Release Me - Tuesday

I’m sitting in a late-middle aged couples’ lounge, with a tea tray, best china and some enticing looking biscuits. These are good signs. Most people despise estate agents and wouldn’t give you the time of day, let alone some freshly-brewed darjeeling, the Royal Doulton and chocolate Hob-Nobs.

‘We called you in because we’ve used you before.’ Says the husband with a warm smile. Yes you did sir, and I remember. I might struggle with siblings’ birthdays and wedding anniversary dates, but I pretty much remember every client I’ve ever dealt with.

‘And we trust you.’ Adds the wife warmly. I sit back in the glow of unaccustomed appreciation. Hopefully they won’t quibble too much when it comes to the sole agency fee. Not that I’ll rip these nice people off. I just know they’ll be prepared to pay a fair fee for a good job. Those who’ve moved home a few times know the value a good agent can bring to the smooth conclusion of a sale, in an often fraught marketplace.

‘You’ve been around the block a few times.’ Continues the wife. ‘ Not like some of these kids in shiny suits.’ Okay, that’s probably enough praise now.

‘We wanted someone who knows the ropes and will give us straight answers. You’re long-enough in the tooth not to try all that sales and smokescreens bullshit.’ Adds the husband, leaning forward to pour the tea.

I sit back and sip the brew, waiting for them to speak. Silence can be a strong weapon in a sales situation. Too many of these, fresh out of school unqualified youngsters, forget it can be better to listen. They just talk at the potential client without engaging. I’ve done the walk round the house, have some provisional details ready to draw-up and a price in mind. Prior preparation, prevents poor performance.

‘Of course we really don’t want to move.’ Says the wife, with a shrug. I just manage not to spray their off-white carpet with milky tea.

‘You don’t?’ I splutter , hesitantly. Surely this isn’t another fool’s errand? If these people just want an insurance valuation and are too tight to pay for one, I might actually soil their carpet.

‘You see we keep seeing these adverts on daytime television.’ Says the husband by way of incipient explanation.

Funeral plans for those not suspecting a sudden death, by way of angry estate agent? I think absurdly.

‘And there must be a catch.’ Adds the wife.

Of course there is lady, it’s daytime television. They’re not appealing to anyone lucid and in gainful employment.

‘What do you know about equity release?’ Asks the husband, finally revealing why I’m here. Obviously most financial advisors now charge for advice - and if they don’t you have to ask questions about the product they are advising you purchase. This pair want the benefit of my long property experience for the price of a cuppa and some of McVitie’s finest. 

People who haven’t saved sufficiently for their retirement and think the uplift in property prices is the answer to their financial incontinence, see this wheeze as a way to stay in their home and fund a few round the world cruises and party lifestyle, until the health gives up. The debt is often the disappointed beneficiaries’ problem. 

‘You realise you are just deferring the interest cost and have no method of repaying it other than selling up when you can no longer cope with the house.’ I say cautiously. I already come across families in distress from the last time this method of ‘free-money’ from you home was popular. Elderly people who didn’t think they’d live as long and now are being pressed to sell to repay a long-spent loan, for a kitchen and a Saga holiday. The next big miss-selling scandal?

‘But we can have all this money and stay in our home.’ Counters the wife. Until they ask for it back or the interest wipes out any equity you have left and gives your children a debt to repay along with the funeral costs, I ponder sourly.

‘So you don’t really get something for nothing.’ Concludes the husband at the door.

Only me.

---------

Memory Lane - Sunday

‘So how do you know the happy couple?’ Asks a man in sports casual, with a belly belying the brand. I’m at a birthday bash for one of my oldest friends, curiously his day correlates, quite closely, with his wife’s – but then he had two other spouses before he hit on a match. They have thrown a joint celebration.

‘We used to work together way back when.’ I tell the man, as his considerably younger girlfriend – we’ve already established over watery chilli and cold rice, that he too has been keeping matrimonial lawyers in villa holidays – looks on feigning interest.

The man chuckles voluminously, his vast man breasts jiggling the premium brand company logo distractingly. Still, stops me focusing on his barely legal girlfriend’s tits. I wonder if he stalks his daughter’s Facebook friends’ page to save paying out for dating website’s fees?

‘You one of those property sharks too?’ Asks the man between tracer- bullet-like grains of Uncle Ben’s finest, he’s projectile ejecting in my direction.

I feel my wife’s hand close round my arm in a vice-firm warning not to start an argument. I nod a suitably apologetic confirmation then enquire as to his profession?

‘Ex Royal Navy,’ grins the man pausing dramatically to allow anyone sufficiently interested to enquire after rank, campaigns fought and which of the few remaining ships he might have sailed on. I don’t give him the pleasure.

Slightly deflated, the man warbles something undecipherable about now doing consultancy work using his maritime expertise. Unemployed then, says the inner voice with the big shoulder chip. Juts as well this no-longer-able seaman is unaware we mock ageing ex-service personnel, who insist on adding a long finished rank to their names when registering for property, with something like: Group Captain – insert double-barrelled name – RAF (Retarded). The simple pleasures get you through a day of pompous time-wasters.

‘God he was a bore.’ I tell my wife, straining to make myself heard over a cheesy compilation of eighties hits, at least three of which I’m embarrassed to realise I own – on vinyl though, so they are lurking in the loft. We won’t be moving in a while what with punitive stamp duty and nobody wanting to sell a home to a fellow agent without a backhander. My sons can dump the warped records and toys my wife refused to throw away, when I’m no longer capable of climbing a ladder - or sitting on the mantelpiece in an urn.

‘You dislike everybody.’ Hisses my wife, smiling at another person whose name I can’t recall.

‘You haven’t been to all their homes and pretended to like their children…or pets..’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘..or wives.’

That one made her think.

‘You ok mate?’ Asks the host as he wobbles to where I’m sitting morosely. He’s one of the few people who can address me as mate without my hackles rising. He’s pissed, and I want to be. I nod towards the projector screen where a half-lifetime of photographic memories are scrolling through on a loop. It was amusing at first but I’ve seen myself ageing, dropping hair and adding weight for about an hour now, as I dip in and out of my friend’s life through the course of several decades, several children and several – of his – marriages.

‘Yeh.’ He says reading my mind. ‘I thought it would be a good laugh when I scanned and loaded them all.’ He pauses, as what I think is his mother, appears in a faded shot. ‘But a lot of them are dead now.’

We talk for a while, remembering old times before the conversation verges uncomfortably towards maudlin.

‘You know what all the old gits say when I go to value their homes?’ Asks my friend semi-rhetorically.

‘Don’t get old?’ I respond, to a nod of recognition.

‘Yeh, every time.’ He replies, grinning.

‘Alternative isn’t too peachy.’ I say, as a shot of me in a double-breasted suit, with a hint of a mullet hair cut, scrolls by.

‘You okay?’ Questions my wife, as the car buzzes along the motorway and I slump in the passenger seat, several pints too many sloshing uncomfortably in my belly.

Alive and still kicking.

------

Get the 'Agents Diary' ebook while I'm still here...

http://amzn.to/ttGZ4j

US Readers: http://amzn.to/vXpFJf