Help The Aged - Tuesday

‘Is that Mr and Mrs Lattimer looking in the window?’ Asks negotiator S softly.

I look up from the jammed again colour printer - having narrowly resisted thrashing the wretched machine, like Basil Fawlty, primarily due to the lack of convenient shrubbery.

I spot the elderly couple, I recognise the elderly couple, only without S’s wonderful memory - and mammaries now I come to mention it - I’d never have recalled the name.

‘Yep, it’s them,’ I whisper like a poor-quality ventriloquist, all the while grinning inanely towards the ancient pair. ‘Only what the hell do they want this time?’

‘Perhaps they just want to pop in for a chat?’ Suggests S, half-heatedly. She knows it’s unlikely. If people want camaraderie and a sympathetic ear it’s the pub before the property man, or failing that a phone call to the Samaritans.

Now sales trainers - the folk who can tell but not sell - will have you mining that invisible seam of repeat business everyone searches for. It can work in lettings, where relationships build, develop and might prosper, but according to recent research the average British homeowner only moves every 21 years. Looking at the Lattimers they haven’t got that long.

They were good clients when they sold with me - please don’t call vendors customers, any more than my office is a shop - but if there is another move in them it will be straight out the door on the undertakers gurney, or a squeeze into a sheltered retirement home. Not much difference square footage-wise, except for the brass handles on the box.

The Lattimers are all smiles as they greet me, so they obviously want something for free. They also remember my name and use it. I’d tell you, but it would mean the end of a beautiful friendship and a contract that would definitely complete.

‘We wanted your advice.’ Gushes Mrs Lattimer with a lipstick-smeared-teeth smile. She looks like a wrinkly velociraptor in drag and compounds my distaste by keeping hold of my outstretched hand and leaning in to plant a slippery smacker on my cheek. Yuck.  Not even close family get a kiss on the cheek unless I’ve been drinking heavily, and don’t even start me on those vapid city types who think they are part-Parisian and need to air-kiss on both bloody sides.

With the elderly pair ensconced in my office, somewhere I prefer more and more to avoid, particularly after the intranet server blocked the more entertaining websites, I ask how I can help?

Before they can answer there’s a tap at the door and S appears with a tray and three steaming mugs of something hot and tasty. Take away the decrepit Lattimers and lose the drinks and I’d be happy to accommodate S, but that’s another story…

‘Well we’re in a bit of a dilemma.’ Begins Mr Lattimer, as I think welcome to the club, while still silently cursing S for bringing in unrequested drinks. If this pair are wasting my time I’ll need an asbestos-lined gullet to drink the tea as quickly as I’d like and even then they’d still be sipping and pontificating. The retired have no real concept of time when they’re stealing it from you, yet never stop moaning how quickly it hastens them to the grave. I’ll be different, of course.

‘We’re thinking of an equity release scheme on our house.’ Reveals Mr Lattimer, after unsolicited news of their offspring and an imminent grandchild.

Don’t do it. I yearn to say abruptly, while mentally holding the door for them. But it’s complicated. It’s always complicated.

They explain, as if I’ve never heard it, how they are worried how long they’ll live and if their funds will last and how long they can stay in their home without help and a stairlift. Then they reveal their children are tapping them up for a bank of Mum and Dad handout.

With UK house prices often defying gravity it’s a relatively new way of kids getting cash without waiting for their parents to croak. 

What was my advice?

Well you can book a free, no obligation, consultation - if you can find me.

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The UK Blog awards nominations are open - link here http://www.blogawardsuk.co.uk/enter-ukba16 - just saying....

Happy Valley Court - Wednesday

Back at another sheltered retirement home development, with that growing sense of foreboding I’ve been getting ever since I valued my first one, about twenty-five years ago. In those days the minimum entry age of fifty-five seemed an age away, and about right for giving up on life and playing Whist in the communal lounge until the undertaker came. Now I’m not so sure…..

‘You can’t park there.’ Croaks an elderly woman, sitting astride one of those bulky motorised wheelchair-come-quad bike things that force you off the pavement and clip your ankles in supermarkets. I swear most occupants aren’t disabled, just too fat and lazy to walk.

‘I’m visiting number forty-two.’ I tell the nosey crone, who in fairness looks wrinkled and wobbly enough to justify her Blue Badge, allowing parking outside my office where I’m not permitted to stop.

The hag’s eyes twinkle. ‘Marjorie’s flat?’ She enquires with a gummy smile. I consult my clipboard and confirm the identity of the elderly owner, who is now in her third month blocking a hospital bed. I’m meeting the son in five minutes, so I need to shake off this old woman with all day to spare.

‘I knew she wouldn’t be back.’ Says the old girl with an unsettling chuckle, before engaging some sort of drive mechanism and whining across the car park towards an open ground floor flat door. 

I want to shout after the gloating woman, and tell her re-sales are really tricky on low-level units, but in truth it will be her beneficiaries who’ll have that problem.

‘Come on up, I’m on the fourth floor.’ Says a male voice, after I’ve buzzed the communal entrance doorbell. The door clicks and I grab it before the cut-off locks again. I’ve spent too many awkward minutes trying to re-establish contact with a hard-of-hearing occupant upstairs, when I’ve not tugged the door in time.

‘You here on business?’ Demand a disembodied voice, as I enter the gloomy foyer and get the first whiff of stewed cabbage that invariably inhabits the halls of these blocks. I see the house manager is in her little cubbyhole-come-office. There was a time when these places all had a live on-site warden to help the residents and to justify the sky-high management charges. Then the bean-counters took over.

I show the sour-faced woman my card and she begrudgingly nods acceptance, before adding curtly. ‘Don’t give them a stupid price. I know what you lot are like.’

I offer my well-practiced false smile and push the lift button. Nearly five minutes later the doors wheeze open. More bean-counter cost saving, I think, as I notice the cheap lift manufacturers logo and begin to wish I’d taken the stairs.

New build has often fetched a premium, but the prices elderly folk pay for these shrunken square footage flats has always disturbed me. During my first property crash I used to sell the second-hand, slightly soiled units, for about half what the parents had paid for them less than eighteen months before they went to the nursing home. Most of the blocks used to be called Something Court. Totally caught would have been more appropriate.

‘That you on the mantlepiece?’ I ask the late-middle aged son of Marjorie, as we try not to step on each others toes in the cramped flat. As usual, the furniture is way to big and dark for the living room/kitchen.

The man looks at the collection of faded photographs on the mock fireplace, wobbly-balanced above an electric fire. 

‘Yes.’ He answers with a self-conscious grin.

‘Mid-seventies?’ I enquire, looking at the shot of him with wrinkle-free skin and a disastrous mullet hair cut, but thinking about a suitable price for his mother’s flat.

‘Afraid so.’ He answers with a sheepish grin and a sweep across his bald pate, where time and genetics have robbed him of his locks.

‘Do you know how much Mum paid for the flat?’ I ask gingerly. Sometimes they say, sometimes they don’t. Then I hit him with the price.

Fortunately, he couldn’t tear his hair out. 

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