family estate, rather than poking his head in everyone’s loft and business - and bombing sales.
‘How’s the market?’ He follows up with only slightly less bombast. It’s the sort of question you can only ever get wrong. If you are too bullish he’ll only down-value the home he’s about to value on account of your over-optimism. And if you err on the bearish side, he’ll still trash the price you’ve agreed, in an underpinning of his consistently pessimistic view of lending practices and the deleterious housing stock. Stock that he’s certain is doomed to succumb to subsidence, both types of rot, and roof spread that spills over more alarmingly than bloated mortgage man M’s belly.
‘Hope you’re not going to trash this one,’ I say as jovially as I can manage as I hand the man a set of details along with a bunch of keys. ‘We could have sold it twice over.’
‘Ah they all say that.’ Murmurs the surveyor as he signs the keybook with a prissy flourish and F makes stabbing motions behind his back with a letter-opening knife I swear he’s been sharpening.
‘I have to cover my back you know.’ Continues the man, more accurately than his valuation is likely to be, as F starts to growl alarmingly. ‘If you’ve had more than one buyer bidding the chances are they’ve paid over the odds.’ He concludes with a nasally presumption, as I wonder if he was friendless at school too, or if it happened by default when he qualified as a Chartered Surveyor.
It was no different in the early-nineties, I remember. Surveyors were being retrospectively sued by lenders who not many months earlier were encouraging them to rubber-stamp rash loans, with impunity. Once again banks are looking to recoup losses on irresponsible lending by pursuing valuers with the sort of 20/20 hindsight normally reserved for historians or lawyers. I ought to feel a little sympathy for the maligned man. At one stage when they were respected and a gateway to a partnership, I thought about training to become one.
‘I bloody hate those guys.’ Hisses S with venom as the surveyor leaves with a self-conscious wave.
‘Me too,’ I endorse. ‘Me too.’
‘Now there’s someone that weasel of a warden could happily issue a ticket to.’ Announces assistant manager T to nods of universal approval, as the object of our scorn looks furtively up and down the high street before activating the hazard warning lights – surely a metaphor for his approach – and hurrying towards us.
‘What do you call a surveyor at the bottom of the sea?’ Asks negotiator S with a pleasing chest-chuckle and I prepare to humour her, only trainee F jumps in before me.
‘A revenge attack from an agent whose sale he keeps trashing,’ rushes F with the sort of haste that indicates a good deal of forethought. ‘Someone who kidnapped him in an empty house, tortured him with heated-up paperclips, then tied a weight to his feet before dumping him off-shore.’
We all look at F askew, as the oblivious surveyor approaches the door.
‘Actually the answer is: a good start.’ I tell him warily, making a mental note to go easier on the fool at his next appraisal and maybe allocate the stationery ordering to S for a few months. F just glowers at the un-loved man as he breezes in, and fiddles ominously with some unseen objects in that muli-compartment tray we all have sitting in the desk top-drawer,
‘Morning troops.’ Announces the surveyor all false bonhomie. He’s sporting a pasted on grin that could easily morph to a leer. The sort of blank-eyed look you see in police mug shots of perverts and paedophiles. He’s wearing fawn coloured trousers, which his mother he doubtless still lives with, would call slacks, and a checked faux-landowner shirt, twinned with a tweedish jacket featuring leather elbow pads. If it wasn’t for the cobwebs in his hair you might think he spent his time supervising pheasant shoots on his family estate, rather than poking his head in everyone’s loft and business - and bombing sales.
‘How’s the market?’ He follows up with only slightly less bombast. It’s the sort of question you can only ever get wrong. If you are too bullish he’ll only down-value the home he’s about to value on account of your over-optimism. And if you err on the bearish side, he’ll still trash the price you’ve agreed, in an underpinning of his consistently pessimistic view of lending practices and the deleterious housing stock. Stock that he’s certain is doomed to succumb to subsidence, both types of rot, and roof spread that spills over more alarmingly than bloated mortgage man M’s belly.
‘Hope you’re not going to trash this one,’ I say as jovially as I can manage as I hand the man a set of details along with a bunch of keys. ‘We could have sold it twice over.’
‘Ah they all say that.’ Murmurs the surveyor as he signs the keybook with a prissy flourish and F makes stabbing motions behind his back with a letter-opening knife I swear he’s been sharpening.
‘I have to cover my back you know.’ Continues the man, more accurately than his valuation is likely to be, as F starts to growl alarmingly. ‘If you’ve had more than one buyer bidding the chances are they’ve paid over the odds.’ He concludes with a nasally presumption, as I wonder if he was friendless at school too, or if it happened by default when he qualified as a Chartered Surveyor.
It was no different in the early-nineties, I remember. Surveyors were being retrospectively sued by lenders who not many months earlier were encouraging them to rubber-stamp rash loans, with impunity. Once again banks are looking to recoup losses on irresponsible lending by pursuing valuers with the sort of 20/20 hindsight normally reserved for historians or lawyers. I ought to feel a little sympathy for the maligned man. At one stage when they were respected and a gateway to a partnership, I thought about training to become one.
‘I bloody hate those guys.’ Hisses S with venom as the surveyor leaves with a self-conscious wave.
‘Me too,’ I endorse. ‘Me too.’
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