Funding Gap - Thursday

‘Any luck?’ I ask fat finance man M, after a young couple leave his office. He still didn’t see them to the door, but unless you’re an impoverished French butcher, I still see no point in flogging a dead horse.

‘Not enough deposit saved yet.’ Bemoans M with a shake of his jowly jaws, before adding.’Makes you wish for the days when you could source a cheeky liar loan and tuck them up with an endowment policy.’

‘That’s disgraceful.’ Chides negotiator S with a pretty pout. I forget she’s so young she didn’t have to flog insurance policies, with dubious benefits to buyers, just to please corporate masters. It was about the time the line between the estate agent’s duty to the vendor became permanently blurred. I’ve worn glasses ever since.

‘You’ll follow them up though.’ I tell M pointedly. He won’t. The only time he shows any forward momentum is when there’s an unfinished packet of biscuits in the office kitchen.

‘They know where to find me.’ Counters M, heading for the aforementioned location.

Yep, and so do we.

‘Not sure I’ll ever be able to afford my own property and I spend all day selling them.’ Announces S sadly.

‘Bank of mum and dad is what you need.’ Says assistant manager T, referring to the one source of finance that will lend, without a raft of fact finding paperwork and a twenty-five year indenture.

‘Haven’t seen my dad for years.’ Answers S mournfully.

‘All the more reason to tap him up for a ten percent deposit.’ Says T jauntily. ‘Push the guilt trip buttons.’

S just shakes her head and looks achingly sad. And all these couples squabbling over the matrimonial home value, still convince themselves separation is in the children’s best interest and won’t harm them at all. It’s still harming me thirty-five years down the line.

‘Didn’t look old enough to buy anyway.’ Contributes B from her lettings’ desk. Didn’t stop her eying up the boyfriend though. I saw her. At least I was more discrete with the girlfriend.

‘You’ll buy eventually.’ I tell S with as much conviction as I can muster. It will probably take another property crash and I’m not sure I’m looking forward to my third one. But the market is cyclical - always has been.

‘Do you think prices will come down then?’ Queries S.

Hell yes. I have for some time, but then with a burgeoning influx of population fuelled by migrants, and pensioners who refuse to die at the appointed age, it may take a while yet. We could build a lot more homes of course, but planning restrictions, green belt policies and greedy landowners aren’t exactly helping things.

‘They can’t keep accelerating.’ I eventually tell S. She doesn’t look convinced.

‘More mug punters for me to let crappy converted flats to.’ Says B, unhelpfully. S scowls at her and so do I, but inwardly, B’s figures help pay my own rent and as an estate agent I don’t need extra enemies.

‘Is it just me,’ asks M, returning with a mug of coffee. ‘Or are buyers looking younger and younger?’ It’s the exact opposite actually, with the average age of a first time buyer being pushed towards middle age. I see countless overgrown children still squatting it their parents’ homes like cosy Cuckoos, but I know what M means.

‘It’s like when policemen start looking young enough to be your baby brother.’ Announces B all glassy-eyed.

‘They’re not real policemen if you just persuade them to dress up like that, for some sweets.’ Snipes S bitchily.

Ouch.

Before a cat fight breaks out - and rather disappointingly - the door opens and some pre-pubescent boy in an ill-fitting Next suit comes in and asks for the keys to a property we have on multi-agency, along with several of our competitors.

‘Who was that spunk bubble?’ Asks M slurping his drink loudly, after the young lad has left.

‘New trainee negotiator for that lot across the road.’ Answers S.

‘Didn’t look old enough to shave.’ Replies M.

‘I could show him something on my register.’ Says B ambiguously.

I’m really feeling my age.

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Perfect Day - Saturday

‘I’m surprised you agreed to go somewhere this close to home.’ Says my wife’s friend’s husband, as we head towards a nearby pub, with live music on offer.

‘I’m hoping it’s too dark to be recognised and too loud for conversations.’ I tell him bluntly.

He nods and shuts up.

That’s the dilemma of the estate agent. Local knowledge is a key ingredient to winning the business over younger, more tech-savvy upstarts. And living in the same town you work in can underpin that awareness of regional quirks such as; housing stock vagaries, schooling catchment areas, common problems on particular construction types, etc. Unfortunately, it also means people know where to find you and tend to recognise you out and about socially. If you’ve just informed someone they’ve been gazumped, or gazundered they don’t always take too kindly to seeing you in civvies, at the bar.

‘Sound like the band has already started.’ Says my wife, as we approach the pub door and a deep throbbing base stirs the ground beneath our feet, and probably causes a few more of those 1970s built bungalows with the flooring screed compaction problems, to require mini-piling.

‘At least I won’t have to talk about what the property market is going to do.’ I reply, as we push through the door and are enveloped with the warm fug of a crowded room and the pounding guitars of a punk-based band, playing loud and fast.

The room is literally bouncing. Floorboards springy from use and awash with spilt beer. But due to the demographic of ageing rockers with big bellies and little hair, it’s more likely arthritis causing the drinks spillage, and excess weight damaging the floor joists. Pleasingly, unlike the last time I heard The Stranglers’ Something Better Change being played, there’s not a hint of phlegm or menace, in the air. At least, not until I get spotted…

‘That man over there is waving at you.’ Bellows my wife, mouth to my ear, as drinks shoutily obtained, we stand and watch the band thrash out another three minute, three chord classic. We’re so near the big Peavey PA rig I can almost feel the air disturbance as the speaker cones pump in and out.

I look furtively across the room and see an ex-vendor of mine. He is rather incongruously wearing a blazer, with jeans and a formal shirt. He’s a colossal time-waster. The type that periodically puts their home on the market only to take it off again, once you find a buyer, citing the old chestnut, “there’s nothing a nice as ours on the market, now if we could just pick it up and move it….”

I give a half nod of recognition, one calculated not to encourage the twat to fight his way through the crowd to bellow an update on his house value request, at me. Then I see a local solicitor with a woman who is definitely not his wife. I’m hoping she isn’t his daughter either, the way he is holding her. A few rows over, the postman who always grumbles about our franking bag is stood next to the decorator who made a shoddy job of painting my barge boards.

‘This is one you might remember, by The Clash.’ Announces the lead singer, as the elderly band stumble in to I Fought The Law which amusingly sees the local beat policeman pogoing in a rather stiff-limbed fashion. I’m a teenager again, as I keenly try to work out which chords the guitarist is playing, while endeavouring not too spill my beer Meanwhile, a crowd of fifty-something career-drones all pretend they are proto-anarchists rather than mortgage slaves. 

‘It’s too loud to talk.’ Shouts my wife, as a Lou Reed number pounds out and my fillings rattle.

That’s the best bit, I think, nodding in agreement. Then I spot the fat building surveyor, wearing a Ramones t-shirt. In my mind, I’m still elegantly wasted, but he is most definitely corpulently-waisted.

‘You going to answer that phone?’ I say, stumbling up to bed later. My wife looks at me quizzically.

‘It’s not actually ringing, is it?’ I eventually mumble, as a beery belch bubbles up.

Only in my head.

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