Some Help To Buy - Wednesday

‘Who has he got in there?’ I ask, nodding towards fat finance man M’s office, where a fresh-faced couple are listening earnestly to him.

‘Couple of first time buyers.’ Answers assistant manager T, with a theatrical rubbing of hands.

‘He’ll eat them alive.’ Suggests loose lettings lush B, with a smirk.

‘Literally?’ Asks trainee F, with a worried look. He’s been watching too many cannibal holocaust films.

‘No, figuratively. ‘ I tell him, to no appreciable enlightenment.

‘Just because he’s big-boned, you can’t make fattest comments like that.’ Reprimands negotiator S, in an unexpected show of sympathy towards the portly policy peddler. 

‘He’s just a greedy pig.’ Corrects B.

‘He says it’s hormonal.’ Defends S, wavering slightly.

‘They all do.’ Responds B dismissively.

‘What do you think boss?’ Asks F.

What? I wonder. Do I imagine M is a morbidly obese glutton with no off-button? Yes. Do I think he’s more interested in his commission, than the naive young buyers, or perish the thought, the client of ours whose flat they might be buying? Yes. Will I do anything about it with finance sales’ targets and a year end objective that seems further away than manned flight to Mars. Definitely not.

‘He has to fill out a fact find and an audit trail to demonstrate he’s given the best advice.’ I parrot, almost word for word from an unconvincing sales’ meeting chaired by the company’s financial services supremo, an ungracious man with an attitude and an abacus. 

‘Bollocks.’ Scoffs T. ‘You don’t believe that for one minute after all you’ve said about endowment policies he miss-sold and don’t even start me on PPI.’ 

‘Boom.’ Exclaims F excitedly.

I look at him quizzically, not for the first time.

‘He slam-dunked you there boss.’ Says F, grin faltering.

‘Bit mean to send F out on a solo leaflet drop in this weather.’ Says S, ten minutes later.

‘It’s all part of the learning process.’ I counter, watching as the young couple start to rise and leave M’s office, clutching enough paper to take out a small rain forest. They look bemused, which is probably just what M intended.

‘Can they buy the Devonshires’ flat?’ Asks T, almost before the office door has closed.

‘No. Can’t afford it, they need to buy new. I’ve signed them up for a Help To Buy scheme, they’ve seen a new build for £300,000.’ Says M with a greedy grin.

‘But, the Devonshires will take £250,000 or near as damn it.’ Says T bemused.

‘Got to be a new build.’ Replies M. ‘That way they get 20% on a deferred interest loan from the Government. You should know that.’

T looks a little crestfallen, as the young couple were introduced to M, by him. Now they will be helping a developer to obtain a price they wouldn’t get without the Government’s deeply-flawed, but well-intentioned, Help To Buy Scheme. I’m not great with figures, but it seems they are paying 20% over the odds, and over what they could otherwise afford, just to keep the Chairman and shareholders of a major developer, in Tuscan villas and Range Rovers.

‘I’ll never be able to buy my own home.’ Grumbles F.

‘You could with Help To Buy.’ Counters M.

‘How long is the  Government equity loan deferred for?’ Asks T.

‘Five years with nothing to pay.’ Crows M, smiling.

‘And their deposit?’ Questions S.

‘Only need to find five percent, instead of ten.’

So propping up unsustainable prices for builders. I think sourly. I’ve seen two property crashes and my team still don’t believe it ever happens. It does.

‘Boss, do you think it’s a good deal?’ Queries F. All eyes turn towards me.

‘How long is the mortgage term for?’ I say to M, deflecting for time. M has the good grace to look slightly embarrassed.

‘Erm, thirty-nine years.’ He mumbles through a cough.

‘F**k me, did you flog them a funeral plan as well?’ Demands T.

Now I know I’m old fashioned, but if you can’t buy a home over twenty-five years, you shouldn’t be buying it.

‘Don’t stress it.’ Says M. ‘ Their parents will be dead by then and they’ll inherit.

Best advice.

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Lambs And Slaughter - Thursday

‘Lambs to the slaughter.’ Says assistant manager T, as the first batch of bright-eyed, naive punters start to arrive.

A gaggle of fresh-faces have been peering nervously through the office window, waiting for the appointed start time of our First Time Buyers’ Evening. In truth they could come in anytime, we’re really quite welcoming - obviously we soon stopped the free coffee machine after the deadbeats and vagrants started turned up for a warming drink, on us. Bad enough they sleep in the office doorway, without providing gratis hot beverages. Don’t want to encourage them - unless the come in to a big legacy from an ancient aunt.

‘Welcome, come on in.’ Encourages negotiator S, ushering in several couples, some even heterosexual ones. Very old school.

I’ve placed S on the door as she’s the most photogenic and with her décolletage she appeals to all but the gay men. Trainee F is on standby in the kitchen, to cater for that market. We welcome all persuasions, casts and creeds, as long as they can leverage a big mortgage, or have inherited cash.

‘Going well.’ Comments T, as the office fills with eager, want-to-be buyers. We’ve brought in a couple of local, user-friendly solicitors, to give a quick legal consultation. If they get the conveyancing business, they can put some probate work our way if we get a nice cold winter.

T is right. The office hasn’t been this busy, since we sold off some ex-MOD houses at knock-down prices. Pretty sure the Government undersold those, but as with the Help-To-Buy scheme, propping up unsustainable new homes’ prices, big business will always run rings around career politicians who’ve never had a proper job.

‘Keep them coming.’ Slavers obese mortgage man M, as he takes a quick waddle to the kitchen. He’s had a stream of bushy-tailed youngsters, funnelled to his desk for free financial advice, but of course nothing comes for free. I still abide by the old-fashioned Caveat Emptor motto, but luckily not many schools round here teach Latin. Just hope he hasn’t started mis-selling again, those commission claw-backs are a bastard…

‘Some of this lot aren’t exactly in the first flash of youth.’ Comments lettings lush B, as she sulks at the back of the office. She’d rather people stay locked in to renting, but it’s dead money and you can’t easily remove generations of yearning to own your own home - although ten incompetent UK Housing ministers in a decade, tried.

‘Some of this lot must be forty, plus.’ Continues B, with obvious distain. It’s partly the market, and sky-high prices driven by lack of construction and a burgeoning population. And partly over-indulgent parents, who feed, cloth and iron for giant-sized children, well into their fourth decade. Change the locks or move to a one bed flat, folks. If your daughter is fat and frigid and your son bald and still playing an Xbox, it’s time to be cruel to be kind.

I’ve had great success with first time buyers’ evening over the years. Back in the early nineties it was a terrific vehicle for gaining fresh stock, ahead of the event, then flogging endowment policies and dodgy payment protection schemes, along with the homes. I was never comfortable with the insurance and finance side of the deal, too many conflicts of interests. But needs must, and I had a big mortgage too - not an endowment one, mind….

‘That went pretty well,’ Says T as the last couple leave and we say goodbye to the tame lawyers, with a reminder that they owe us some reciprocal business, once the icy pavements arrive.

‘More than well,’ gushes M. ‘I’ve signed-up over ten couples, with a another dozen to follow up. Got to love a naive first timer.’ He really has no redeeming characteristics.

‘How about a last-time buyer event next?’ Says T with a grin. ‘Shift some of those vacant retirement flats with the piss-stained carpets.’  

‘You’re horrible.’ Says S, with a pout.

‘We could do a bog-off double-deal tie-in with the local undertaker.’ Continues T, laughing.

Burn one, get one free.

Driving Me Mad - Wednesday

‘Oh for crying out loud.’ Exclaims negotiator S. She doesn’t often bother the swear box, so something has got her agitated. I’ve thought of various methods, but we’ll draw a polite veil over those…

‘What is it?’ I enquire soothingly. We’re alone in the office and I’m showing what a caring and sharing manager I am by sitting in the front desk and facing the public. I know managers who hide in their office and stare forlornly at the profit and loss accounts, but I’m more of a front-line, man of the people kind of guy - plus I can’t fully understand the Excel spreadsheet. Dilapidations just make me think of elderly folk in sheltered accommodation having to sell at a loss and move on to a nursing home, at £1500 a week.

‘Mr Oates’ sale.’ Answers S glumly.

I grimace. This one has been running for nearly five months and if anyone tells you estate agents don’t work for their money you should read the file notes on this protracted sale. Destructive surveys, lapsed mortgage offers, wall-tie failures, antagonistic vendors and twitchy first time buyers at the bottom of the chain. The lawyers involved seem indifferent, or incompetent, and half the agents are numpties with no training and more grasp of a Koppaberg than the conveyancing system.

‘What is it this time?’ I ask S. My bean counter boss has been asking why we haven’t invoiced this sale, for the last two months. With, no sale no fee, you keep bending and spreading to accommodate like a loose-limbed rent boy, all in the hope you’ll get your money eventually.

‘They’re finally all ready to exchange,’ answers S. ‘And now they’re arguing about completion dates.’

This isn’t uncommon. Over protracted sales’ periods, antipathy can build up between the parties, and if it isn’t removing all the light fitting and toilet roll holders on the last day, it’s cutting off noses to spite faces and risking all that packing and prospecting for suitable schools, by intransigence over the moving date.

‘Who is the most vulnerable?’ I ask S, after she’s reminded me of the chain details and the personalities involved. It’s brutal, but if pressure needs to be exerted, I need to find the weakest link. It should be a job for the solicitors involved to sort out the completion dates, but at least two of the individuals involved will only answer to letters and as they charge by the missive and take weeks to reply, I can’t risk the wait.

‘What did he say?’ I ask S, after we’ve discussed the best person to try and persuade to be flexible and spoken to all, bar one, of the agents involved in the chain. The on-line outfit just had an answering service and in truth I’d have more chance of speaking to the mad woman, who pushes the empty pram round town, than those clowns. And people think they are saving money…

‘He said if they don’t move on his date, he’s going to pull the plug on the whole deal and put the price up £20,000, as another agent has told him he’s selling too cheaply now.’ Replies S, head in hands.

Oh, for some paltry professional standards in the much-maligned industry. There are more cowboys in this business than the whole of Texas. I’d plead for some minimum entry standards and exam qualifications. But all the time people entrust their home sale to call-centres, with a couple of chancers fronting a tacky television advert and local property experts who cross three counties with a digital camera and a sandwich box their mum packed, we are going nowhere. Fast.

‘Try the first time buyers.’ I urge S after several more heated and protracted conversations. The two diffident solicitors, as predicted, have refused to take her calls.

‘I think if I pressurise them any more they'll not only be forgetting the purchase, but the wedding too.’ Suggest S flatly.

There are enough reasons for first purchasers to balk at buying, without some surly old sod at the top of the chain digging their heals in because the proposed moving date clashes with a golfing match.

Sadly, it’s par for the course.

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The Song Remains The Same - Sunday

We go, with friends, to a late summer festival in a field. Now there was a time, when the prospect of loud music, loose women and not washing for several days held an allure. Reading 1977 with a porous tent springs to mind. A weekend of mud, mayhem and a ruptured ear drum seemed an adventure at the time. Now my hearing is buzzing naturally, and if I want to have a shower I favour the en-suite, rather that a leaky fly-sheet giving a constant dripping even my bean counter boss can’t match.

‘It’ll be fun, stop moaning.’ Says my wife as we bump the car through a rutted field and the clouds darken, even as I swipe madly at her wretched smart phone I still can’t master, endeavouring to get the latest BBC weather forecast.

‘I see enough people living in squalor at work.’ I tell her cussedly. ‘If I want drug addicts lying in their own filth I’ll just go on the next Letting Department’s eviction.’

‘Is he always this negative?’ Asks my wife’s friend from Fat Club - or keep fit as they like to call it.

‘He didn’t used to be.’ Replies my wife, slightly morosely.

Possibly not, but when I was wearing straight jeans with a 32 inch waist and Graham Parker and The Rumour, Thin Lizzy plus Aerosmith, nearly deafened me, I hadn’t been flogging homes for coming up for three decades. Somewhere along the line the fun went out of it. 

‘Thank God we’re not staying overnight.’ I tell our motley crew - pretty sure they hadn't been formed in ’77’ and it’s a different spelling entirely - as we pass the tented village. A rainbow coloured forest of cheap nylon, and fluorescent guide ropes, flutter in the gathering breeze as I spot the schoolboy error many have made by pitching at the bottom of a dip. Waterside views might fetch a premium in the housing market but when it’s flushing through your sleeping bag with turds bobbing past your head, I’m suspecting the surveyor’s damp meter might not be the only thing to blow a fuse.

We erect our collapsable chairs towards the back. I’m not repeating the mistake I made at the Oasis concert that time. Not much worse than  aching for a piss, unable to move backwards or forwards, while a bunch of neo-Nazis try to start fights while opposing groups lob plastic bottle full of urine at each others' heads. Liam wasn’t happy - but then he never is.

‘See, this is fine,’ says my wife soothingly, as she opens out the picnic blanket and unfurls a coolbox full of Marks and Spencer ready foods which probably cost more than my entire 1977 weekend did. ’It won’t be too loud  and we can watch the bands on the big screen.’ She smiles and starts chatting aimlessly to her friend. I look at her partner, a man I barely know. He’s something big in the City.

‘Beer tent?’ I ask him. ‘I’m more of a wine man.’ He replies. Of course you are.

Several pints in, stodgy portion of couscous consumed and I’m fighting the bladder alarm. The ruddy-cheeked man is joining in with the ladies’ conversations having decided he really has nothing in common with beer-swilling estate agents - except when he wants notice of a cheap investment property to add to his portfolio. I’ve taken a stomach churning dislike to the man which might, in truth, be partially as a result of the durum wheat rehydrating in my guts courtesy of two quarts of London Pride, but also because he’s basically another odious bean counter.

Finally I break the seal, realising I’m condemning myself to regular bog-trots between now and the headliner’s first engineered encore. The row of regimented portable toilets look like shit attempts at low-cost first-time buyers’ properties. Appropriately enough, queues of mostly young women are lined-up outside them. Sitting room only.

‘Eh-up, it’s the estate agent!’ Slurs a familiar-looking man as I stand at the rank-smelling urinals. Gentle heat haze rising from the gurgling gutter. My heart sinks.

Time to face the music.

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Come On In - Thursday

‘Come on in, I won’t bite.’ I mutter under my breath as I sit at the front desk covering what in the public sector would be a lunch hour, but in sales is usually a snatched sandwich at our desk, or in the case of S my well-upholstered negotiator, in the kitchen standing up.

Her seat was warm when I sat in it, something I could have done without – you don’t want to be distracted when you are setting a forward-thinking, modern manager’s example.

‘Looks like they might come in.’ Says S from the back of the office, speech slightly hampered by whatever she has in her mouth – best not to imagine.

‘They’re wavering.’ I tell her, projecting my voice like a third-rate ventriloquist. I don’t want the punters to think I’m talking about them; the door is a big enough barrier.

‘Do you want me to relieve you?’ Asks S.

‘Not really.’ I eventually splutter after a head-spinning scenario involving adults’ only material, not suitable for family consumption.

‘I don’t mind.’ Continues S as the seat below me warms up even more. Fortunately the young couple and their child decide to cross the threshold. I’m up out of the seat like a greyhound from the traps, only without the mechanical stuffed rabbit obviously. That would just be ridiculous.

I know S is watching, as is B now from her lettings’ desk. Chances are the loved-up pair will want to rent not buy, but either way I need to step up to the plate.

I grab the door and usher the young family in. A little voice inside is telling me they won’t be able to afford anything we have in the window, and rather censoriously, that maybe they should have thought about some family planning precautions ahead of sorting out somewhere to live. I must be getting old.

‘How may I help you?’ I enquire, after giving them the time of day. It’s an open question, one I drill into the junior members of staff. Qualifying applicants is the first filtration we apply, you’ll spend every waking hour dealing with time-wasters otherwise. Moments later they are sat at S’s desk, with me back in the hot seat.

The baby in the pushchair looks at me with that fixed guileless stare only an infant can maintain. She doesn’t know I’m an estate agent yet, so she’s smiling more than her parents are. I can sense the antipathy mixed with caution the young couple are exuding. Their daughter might like me, but they aren’t so sure.

‘What do you think you can set aside for monthly housing expenses?’ I probe, thinking if they have a decent income and jobs that aren’t on a zero-hours contract, I might be able to wheel them into fat man M, our financial advisor, except he’s not in his office. There’s a man who does take his full lunch allowance, mid-morning, midday and mid-afternoon.

It turns out they have already been to the bank of mum and step-dad. A 10% deposit can unlock a few doors now lending has eased a little. The trouble is their spending power finishes far short of a two-bedroom unit their family situation probably demands.

Names, numbers and contact details harvested and a commitment to at least a phone call from M when he returns, I’m feeling quite smug, particularly as I can still feel S watching and judging me. B lost interest as soon as the couple were buyers not renters. She’s filing her nails again noisily, much to my irritation. I try for a solicitor referral but they draw the line at that.

‘We saw one in the window we might be able to afford.’ Says the woman, confirming another pre-conception, always sell to the decision maker - invariably the female.

I know the property she’s talking about, it’s the only one on display suitable for first-time buyers’ budgets.

 ‘A studio flat, what’s that?’ Asks the young woman. Her daughter is now eyeing me with suspicion too. Innocence doesn’t last long.

I explain the living, eating, sleeping and virtually dumping in the same room, concept. 

‘That’s ridiculous.’ States the man, finally engaging. 

Welcome to my world.

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