Happy Valley Towers - Wednesday

‘Are the other residents friendly?’ Asks the pernickety daughter as she guides her elderly father along the first floor corridor of the retirement apartment block.

I’ve managed to get in the main door with the communal key and avoided the overbearing manager, who if past experience is anything to go by will try and hijack my buyer into looking at one of the many re-sales the management company - her employer - are trying to flog.

‘Oh they are a lovely bunch.’ I answer, trying to hurry the pair along the never-ending run of patterned carpet and closed sapele fire doors, with those spy holes. I expect a few ancient inmates - I mean owners - are squintily watching our progress along the interminable dark warren that resembles a budget hotel setting. No doubt if the old boy does move in he’ll be in great demand from the predominately female inhabitants. Rumour has it any reasonably able-bodied pensionable male can die with a wrinkly smile on their face, if they can last long enough and get a decent supply of Viagra.

‘What happened to the owner of this one?’ Asks the daughter as we reach the appointed door and I fumble with the keys. It’s not a great question to answer. The clue is in the name with Retirement Apartments, if they don’t get shipped out to a nursing home the occupants usually leave horizontally - on a gurney.

‘I think they went in to full time care.’ I say as vaguely as I can. It could be argued the embalmer constitutes fairly permanent full time care, but fortunately before I’m pressed further I get the door open and we move into the even darker entrance hall.

I swiftly hit the lights, but I can’t hide the musty smell and the hint of stale urine.  Always best to fit new carpets if you buy one of these places second hand. Hurriedly, as hurriedly as you can usher a man with two walking sticks and a heart condition, I bring the duo in to the living room/kitchen.

There is one window at the far end overlooking the car park and the kitchen is as dark as the hall, with just a wheezing extractor unit to pull the pong of piss from the air. I’m not a big fan either…

Window flung open as far as the restrictor will allow - jumpers can wreck the communal morale - I give the highlights of the room. The illusionary safety net of the orange emergency pull-cords that put you through to a call centre where English is a foreign language, and the waist high electrical sockets to stop rickety backs from popping out of alignment.

‘I’d like to know about the service charges.’ Presses the daughter as her father sinks into the one high-backed chair, left incongruously in the middle of the room. The beneficiaries had their pick of the furniture and jewellery and are just bitching about the asking price.

I give the woman the latest set of figures we’ve managed to prise from the managing agents. They want paying for each piece of reluctantly given information and would even charge for a phone call if they could gouge it from you.

‘It seems a lot once Dad’s paid for his electric and other costs.’ Replies the daughter accurately.

She’s not wrong, but then for years the major players who built these blocks owned the management companies as a subsidiary. Allegedly, it’s not so often the case now, but I still suspect there are mutual interest behind the scenes.

If any member of my family wanted to buy a retirement flat, I’d get our solicitor to take a good look at the lease and management costs and to ask about sinking funds and future major expenditure on maintenance projects. Better still I’d get them to hang on in their own home as long as possible. This pair are not blood relations though.

‘Is it good value?’ Asks the daughter as we stand back in the hall while her father tries out the internal bathroom. We can hear every slow dribbling drop of piss the old boy is expelling.

I’d say so.

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You Ain't Nothing But..... - Tuesday

‘Come on you wasters.’ I grumble audibly. There’s nobody else in the car, but I get an odd look from the woman tugging a shopping trolley who happens to be peering in my open car window as I spit the complaint out. I smile at her - she scowls at me. I could have said a lot worse lady. Not sure how she tagged me for an estate agent anyway, mercifully the car isn’t sign-written with the company logo. Perhaps it was the shirt and tie. Most other males round here are in jogging bottoms, wife-beater vests and sport more piercings than a gang-banged hedgehog.

I punch the office name on my mobile phone and start to fret it won’t be answered in three rings. Relief and a butterfly flutter of pleasure courses through me when S, my impressively stacked negotiator, comes on the line in two-and-a-half rings and purrs out the corporate greeting. She should do those premium chat lines if everything goes tits up…

‘That couple viewing flat 12,’ I tell her. ‘They haven’t cancelled have they?’ A few seconds pass while S checks the message book and I think what I’d like to do to all the people who make appointments then don’t show up, and don’t have the courtesy to let us know.

‘Nope, nothing showing.’ Announces S as I put on hold a vision of some vast spiked wheel - a bit like that one in the ancient Duran Duran video when Simon Le Bon nearly drowned - peopled with all the inconsiderate bastards who booked but never arrived. A big wheel and not enough water.

‘Do you want me to ring their mobile?’ Asks S interrupting my disturbing daydream, one that would cost me several expensive sessions on the psychotherapists couch if I didn’t have a Blog

I gaze into the middle distance, mind whirring. Then I spot them. A forty-something couple, the man overweight and, like me, overdressed; the woman tottering in tight – mutton clad as lamb – pencil skirt, with heels almost as high as the first-floor flat we were due to view fifteen minutes ago.

‘F**k.’ I say without thinking.

‘Excuse me?’ Says S in mock horror. I’ve told people not to swear in the office – except when a sale falls through – but sometimes a lusty Anglo-Saxon expletive is the only word that fits the moment.

‘They are carrying a dog.’ I say in way of explanation.

‘F**k.’

You’ve got to love her – except I can’t obviously.

‘You going to let them do the viewing with it?’ Asks S, suppressed laughter in her voice aching to escape. She knows I dislike pets at the best of time. They’re a curse to estate agents, either trying to bite or shag you whenever you visit a home. And what’s worse they make me sneeze just by being in the same room. Now I’m expected to share a lift with some over-pampered dog that nobody has ever said no to – the pooch probably isn’t much better…

The couple have spotted me and are making a beeline for the car. The man is clutching a set of our sales particulars; the woman is holding the ratty little dog like a hirsute baby.

‘I’m not sure pets are allowed in the lease.’ I tell S, pasting a smile on my face and acknowledging the approaching pair with a wave. It’s too late to check. I should know. It would save me several snotty minutes with this couple. I hang up on S and climb uncomfortably from the car, nearly tumbling into the gutter as my back locks up again and a teeth-clenching pain shoots down the sciatic nerve.

‘You the agent?’ Challenges the chubby chap, without a hint of an apology for their tardiness. I do the introductions, sticking out my paw as the snappy little dog withdraws his and gives me the benefit of his yellowy teeth and a girly growl.

‘He doesn’t like strangers.’ Says the woman, who up close is wearing more makeup than an entire West End chorus line. Why bring the smelly hound on a viewing then? I think. It turns out the dog crèche was full – you couldn’t make it up.

Did they buy it?

You must be barking.

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Not Many Lives Left - Tuesday

‘And here she comes.’ Announces assistant manage T with the sort of weary resignation I’ve been dreaming about for years now.

Negotiator S bobs her head up from behind the flatscreen and smiles in recognition when she sees the approaching woman. All offices have them, the regular time-wasters - as opposed to the casual ones who bowl into your working life like a whirlwind, promise to buy or sell then blow you off.

‘Bloody nutcase.’ Proclaims M the morbidly obese financial advisor. He tried to flog her some life cover, a re-mortgage and even, in desperation, some pet insurance last time she was in. But this type is a window shopper for life.

‘Who’s this?’ Asks trainee F, wide-eyed and innocent, only without the charm of a fresh-smelling baby you can hand back before their Snugglers become soiled.

‘One of our habitual lookers.’ I tell F, contemplating whether I should let him talk to the woman as part of his ongoing training. The trouble is he’s so naïve he’ll end up making viewing appointments that the woman will happily go on for something to do and doubtless book my fourth valuation visit to her home. One she convinces herself and every new agent in town she’ll be moving from in the near future, when in reality the only way she’ll be leaving is feet first on an undertaker’s gurney.

‘She’s called that cat lady.’ Enlightens T, as F stares at the approaching target vapidly. I can see the animal hairs on her grubby fleece from across the high street and already my nose and eyes are twitching just from the memory of my last, abortive visit, to her flea-infested home. Five cats and counting plus that all pervading pong of animals which pet-owners are in persistent denial over.

‘Why’s that?’ Asks F, comprehensively confirming his unsuitability for any role involving common sense. The private school his mother and various stepfathers coughed for - just to keep him away from home - somehow coached and cajoled him to some spurious mid-range, heavy on the coursework qualifications, but the school of life has yet to see him sign the register.

‘She has cats you numpty.’ Informs lettings lush B from across the office.

‘Yeh and we all know about women with cats.’ Says T chuckling.

B glares back at him. ‘One is acceptable, two at a push.’ She says challengingly, adding the old chestnut. ‘They’re more reliable than men.’

‘Let’s not start that one.’ I plead, as I track the approaching woman, hoping against hope she’ll misjudge the road crossing and give me about a one in fifteen chance of getting the probate business.

‘The loser women who can’t hold on to a man get cats instead.’ T tells F unhelpfully. I can sense the, along gender lines, friction building.

‘You’re just saying that for a reaction.’ Says S looking nervously at B as her hackles rise.

‘You can’t say that sort of thing.’ Spits B angrily, before turning to me and asking. ‘Can he?’

Probably not out loud.

Trouble is I pretty much agree with T on this one. My experience of neurotic man-loathing women tends to lead to the same, staring-eyed, let them sleep on the bed, cat-loving conclusion. These females – and it is almost exclusively females who own cats – seem to turn to feline companionship after a fruitless love life. Ultimately, cohabiting with several sets of hairballs, rather than one errant set of hairy balls. It still stinks, particularly with the elderly ones who the neighbours eventually smell decomposing. Someone has to go in to clean up the mess and see what is left of the owner the ungrateful pets haven’t eaten. It takes forever before I get the new carpets, the keys and a for sale board.

‘Hello Miss Bryan how are you?’ Greets S, saving me the bother.

‘You now my name?’ Queries Miss Bryan.

‘You were in last year.’ Says S gently.

‘Was I?’

Perhaps I should have let F see her after all.

‘We don’t have any little bungalows.’ Informs S kindly. ‘And most flats don’t allow pets in the lease.’

‘How did you know I have pets?’

And they still say we don’t earn our money.

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Shed Out Of Luck - Thursday

‘You’re not going to like this.’ Says negotiator S with a frown when I come through the door, reasonably upbeat having just secured a signed sole agency at a sensible price, with a board.

The bounce in my step falters, as I look at her and run through the umpteen bear traps that might have just sprung. The property market can cause a lot of shit to happen and not just in the woods. Mind racing now, I shrug off my coat and run through some of the options that might hurt me. Surveyor downvaluing an agreed sale, lawyer ripping apart an ancient lease and advising against purchase, lender withdrawing a product and leaving a potential deal without finance, local authority search throwing up a planning blight, or a buyer just changing their mind.

‘Tell me then.’ I instruct S, once I’m sat at T’s vacant desk, plastic beaker of over-priced water from the cooler in my hand.

‘Mrs Ward.’ She begins wearily.

‘What now?’ I interject angrily. ‘Wants the buyers to wait another three months while she procrastinates? Expects them to pay extra for that “summer house” in the garden that anyone else would call a shed? Grumbling about the fee we’ll charge when she finally moves after five months of sales progressing, several adverts and over thirty viewings before someone offered?’

‘None of the above.’ Answers S with a grimace.

‘What then?’ I snap.

‘She’s taking her house off the market.’ The expletive is as loud as it’s coarse, echoing around the office and bouncing off the filing cabinets like some Tourettes afflicted Swiss yodeller.

‘Why?’ I finally plead after an apology for my, against company standing orders, swearing.

‘You’re still not going to like it.’ Ventures S, gathering up the file and bringing it over.

I expect buyers to jerk me around, it’s in their DNA. And even if they think they are genuine purchasers, there’s a thousand little property based land mines, to detonate under their intentions, along the way. Chains will break, relationships will shatter, jobs will be lost, but when vendors cancel a deal it hurts even more. I’ve nurtured a relationship with them from day one, fought off rival agents for the initial instruction, battled over-optimistic price expectations, spent on marketing, done countless viewings, nursed along faltering buyers, only for my client - the one who is supposed to be paying my bill - to pull the plug like a jaundiced surgeon switching off another life-support machine.

 ‘She says there’s nothing out there on the market as nice as her house.’ Explains S as she hands me the buff file, full of week after weeks’ worth of progressing notes in her neat hand. ‘Thinks she may have sold it too cheap in the first place.’ Continues S rubbing salt into the wound as I gaze at the bundle of letters and updates which when I left the office first thing, were worth about £5,000 on my sales pipeline.

‘Mentioned what she’d really like to do...’

‘Is pick her house up and move it somewhere else?’ I finish angrily, the familiar refrain hurting my buzzing ears even as I repeat it.

‘What are we supposed to tell the couple buying?’ Asks S plaintively. ‘They’re supposed to be getting married in three moths time.’

‘Tell them they’ll have a bit more to spend on the honeymoon.’ I reply bitterly. ‘Only nowhere to live when they get back.’

‘They’re going to be fuming.’ Continues S. ‘She kept them waiting for weeks and they’ve spent out on lawyers fees and surveys.’ S hesitates then adds. ‘I suppose they’ll blame us for it.’

‘No question.’

‘I really don’t want to discuss it, I’ve made my mind up.’ Proclaims Mrs Ward curtly when I ring to try and resurrect the sale.

‘Did you want to speak to the buyers and explain?’ I ask, knowing the answer but feeling malevolent once I’ve established the deal is dead.

‘I’d rather you do that.’ Instructs Mrs Ward as I think, don’t you dare say: That’s what I’m paying you for. But instead she says. ‘There won’t be any charges for me will there? It is no sale no fee.’

No cost to you, lady.

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