It’s a full day racing from one house viewing to another, meeting folks at house and scampering round pointing out the nice features and the ‘could do with a bit of updating’ features. This is my fourth week at this and I am beginning to get back to some of the same places for a second and even third time. It feels insincere to say the same things, even though the new people haven’t heard you mention the underfloor heating, or the sunny garden.
I meet a youngish couple, late 20s – can’t be thirty surely? – at a four-bedder on the market for £350,000. He keeps mentioning that they have just come back from holiday and are planning another, and another. Are they drug dealers, contract killers or something? It’s newish built and so badly finished it looks like someone left in a hurry. The skirtings are rough, there are gaps between them and the walls, and patches of filler slapped on here and there, not even sanded off. The laminate flooring squeaks and there is a slightly creaky feeling to the stairs. Outside is a massive wooden electricity pole thing with ‘DANGER OF DEATH’ in black on a yellow sign at eye level. One could make it a feature of the garden perhaps.
Astonishingly, later I go out to another four-bedder, for sale for £450,000. It’s well finished, not a bad design, but the kitchen’s small. How can a kitchen be small for £450,000? I’d want a kitchen the size a ballroom for that kind of money. There isn’t even a utility room. Welcome to Cornwall.
It can be more interesting at the lower end of the ladder. Out in the country I re-visit a four-bedroomed cottage which has been for sale for nearly two years, now reduced to £225,000. Why, you may wonder?
Last week I let myself into the cottage and was sure there was somebody at home. I called out but no-one answered. I checked the place over and waited for the viewers to arrive and realized that the owner was still there. She’s died poor thing, but she hasn’t left. I did speak to her respectfully, and explain she shouldn’t be there, and that I was going to show some people round who may want to live there. That seemed okay.
However, in the general excitement of having a family running all round the place, opening doors, and exclaiming, I must have forgotten myself. They were delighted at the brilliant yellow bathroom suite, and the turquoise shower unit stuck in a corner of a downstairs bedroom, and these things are indeed novelties. The jolly family left, I switched off the lights, and backed out of the door to hear a furious, “Get out of my house,” close in my right ear and it felt as if the door was about to be slammed in my face. I was a bit put out because I had tried to be pleasant but maybe I did laugh at her décor. I’m sure I deserved it.
I go back there today so I try to make amends. She isn’t so hostile so maybe she’ll get used to me. I have another chat with her and tell her she should leave now. That it's time for someone else to come and live there.
The second family that look round all wander independently of each other. First the mother scuttles downstairs to me all a fluster and says that she had been in one of the upstairs bedrooms and a coat hanger leapt off the rail by itself when she was nowhere near the cupboard, and she’s not happy. Next, one daughter comes to me and says she thought the place was fine until she went upstairs, but then she felt completely creeped out. She shudders and says, ‘and I don’t believe in those things’. Then, the second daughter – the prospective purchaser – wanders dreamily in to say she, ‘loves the soul of the place’. There now. Can our old lady have chosen a new owner?
I meet a youngish couple, late 20s – can’t be thirty surely? – at a four-bedder on the market for £350,000. He keeps mentioning that they have just come back from holiday and are planning another, and another. Are they drug dealers, contract killers or something? It’s newish built and so badly finished it looks like someone left in a hurry. The skirtings are rough, there are gaps between them and the walls, and patches of filler slapped on here and there, not even sanded off. The laminate flooring squeaks and there is a slightly creaky feeling to the stairs. Outside is a massive wooden electricity pole thing with ‘DANGER OF DEATH’ in black on a yellow sign at eye level. One could make it a feature of the garden perhaps.
Astonishingly, later I go out to another four-bedder, for sale for £450,000. It’s well finished, not a bad design, but the kitchen’s small. How can a kitchen be small for £450,000? I’d want a kitchen the size a ballroom for that kind of money. There isn’t even a utility room. Welcome to Cornwall.
It can be more interesting at the lower end of the ladder. Out in the country I re-visit a four-bedroomed cottage which has been for sale for nearly two years, now reduced to £225,000. Why, you may wonder?
Last week I let myself into the cottage and was sure there was somebody at home. I called out but no-one answered. I checked the place over and waited for the viewers to arrive and realized that the owner was still there. She’s died poor thing, but she hasn’t left. I did speak to her respectfully, and explain she shouldn’t be there, and that I was going to show some people round who may want to live there. That seemed okay.
However, in the general excitement of having a family running all round the place, opening doors, and exclaiming, I must have forgotten myself. They were delighted at the brilliant yellow bathroom suite, and the turquoise shower unit stuck in a corner of a downstairs bedroom, and these things are indeed novelties. The jolly family left, I switched off the lights, and backed out of the door to hear a furious, “Get out of my house,” close in my right ear and it felt as if the door was about to be slammed in my face. I was a bit put out because I had tried to be pleasant but maybe I did laugh at her décor. I’m sure I deserved it.
I go back there today so I try to make amends. She isn’t so hostile so maybe she’ll get used to me. I have another chat with her and tell her she should leave now. That it's time for someone else to come and live there.
The second family that look round all wander independently of each other. First the mother scuttles downstairs to me all a fluster and says that she had been in one of the upstairs bedrooms and a coat hanger leapt off the rail by itself when she was nowhere near the cupboard, and she’s not happy. Next, one daughter comes to me and says she thought the place was fine until she went upstairs, but then she felt completely creeped out. She shudders and says, ‘and I don’t believe in those things’. Then, the second daughter – the prospective purchaser – wanders dreamily in to say she, ‘loves the soul of the place’. There now. Can our old lady have chosen a new owner?
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