The Price Is Wrong - Tuesday

Please don’t say it.

‘The thing is, we can’t afford to reduce our price, it’s so much more expensive where we want to move to.’

‘I appreciate that.’ I say cautiously. You work hard enough to win instructions to sell from vendors, so you don’t want to lose them before you’ve earned a penny - unless you are an on-line outfit, who take the money up front and couldn’t care less afterwards…

‘We need every last pound, or we’ll never get something as nice as our house.’ Says the wife, waving her hand round the dated lounge, with a faded 1980s wall frieze that will eventually come back in fashion, if they wait long enough.

The intransigent woman has missed the irony of her comments. If it’s more expensive where they want to relocate to, you are not going to get the same property, for the same money. Are you?

Please don’t say it.

‘What we’d really like to do.’  Begins the husband - please don’t say that either - ‘Is pick our house up and move it to Surrey.’

Too late. Idiot. I should tell them, but truth is one of the first casualties of war - and property sales.

‘I expect you hear the a lot.’ Says the wife, with an apologetic shrug. Every f***ing day, madam.

‘Oh not really,’ I lie. ‘It’s an understandable sentiment.’ It’s not.

‘So why exactly is our house not selling?’ Asks the husband, frowning.

Experience tells me to tread cautiously. Telling someone they might like to clear underwear off the radiators before viewings, or spray some air freshener around to mask the stench of their flea-bitten pets, or even wash-up the debris from last nights’ takeaway, isn’t always that well received. I’m wounded already, so another casualty in this war, I can do without. But they really need some straight-shooting.

‘You remember I recommended an asking price £15,000 less than we started with?’ I venture, by way of a probe at the enemies’ defences.

‘I remember you were £20,000 lower than two of the other agents we spoke to.’ Replies the wife, icily.

Reconnoitre over,  heavy entrenched resistance ahead.

In a spirit of gentle reconciliation, I list the data I have with me. The number of viewings so far, the adverts we’ve placed in the local press, the hits from the on-line property platforms. The feedback from the viewers.

‘Yes but we just haven’t found the right person yet.’ Says the wife, doggedly.

Someone who likes water-marked whisper grey bathroom suites, a tired limed-oak kitchen with burns on the working surfaces and carpets with more stains than a tramp’s trousers?

‘You are just not bringing the right type of buyer round.’ Suggests the husband, with a hint of annoyance. One who likes to pay over-the-odds for a home that if they stay another decade without updating, could be one of those museum-piece time-capsule exhibits?

Please don’t say it.

‘We might have to consider using another agent.’ Suggests the wife, confirming my fears, but not saying that hated phrase.

Now I’m really worried. If they’ve checked our sole agency agreement, they’ll know they can give me two weeks notice and I don’t want another agent to come in and sell at the price it should have been all along.

Of course I could have refused to place their home on the market at this inflated figure, at the beginning. But I fought off several other competing agents, two of which, vastly overstated the value to try and grab the business and lock out the other agents. Old estate agency adage: If you haven’t got it, you can’t sell it.

I take a deep breath and tell them my suggested price reduction, sweetened with a fresh advertising push and some advertorial in the local free rag. I pause and pray.

Please don’t say it.

‘You must be joking.’ Says the husband.

I’m not. But please don’t say it, anyway. The wife scowls at me. Here it comes.

‘We’re not giving it away, you know.’

And there it is.

Again.

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Let's Do The Timewarp - Wedneday

Stuck in traffic again. If I’m not gridlocked I’m dodging aggressive traffic wardens, determined to not rest until every town is a wasteland of boarded up units interspersed by charity shops and coffee outlets. I have idiot trainee F alongside me so there’s not a lot of intellectual stimulus and the local radio presenter – only allowed as an auditory intruder in case he can pre-warn me of any further traffic blockages – is vainly trying to plug some absurd competition to guess three celebrities from a trio of nano-second clips. The hook is tens of thousands of ‘life changing’ pounds that won’t even buy you a studio flat round here. God, I despair of humanity.

‘Who do you reckon they are then?’ Enthuses F, nodding at the radio. ‘We could ring in.’

‘You might as well try and guess the lottery numbers.’ I tell F wearily, spotting an opposition for sale board and bristling uncomfortably - even after all this time.

‘Yes but it’s a huge amount of money.’ Continues F. It’s not. I point out the cost of housing stock and then remind the fool that to call in you need to ring some pumped-up price phone number that is in all probability funding the ‘giveaway’. F looks crestfallen. He has to learn sooner or later.

Finally we move and I take a rabbit-run short cut through some 1930s housing stock. The roof tiles have been replaced, on some, with unsightly concrete interlocking pieces that will be throwing up survey problems in years to come, as they’ll be too heavy for the existing struts and purlins.

What sort of vintage do you think these are? I say, nodding towards the spec-development semis, while squinting at the unaccustomed sun and tugging out my sunglasses.

F frowns. I wait, then bump over several sleeping policeman. My back winces ahead of F’s pearl of wisdom. He hasn’t a clue.

‘It’s hard to tell.’ He eventually ventures.

‘Look for styling cues.’ I tell him, seeing, through my tinted vision, bay windows, tile hung elevations and cast iron guttering.

‘Uhm, are they like original Ray-Bans?’ F finally asks.

Think I’ve mentioned no minimum qualification for estate agents before...

‘That development.’ I say to F as we pass a mock Tudor cul-de-sac of identikit executive homes, all with double garages but still not enough parking for the two teenagers, four car families, now living there.

‘They’re kind of modern’ Ventures F timidly. They were when I first started in estate agency, I think gloomily. Now the Energy Performance Certificate assessor will pick holes in the loft insulation levels, the lack of cavity wall filling, then condemn the wheezing boilers with crappy energy ratings and no condensers.

‘They’re 1980s.’ I tell F, as I swing back out on to the main road then use my local knowledge to dodge more road works, darting down a road containing some rare 1950s bungalows.

‘These.’ I say to F, as we exit past the temporary traffic lights and I get a rare shiver of pleasure as I spot the van we had been following still stuck on red, some three hundred yards back. No sign of any workmen, needless to say.

‘Well these are old.’ Posits F staring at the last bungalow on a corner plot that might just take a planning application for in-fill, if it wasn’t for the tricky access back on to the main road.

‘How old?’ I press. ‘Pre or post war?’

F shrugs then asks.

‘Is that the Falklands war?’

‘Here we are.’ I tell F as we turn onto a sprawling housing development with virtually no architectural merit. The gardens are open-plan as will be the downstairs accommodation. Crazy paving paths and matching chimneybreasts are hardly complemented by huge, single-glazed, picture windows that drip with condensation nine months of the year.

‘These are cool.’ Enthuses F as I take a sideways glance at the imbecile and almost mount the kerb.

‘The energy assessor might think so, but that’s for a different reason.’ I carp.

‘1960s like Mad Men, you mean?’ Asks F after I’ve tired of waiting. I nod and he looks at me hesitantly. Eventually he speaks.

‘Is that, like when you were born?’

I preferred it when he was wrong.

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