The artistry of a good estate agent

Having effectively to act like an estate agent yesterday morning, I decided to dress like one, so I found a gaudy, striped shirt, a tie that did not match, some badly ironed trousers that matched neither, a black belt and brown brogues, topped off with a slightly dented Homburg hat and adopted what I thought was a winning smile, but which that nice lady decorator considered was a countenance suggesting imminent flatulence.

Next, I decided to practice some phrases that might come in handy “yes, it has a sea view, try these binoculars”, and “its a dream environment for young children, the pavement will be built by the time you move in” and “that’s not damp, I knocked over a bath full of water yesterday and it’s just drying out”.

Selling a house is an art form that sadly I have not yet mastered, having tried to sell my house in England for the last year. It often requires the ability to block out the obvious down sides whilst drawing attention to small saving graces. Surely they would have more success and fewer wasted visits, time destructive to everyone involved, the seller, the prospective buyer and the agent, if they were honest?

Sannie cottage, a period cottage in a pretty village within the catchment area for Aylesbury Grammar and High School which is STILL for sale

Take my house in England, why not say that its situation has been ruined by the construction of a modern horror in the once beautiful garden, and now there is now no access to the river, but now at least its comparatively cheap? It’s as if the agent believes he can suspend belief and persuade buyers to make often the biggest purchase of their lives, without properly assessing whether the it suited their needs. I guess their confidence in this process is fuelled by the number of clients that do exactly that.

And so yesterday, I was that agent, and by the time I had finished, I wanted to buy the house I was showing myself! That’s how good I was. Of course, there are good estate agents, the pick of whom have ben intelligent enough to affiliate to Currencies Direct. There are several in the bl

That nice lady decorator has a plan. I hate it when she has plans because she suddenly develops an ability to delegate, and that means anyone caught in that tractor beam optical stare of hers is required to be delegated upon. Sadly I did not duck the stare in time and it was my job to retrieve her cement mixer (this is not a misprint, it is she who owns a cement mixer, indeed it was her requested birthday present some years ago) from our neighbours, who had borrowed it in September for “about a week”.

Regular readers will now be thinking “I wonder if he agreed to be an estate agent to get him out of the house in order to avoid being dragged into manual labour”. I hate it when I am so transparent.

Todays picture is of a giant octopus of an oak tree, which if I had my way would be stacked in neat rows of logs ready for next winters fires, but that nice lady decorator thinks will make a nice backdrop for the outside bar area she is planning. This has required the destruction of a small retaining stone wall, the cement for which took me three days of hard work last spring mixing the cement she needed to construct it.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all in favour of an outside bar, it’s just the work required to have it built that worries me. I am happy to put it to the fullest test, once it has been constructed, it is the construction process, or rather, how much of the construction process will involve me in hard work, that worries me. There is also the small matter of cost to consider, a concept which eludes that nice lady decorator when she has a plan.

Chris France