Fawlty Towers - Tuesday

‘We were hoping for  bit more than that.’ Says the elderly lady, and her crinkly husband nods in agreement. Either that, or he’s fallen asleep.

I’m sat in another dusty, overheated lounge, shelves stuffed with a lifetime’s mementoes. It’s mostly gift shop tat and doubtless will go in a skip when the beneficiaries get to clear out the couple’s last resting place.

‘Well you did say you wanted a realistic valuation, Mrs Glover.’ I counter gently. ‘And the developer will be needing the same.’

‘That’s true dear.’ Mumbles the man. Reassuringly he’s still alive. Probate can really hold up a sale.

‘It’s just….’ Begins the old lady falteringly.

‘Go on.’ I urge.

‘It’s just that the other two agents said much more than you.’

‘They were barely out of short trousers mind.’ Says her husband. ‘Didn’t like the cut of their jib.’

This is a familiar problem. Ever since I entered the industry I’ve been plagued by over-valuers. Agents who mislead potential clients to get their property on their books - often on a long sole agency - then batter the hapless vendors down to a sensible price once competitors, who were honest and accurate with suggested pricing, are locked out.

‘Well, did they show you comparable properties to yours that have actually sold?’ I ask. 

‘Not really.’ Admits the wife.

‘Told you they were charlatans.’ Croaks the old fella. I’m really warming to him. Just hope he lasts the protracted sales’ process.

‘Yes but it’s thirty thousand pounds.’ Continues the wife doggedly.

Not if you’re never going to get it, I want to shout.

‘And the flat we want is ever so pricey, we need every penny we can get.’ Says the old lady, not unnaturally.

‘Thought we were downsizing,’ confides the husband. ‘But we’re going to end up hardly banking anything once we’ve bought the sheltered flat.’

It’s a pet hate of mine. One that grows with every passing year as I move towards the same dilemma this pair are facing. The largely illusionary safety of an old persons’ home, with built-in security and the comfort of a pull-cord to tug when you collapse on the bathroom floor. In reality any shitester can con a resident to buzz them in to the building and the emergency call goes through to a dis-interested call-centre worker somewhere at the cheaper end of the Commonwealth.

‘What do you think we should do?’ Presses the husband. Damn it, and I really like this couple. I could tell them it would be cheaper to stay put, get a gardener and some home help. Avoid paying , way over what I consider sensible for a one bedroom retirement flat. A flat with punitive service charges, an onerous lease full of pitfalls and unfair charges for the beneficiaries when they come to try and sell, and one that will be worth less than their parents paid for it.

I could open a tourist shop with the amount of fudge I’ve dispensed over the years. We agree to market the home at £20,000 more than I’d like, but £10,000 less than the smoke-blowers have suggested. It’s a win, of sorts.

‘Got the developers of the retirement flat, the Glovers are hoping to buy, on line one.’ Says negotiator S, an hour after I’ve returned to the office and before I’ve even uploaded the sales’ particulars. I tense. I don’t like this lot, but then I deal with people I wouldn’t share a drink with, daily. 

‘Cheers. Put them through.’

‘How much could you sell it for, in six weeks?’ Presses the lady sales consultant. 

I offer her a gift-wrapped, metaphorical, 200gms of salted caramel product.

‘We need absolutes.’ She says curtly.

You don’t get those in property, lady.

‘If we take their house in part-exchange we want it sold quickly.’

I bet you do. And you’ll offer them 85% of it’s actual value - my original price not the over-inflated figure - and expect them to pay, what is about 150% of the true price, for your shrunken square-footage box.

Have a feeling I’ll be needing that gardener’s phone number.

---------

Battle Zone - Friday

I’m outside a pleasant semi-detached house in one of the nicer parts of town. I want it on my books - but so will every other estate agent locally.

Preparation is everything in a sales situation. I have a briefcase full of promotional material, agency contracts, print-outs of suitable buyers I have registered looking for similar homes to the one I’m about to value - and most importantly of all, data on comparable properties sold recently.

I glance at my watch, then double check with the car clock. I’m at least fifteen minutes early after the last appointment turned out to be the biggest pair of time wasters since….well….since the previous ones.

In the days when I used to help train new recruits, before I was deemed too dated and dowdy, I would labour the importance of never being late for a valuation appointment. The owner - at least the house proud ones - would have tidied up and been looking at the clock for at least ten minutes before the agreed time. Run behind and turn up just five minutes late and your potential client may well have been looking out the curtains fretting about your arrival, for at least quarter of an hour.

This bitch clearly hasn’t though, I realise, as I look across the road and recognise a bitter rival’s company car. It doesn’t have the tacky paint job, or the corporate logo down the side but it’s just as conspicuous to me. Damn it. I’m on a beauty parade and having pulled down the sun vizor and checked a few moments ago, I’m going to need to labour the charity work and world peace angle. Calling it a vanity mirror was painfully accurate.

My mobile chirps insistently. I really need to change that irritating ringtone, but I’ll need to wait until one of my sons is back from University. I can’t have the office thinking I’m more of an inept Luddite than they already do.

‘Yes?’ I enquire curtly, seeing it’s the office calling. I was about to turn the phone off. You don’t want it ringing when you are half way through trying to convince an intransigent owner their home really isn’t worth the £30,000 more a rival agent told them they could get.

Negotiator S comes on the line, her soothing tones a loss to the Premium Rate phone industry.

‘Could you fit in a late valuation this evening?’ She asks artfully.

I can’t afford not to, even though it could mean another charcoaled dinner when I finally get home - and my wife doesn’t do barbecues…

I jot down the details, hoping it won’t be me and several other agents this time.

‘Did you know I was going to be in a queue of oily liars in suits, on this valuation?’ I ask S. She laughs.

‘What?’ I demand.

‘Well that sort of indicates you’re a greasy bloke in a three piece.’

As it happens, I ditched the waistcoat after too much ridicule from my unsympathetic team. In truth, it was too sweaty anyway. Nothing worse then reeking of body odour when you are trying to appear fragrant and professional.

‘She didn’t say there’d be others.’ Answers S defensively. ‘But then there always is, isn’t there?’

There is. Unless it’s a probate sale. The dead are less argumentative than the living, although the squabbling beneficiaries more than make up for it.

‘Do you know who is in there?’ Quizzes S, as I look at the dashboard clock and wonder how long to give it before I cut short my opponent’s sales pitch

‘The shitester with the zero-fade haircut and loud ties.’ I tell her sourly.

‘God, you’ll not be able to breathe in there for aftershave fumes.’ Chuckles S.

More importantly, I’ll have to push my suggested sale price to stratospheric proportions. The outfit the man works for are notorious for misleading sellers to secure a sole agency, before starting to work on big price reductions.

‘We reckon you should sneak over and let his tyres down.’ Says S mischievously.

It’s tempting, but knowing my luck I’d be caught on someone’s home CCTV.

I’ll just pull his for sale board down after dark.

------

Cottaging Again - Tuesday

‘Everything okay?’ I ask as I come back to a quiet office and a glum looking T, my assistant manager.

‘We’ve had two more offers.’ Replies T with less enthusiasm than I’d prefer. Just like that time two aggressive drunks accosted me on a narrow walkway behind those council flats, I sense a problem.

Normally we crave offers and sometimes no matter how many adverts you place, how many sets of details you snail-mail or email, no matter how many viewings you conduct, a single offers isn’t forthcoming. T has two, so they can’t be good.

‘Which property?’ I ask warily, already knowing the probable answer.

‘The cottage,’ says T. ‘It’s always the bloody cottage at the moment.’

‘Any chance of a mortgage placement?’ Asks fat M our financial advisor M, waddling back from the gents’ toilet for at least the third time this morning. I dread to think how his lower intestine looks, his gait across the office resembles a peristaltic movement.

‘It’s cash buyers only!’ Shout T and negotiator S in unison. S doesn’t often get angry but when she does her breasts heave most distractingly. There should be an adult’s only warning on her desk, perhaps one of those red circles the film censors use with the figure 18 in the centre - or maybe it’s just me…

‘Alright. Calm down.’ Respond M, fat jowls flapping alarmingly. Please don’t say it, I think, moments before he adds, not for the first time. ‘A man has to eat.’ 

He see-saws back to his office leaving the faint aroma of cheap cooked fatty product I get when I succumb to a sausage roll from Greggs.

‘He’ll still have to qualify them.’ I tell T ruefully.

‘Not much point they both need massive mortgages and there’s no way they’ll get them on that place.’

‘You’ve told them that, obviously.’ I say to T.

‘Obviously.’ 

The cottage in question is the sort of dilapidated home couples with more desire to have their fifteen minutes of fame, than to save a decent deposit, end up drooling over on those ghastly property based television programmes that proliferate on daytime television. And as for the so called property ‘expert’ presenters, well lets just say - they are not.

To my certain knowledge the cottage requires at least £50,000 worth of updating, new wall ties on one elevation and some underpinning to the poorly constructed rear extension. I advised the beneficiaries to take it to auction, for a binding contract and the right sort of buyer. One son of the deceased agreed, the two other siblings wanted the ethereal promise of much more money if some mug punter could pay over the odds and find a dodgy lender.

‘They are just greedy.’ Says T disdainfully, referring to the battling beneficiaries. By the state of the cottage none of them helped out with the late mother’s cleaning and maintenance needs.

‘That’s just families.’ I tell T, as we discuss the best way to present the offers to the trio. There’s a sale in progress already, one arranged at a figure they weren’t over-enamoured with, but to a cash buyer, fully aware of what they were taking on.

‘Is there no way we can just lose the bids?’ Asks F, my intellectually-challenged trainee, joining the discussion.

‘It’s illegal.’ Parrot T and S in unison again. I hope T’s not doing anything else in tandem with her.

‘But there’s no way they’ll ever buy the place,’ persist F. ‘They’ll just trash the other sale then pullout three months down the line when they can’t get funding.’ From the mouths of imbeciles, sometimes comes sense. Sometimes.

M is going to need to confirm the two ill-informed buyers’ finical arrangements, something they won’t take kindly to, then I’m going to need to explain to three barely communicating siblings why an extra £10,000 or £15,000 respectively isn’t worth a hill of beans, if the buyers ultimately can not proceed.

 ‘My sister wants to take the extra £15,000,’ Says the more reasonable brother mid-afternoon. She won’t get it, I want to scream, not even her third of it.

‘You’ll tell the other buyers won’t you?’ States the brother.

No problem.

------

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Glad Tidings We Bring - Monday

I pull up outside an identikit  ‘executive’ detached house on the sort of soulless estate you’ll find anywhere in Britain, the only difference being prices each area can sustain. You have to laugh, because the architects who design these developments invariably live in a Grade Two listen ex-vicarage somewhere semi-rural, with at least half an acre of garden.

I notice the house I’m visiting is the only one without Christmas lights twinkling in the window, or draped across the bargeboards like LED stalactites. At least I won’t be tripping over a tacky Santa Please Stop Here sign when I walk up the meagre front garden. The bloke I’m seeing is in the middle of a matrimonial dispute, the wife and kids have gone and he’s left with four bedrooms and a mortgage he can’t sustain.

I ring the bell, already feeling gloomy. Separations are poisonous at the best of time and I’m not about to make this guy’s Christmas by telling him he won’t have enough equity left to buy an airing cupboard, once everyone else has had their cut. When families split up at Christmas you never forget it – even after nearly forty years…

Three more rings and I’m about to give up and push a business card through the door, then a light comes on in the hall and I hear ponderous footsteps. At least he’s still alive, that poor girl who found a dead vendor on a viewing a few years back never got over it, plus the beneficiaries instructed another firm to sell the flat. A dead loss.

‘Sorry the place is a bit of a mess.’ Says the man as I follow him into the kitchen, surfaces strewn with the remains of several nights’ takeaway meals. He’s sporting an embryonic beard and dressed in jeans and a stained t-shirt. After half a lifetime of shaving everyday I long to sport designer stubble, but by the time I’ve paid off my own mortgage I’ll be producing the sort of beard only acceptable in a Father Christmas grotto.

‘Fancy a beer?’ Asks the soon to be ex-owner. He has several spent cans alongside the smeared tin foil containers and by the look of his red eyes is either half-pissed or has been crying. I decline. I never drink at work, I’m driven to drink but not until the closed sign is in the window.

A quick tour of the echoing house, kids’ rooms stripped of stuffed toys and Play Stations, we’re back on the stools, sat at the grubby worktop. Too dark to look at the garden and not much need, the plots here are parsimonious. I can see the house behind through the fast-growing Leylandi and I know which way we’re facing from experience.

‘You married?’ Asks the man as I prepare to hit him with the price. It’s better than it might have been twelve months ago, but it still isn’t what he’ll want to hear. I answer in the affirmative.

‘Too bad.’ He continues. ‘I was going to warn you off.’ Then with a wry smile he tells me the old adage about a woman being like a hurricane. They spin you round, f**k you up and when they leave, take half your house with them. I’ve heard it before, of course, but if you want someone’s business you’ll laugh at their jokes, coo at their children, pat their dogs and even…. actually in this case I don’t need to screw his wife, someone else is already doing that.

‘You having a laugh?’ Challenges the man, almost spitting out his lager, when I tell him what he’d need to ask for a reasonably quick sale. And again I curse a certain tabloid newspaper that runs House Price Rise stories almost daily. You don’t get much variety as a journalist with that outfit.

‘Well I’m just going to have to stay put.’ Concludes the man with a hint of satisfaction as we part. I want to keep him sweet – although he doesn’t know I’m back here tomorrow to meet his wife.

After all it’s the season of goodwill to all men – and women if they’re the decision maker.

---

Have a peaceful Christmas and thanks for reading.

S.A.

Reanimator - Monday

  

‘Can you do a viewing on number 21?’ Asks negotiator S as I come through the office door.

‘The dead man’s house?’ I ask, plonking my briefcase down and glancing at the message book.

‘Ugh, I wish you wouldn’t call it that.’ Chides S, pretty face frowning.

‘It’s just a fact.’ I tell her seeing with sinking heart that ‘Bomber’ the surveyor will be valuing a sale we agreed ten days ago. Might as well stick the For Sale board back up, I think glumly. Bomber’s idea of valuing is to find out the agreed price and subtract 10%, to arrive at his valuation.

‘Yes but it’s so creepy to think about what happened there.’ Continues S, as I fantasise about catching Bomber in a loft carrying out a Home Buyer’s Report and snatching away his step-ladder.

‘It’s Bomber’s office on the line boss, has anyone seen him since he surveyed London Road? Only he’s been missing for two days.’

‘Tell them I can’t discuss that over the phone, they’ll have to wait for my written report….’

‘Don’t even think about all that nonsense.’ I tell S coming back to reality. ‘It’s just bricks and mortar and anyway the dead vendors aren’t so fussy about the sale price.’

‘Beneficiaries are though.’ Retorts S. She has a point – two quite prominent ones.

‘Can’t T or F do the viewing anyway?’ I grumble, looking at the office diary and then scanning my inbox. God I yearn for a time, pre-email, when the only disappointment was daily when the postman came, or when you trudged to the Document Exchange box in the nearby lawyer’s office. I see the bean counter boss has sent me three missives in the space of an hour. There’s a man who has never stood on a damp doorstep waiting for viewers who aren’t going to show. He doesn’t even need to push a pen any more – just the Return key.

‘F has the dentist.’ Replies S as a fleeting fantasy involving a large drill and no pain relief for the idiot trainee, flashes through my mind. ‘And T has to visit his Grandmother in hospital later.’

‘I’m sure he’s been to two funerals for dead Grandmothers already.’ I gripe ungraciously.

‘He hasn’t.’ Replies S curtly.

‘What time? I ask throwing in the towel. You need to be resilient in sales but you also need to know when you’re beaten, or you’ll take a lot of unnecessary punishment.

‘Erm, it’s a late one, sorry.’ Says S with a shrug. Not much chance of the owner doing the viewing, short of an unlikely resurrection – particularly as they cremated him.

‘It’s a bit chilly in here.’ Says the woman as I try not to glance at my watch and imagine how incinerated my supper is going to be. Not as toasted as the outgoing owner, but even so…

‘I’ll shut some windows.’ I say, smiling at her and receiving a scowl from her boyfriend in return. Calm down mate, I think, I might want to shaft her but I don’t want sex with the woman.

All the windows I opened on arrival ten minutes before the viewing time, pulled in, smell still lingering in my nostrils, I turn back to the couple. He’s younger than her. Second time round for the lady, divorce proceeds to spend. She is some sort of Cougar; he’s some sort of parasite, suggests the little voice unhelpfully. Don’t judge, just get them to buy it, I answer internally – and stop talking to yourself

‘The sofa set would fit in here easily.’ Says the woman to the sponger, flagging up an Olympic-sized buying signal. The supper can wait. I sense a deal.

‘Can we afford it?’ Asks the man artfully. You mean can her ex-husband? I think.

‘Will they take an offer?’ Asks the lady, smiling at me for the first time.

The ex-owner won’t return my calls, but his bickering children seem keen to get the cash.

‘I’ve got two more viewings tomorrow.’ I answer obliquely. The smile vanishes faster than cake at a Weight Watchers’ Christmas party.

‘You would say that wouldn’t you.’ Sneers the man-boy.

‘We’ll take it.’ Says the decision maker.

Week saved - back from the dead.

-----

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Key To Another Door - Tuesday

‘Don’t you get spooked by dead people’s homes?’ Asks dopey trainee F nervously, as we pull up outside a ramshackle semi-detached house with the look of a decade or two’s neglect clinging to the elevation. I have the keys nestling in my pocket and the covering letter from the probate department of a local solicitor, is in my briefcase. It gives me a nice warm feeling.

‘Death, debt and divorce.’ I remind F as we open a rusting iron gate to a groaning accompaniment. ‘I’ve told you, they are the estate agent’s best friend no matter how the economy is doing.’

‘Yeh but it’s a bit…’ Begins F, tailing off as we dodge round a wild looking buddleia that’s trying to reclaim the crumbling path.

‘A bit what?’ I snap, as a thorny runner from something low-lying snags my trousers and I stoop to unpick it warily. I can’t afford to lose another suit to wear and tear.

‘A bit like grave robbing?’ Ventures F uncertainly.

I tell F curtly that we are providing a service, as I fumble with the tarnished brass keys and try to find the right one for the peeling front door. Remind him, with both debt and divorce we are putting people out of their misery and that with death it’s already been done. He doesn’t look convinced.

‘The deceased don’t grumble about the price and fee.’ I tell F sagely as I finally find the right key and the lock turns with a throaty rasp reminiscent of a death rattle. Bit creepy.

‘Yes but the beneficiaries still do.’ Replies F with unusual accuracy. Perhaps he is learning something.

The door gives after a couple of shoves, but stops after a foot or so as I encounter a few months worth of junk mail. At least I hope I do. I wouldn’t be the first estate agent to find a dead owner. A colleague bustled in a few years ago, viewer on their heels, to find a note on the stairs warning them not to go to the bedroom and to call the police. The man hoping to view the home grumbled that his time had been wasted even as the ambulance crew shook their heads and prepared the body bag.

‘Smells stale in here.’ Says F unnecessarily as I kick the free papers, take away menus and final demands to one side and we enter the hall. A locked house starts to feel musty after a week on holiday, if a stiff has been swinging from the loft hatch for a month or so, the stench will linger for months no matter how many times you try to gloss over it…

‘People like to know what happened to the owner before they buy don’t they?’ States F semi-rhetorically, as I feel a cobweb cling to my face while we move into the kitchen. ‘Best to keep the detail to a minimum.’ I advice F, adding. ‘Act dumb.’ He looks a little hurt, but he’ll get used to it.

A stack of unwashed plates is cultivating some sort of mushroom-style culture, as a tap drips mournfully behind.

‘I wonder what his last meal was?’ Questions F as he peers at the detritus. Probably something pureed I think glumly, as I glance down the jungle-like back garden and wonder who we’ll get to clear the shrubs.

In the cramped sitting room the remains of a real fire sits coldly in the grate. Ashes to ashes. The room is dark, with the threadbare curtains pulled against the daylight.

‘We’re going to need someone in to clear this lot.’ I say to F. ‘Not a lot of value here. Might have to pay to get it taken away.’

‘That’s wrong isn’t it?’ Says F morosely. ‘You live all your life and your stuff just ends up in the council tip.’

I glance round the room and spot the spaces where ornaments, a clock or two and some photographs must have sat, judging by the dust patterns. ‘Relatives have been in and taken all they want.’ I tell F as I open my brief case.

The second professional to measure-up recently.

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