Please, Don't Trust Me

By Agent Incognito

Discover the truth behind the much-derided world of estate agency in this no-holds-barred account. From gazumping and sealed bids to Dutch auctions and life-affirming philosophy, this brutally honest book delves into all aspects of the housing market that have never been available to the general public.

Written by a local author who may have sold your house or sold one to you, this book sheds light on the mysteries of estate agency and the rationale behind its practices. Is estate agency really just money for old rope? What links it to the dropping of the atomic bomb? What phrase from 1928 is still causing angst in the house buying process?

With fascinating insights into the history of estate agents and even a discussion of the role of the Bible in the industry, this book explores the tall stories and interesting views that make up this complex world. Whether you’re a seasoned property buyer or just curious about the industry, prepare to be stultified and enlightened by this intriguing read.

As any self-respecting estate agent would say, an internal inspection is highly recommended. So read on and discover the secrets of estate agency that have never been revealed before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Dec 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781035811328

Agent Incognito

Agent Incognito is the anonymous persona of an experienced, hardworking estate agent who, having sold thousands of houses over the course of a long career, felt it was long overdue to tell the public what really happens when you try to buy or sell a residential property. All the situations described in the book are real, with little-known facts and true stories from the daily experiences of over thirty years of helping people through what is the most complicated and challenging thing they will ever do as an adult.

Book preview

About the Author

Agent Incognito is the anonymous persona of an experienced, hardworking estate agent who, having sold thousands of houses over the course of a long career, felt it was long overdue to tell the public what really happens when you try to buy or sell a residential property. All the situations described in the book are real, with little-known facts and true stories from the daily experiences of over thirty years of helping people through what is the most complicated and challenging thing they will ever do as an adult.

Dedication

To all those who trusted me, you were right to do so.

Copyright Information ©

Agent Incognito 2023

The right of Agent Incognito to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, experiences, and words are the author’s alone.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035811311 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035811328 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgment

The colloquial saying in life is that you need to get on to the housing ladder and as with any ladder, you have to start on the bottom rung and work your way up, which naturally takes time. The experiences of the process are not dissimilar to the game of snakes and ladders. This simple game is popular with young children and the historic version had its roots in morality lessons in which a player’s progression up the board represented a life journey complicated by virtues (ladders) and vices (snakes). It’s also based on luck and like the housing market, it can now be played online. Interesting that I saw it described as ‘any situation in which people or events go forwards and backwards, seemingly at random!’ (Whether it was describing snakes and ladders or the housing market, I’ll let the reader decide).

Introduction

As with all things in life, you have to start at the beginning, so in case you’ve lost track already (worrying if you have) this is page one. My own beginning is a little more profound, as I was born on the first day of the year which has its good and bad points. Firstly, it’s a bank holiday so I don’t have to go to work, but when I go back the next day, I’m a year older whereas my colleagues are the same age (they can’t legitimately claim to have the New Year’s blues if they haven’t aged a year over-night). I invariably wake up with a sore head from the New Year’s Eve celebrations from the night before and nine times out of ten the weather is dull and wet. Most people are at home nursing hangovers so don’t want to go out again on January 1st in the evening.

Normally, the pub is closed anyway and if I walk into one at 8 p.m. the landlord says, I’m closing in ten minutes, I shouldn’t have opened in the first place, and then Should have been here last night mate, it was a real laugh (actually I was probably somewhere else having my own good time). I was actually born a day late, but unlike most people at least I start my birthday at a party reflecting that as the year got a day older and progressed, so did I. The only other personal thought is that in my family from November until my big day we have five birthdays as well as Christmas so by the time we get to me there’s little money left.

Now, where was I? Ah yes, the beginning. I’m sure very few people know from an early age what their future profession is going to be. I guess if you’re exceptional at kicking a ball around, there is a very tiny chance you may become, with a lot of luck, a professional footballer but how someone ends up being a forensic pathologist is surely a long process of events that ultimately leads them to that job. So how does an estate agent come to be an estate agent? Often by accident, sometimes by deliberate forethought, but as in my case by a series of unconnected events that took place over several years with a worrying early sign that was manifesting itself when I was only five years old (I didn’t really stand a chance with such embryonic circumstances). I feel you need a more elaborate explanation.

Estate agents sales particulars that have long been renowned for flowery descriptions that entice, cajole and convince people to drop everything they’re doing and to view the property at the earliest moment. Legislation by way of various acts of Parliament was eventually introduced to combat the inconsistency and often lauded statements that not only bent the truth but distorted it wildly beyond recognition. So, my five-year-old imagination was running away with me beyond my control. I recall my mum throwing the bones of leftover Sunday lunches (chicken carcasses and shoulders of lamb) onto the garden refuse tip that my dad would then dig into the vegetable patch. When I subsequently later ‘helped’ him fork over the garden, we would inevitably find these old bones and in my school book I enthusiastically described how my dad and I were digging up bodies from the garden, I even drew pictures in my school exercise book, as best a five-year-old can, of skeletal remains. This made the head teacher bring my mum in for questioning but luckily all was explained and the local constabulary was stood down, my dad remained a free man.

A few years later, actually a decade, I inherited an evening newspaper round from my older sister that involved stuffing paper through people’s letter boxes for money. Something I would replicate later in my estate agency career but by then the bucks were bigger which was just as well because at 20p a night, the earlier career wasn’t enough to feed a cat on (all relevant economic data prevailing naturally).

The next part of the sequence of events was again beyond my control. As I progressed through my school years it was painfully obvious that I wasn’t mathematically minded but loved writing and subconsciously developed a sense of humour, always looking for the funny side of any situation or circumstance. I tended to like English, Geography and History and a further subject, Commerce, attracted my interest. Upon leaving secondary school I went to college to study History, Geography and English at A level but within three weeks I realised this wasn’t for me (my ambition to be a history teacher was fast expiring). My best friend had joined Lloyd’s bank and suggested I contact the regional personnel manager. I duly did and soon found myself leaving college to become a trainee bank clerk. This new career encompassed the next eight years of my life and saw me studying for the required bank exams in evening class with the aim of obtaining a banking diploma and ultimately becoming a bank manager. The dedication involved was an innate quality that had stood me in good stead in the past (I was never given pocket money, I was always doing something to earn money be it polishing shoes, chopping logs, mowing lawns, cleaning cars or delivering papers) and this would serve me well in the future.

Having married my long-term girlfriend at the now amazingly young age of 23, I was starting to sense that banking wasn’t going to be my lifelong career. A small number of clerks became managers and invariably you had to relocate to far-flung towns to progress your career. I saw people around me who weren’t ‘going places’ starting to fester, get fat and sometimes nod off in the afternoon. I was full of fizz and energy so when my friend who had got me into banking left to become a mortgage adviser in a local firm of estate agents I was naturally curious. He told me when he wasn’t busy he would help out his colleagues by going out in a company car to do viewings and get out of the branch, it seemed there really was a big wide world outside of the bank. This got me thinking that there was more to life than being cocooned in a stifling bank branch.

When a close colleague left to become an estate agent, I kept in touch and over a beer one night he told me all about his varied and what seemed exciting daily duties. By chance, the next day a customer who happened to work for a prominent local firm of estate agents came to my cashier’s till to bank his pay cheque. I couldn’t help but notice the amount that was twice if not more than what I earned on a monthly basis. That was it, time to plan my escape. I was out!

My first interview was a disaster. I had only ever had one before in my life when I applied to the bank eight years ago. I didn’t really prepare myself and it was painfully obvious after a short while I was not a good candidate, his closing ‘I’ll let you know’ still resounds in my ears now some 34 years later! I told my best mate, the mortgage adviser, and he suggested I approach another estate agent whom he had applied to previously but had not been successful with but nonetheless was a very prominent local firm and ironically the same business that the customer with the big fat pay cheque worked for. I wrote to him (by hand as you did in those days) and he subsequently telephoned me and asked me for an interview.

This time I was prepared. I had picked the brains over another beer of my ex-colleague and I had researched the agency concerned to understand them better. I had also thought about how I should sell myself so this time I felt more confident. The agency was a short stroll from my bank branch so I soon found myself sitting in the showroom waiting for my interview quietly absorbing the buzz of what was without doubt a vibrant and very successful agency.

The interview was a world apart from the previous one and I left much more confident, partly because it seemed he took a lot more interest in me. Sure enough, a week later he called me at the bank, my face reddening when the telephonist shouted out his name to me in front of the four most senior members of the management, (luckily they didn’t know who he was) to offer me a second interview. This was a quick chat to confirm he wanted to offer me a job. I was buzzing and then reality kicked in. I was earning then £6,500pa and two-thirds of our mortgage was at 4.98% (in those days the typical rate was 12.25%). He was offering a salary of £6,000pa, the discounted mortgage would go and my holiday allowance would drop from 28 days to 20. The latter wasn’t so much of an issue so I explained my concerns to my new boss and he said if I was ‘any good’, he would increase my salary to £7,500pa after three months. Deal! I went home on the bus as usual and went upstairs to find my wife in the bath (perfectly alive, just enjoying a soak). I told her my news and that I wanted to leave the bank, the safe job for life in a major PLC institution join a small independent business and follow an entirely different career path. We’d been married barely eight months so for reasons known only to her she burst into tears at the thought. I wasn’t sure if it was the money, fear of the unknown, the fact our matrimonial home could be at risk if things didn’t work out or the fact her new husband was going to become an estate agent, I never did ask her.

So, resignation tendered and notice served, I duly joined my new colleagues. We only had one car that naturally I now had to use so my wife cycled the one mile to her office while I drove six miles into the city. I had passed my car test only three years before as since leaving school I had ridden (wildly) two motorbikes and driven either my dad’s car or my wife’s. After a few months, I was given a company car and that over the next thirty years resulted in two things. Firstly I paid an exorbitant amount of tax for an essential tool for my job (some company car users drove to work, parked it and then didn’t use it all day until they drove home-that is a taxable perk, surely?). Secondly, it meant I never owned a car in my entire life, but I suspect at some stage I’ll be troubling the DVLA’s computer with my details, but who knows? I’ve held out this long.

Not long after I had left the bank I was invited to a lunchtime drinks do for a colleague who, like me, had joined at the age of 16 and was leaving. It was great to catch up with old familiar faces (no social media or mobile phones in those days) but within a short space of time, they were talking about cheques, standing orders, tills not balancing etc. My world was now all about booking viewings and valuations, dealing with offers, helping people move house and although it had only been a matter of weeks I really had left all that behind. It seems frightening to admit but I had almost forgotten all about it, such was the busy pace of my new career. In those days there wasn’t the internet or online advertising so on a Thursday the local newspaper carried the agents’ property adverts. We stayed open an extra half an hour to deal with the additional enquiries we received over the phone. I distinctly recall on my very first Thursday a colleague saying, Hey lads, it’s ten to seven, are we going home or what? From there every Thursday followed a similar pattern except we stopped calling out the time and just got on with the job in hand.

The time now to stop waffling on (difficult as it’s all I’ve ever done – no training required, it came naturally) and take you with me on a tour of the world of estate agencies. The factual bits are littered (I thought long and hard about that word) with anecdotes and asides just to keep you entertained. When I started putting this esteemed work together, I wondered that if it ever got published, what would it be classified as? Fiction? Memoir? Textbook? Self-help? Fantasy? Horror? Comedy? I’ll let you decide.

Where property values are mentioned throughout the book they are accurate and genuinely reflect the market at the time of the event. Although a lot of information is readily available online I have deliberately changed some prices as usually the point of the exercise is not only to illustrate a principle but also to protect those involved in the transactions. What follows is my experience of the subjects described and the situations I have encountered. I’m not saying I’m an expert but I would like to think I know more than most but perhaps not as much as some practitioners of the craft.

Chapter One

The Housing Market

A very imperfect entity and extremely difficult to determine simply but as with all markets it involves a buyer and a seller, from thereon the simplicity ends and the complexity sets in. When people say, I’m going to put my house on the market, they really mean they are going to put their house up for sale. That’s because the actual market place doesn’t tangibly exist and is multi-faceted i.e. it is not in one place (like a market place in a town or hall). It used to be that a house was advertised in the local newspaper, magazines, sometimes national newspapers, the estate agent’s high street window and also with a for sale board outside the property (or at the entrance of the road where it could be seen by passing traffic. This is actually illegal as the Town and Country planning act states an advertising board must be within the actual boundary).

Since 1999 the internet meant a property would be advertised online and that transformed the exposure from local and regional to national as well as international. Pre-internet, I distinctly recall at a valuation a client asking if I would send her property to London. I politely asked where she thought I should send it. (I wanted to be facetious and say the Houses of Parliament or Buckingham Palace, anywhere else?). She looked back at me with a certain level of disdain and disbelief. I then asked them if they were moving to London, where would they start looking in their own town or London. They realised with some reluctance that I was right when I reaffirmed that if a London-based buyer was moving to our town, they wouldn’t find a new home in their area but would come to our town to start their search and then with a bit of luck find a suitable house (assuming it was what they wanted and fitted their budget etc.).

Before the internet revolution of 2000 if you were serious about buying a property, you had to go to the ‘estate agents row’ in your local town physically go into each branch, register your details and requirements and see what they had on their books. Some buyers did this by phone which saved them the journey but was still time-consuming. We actually appreciated it more when someone took the time and effort to visit us as it demonstrated a genuine level of commitment. It also made them real and certainly more likely to get a viewing and therefore the chances of buying a property increased dramatically.

The other ways properties could (and still can) be sold was either via auction, privately i.e. the seller and buyer know each other directly or indirectly, or by a discreet introduction by the agent to the buyer, what we classify as ‘under the counter’ or ‘in the back drawer’ transactions. Auction sales guarantee an immediate exchange of contracts with normally 28 days to complete the transaction. It’s a small market, primarily for professional buyers who have access to immediate funds and aren’t overly worried about the condition of the property accepting the kinds of property offered can vary but are not mainstream, i.e. they are unsuitable for a mortgage, have an element of commercial, are investment properties, have long term sitting tenants or have re-development potential.

The word ‘private’ before the word buyer has often been elevated by some if not most sellers to a special status along the lines of ‘I have a private buyer’ and therefore ‘aren’t I clever or lucky?’ It infers they are gold-plated or gilt-edged, but no! That word doesn’t guarantee a thing, can they pay the price? Get their mortgage? Sell their own property within the seller’s required timescales. Not let a seller down? Not withdraw after the survey? And so the list goes on and on, in fact, if things go wrong a private sale can ruin a good friendship or other relationship. There may be a saving of the commission due to a selling agent but by telling one person you only have their opinion on price. By actually putting the property onto the market you literally tell the world it’s for sale and the vendor may actually get a better placed buyer (i.e. cash or chain free etc.) or an even higher offer, possibly more than one to consider. This is because the sheer volume of buyers in the market then weighs in favour of the owner and the mood of the buyers prevails. That can mean any number of scenarios from twenty viewings with no offers, ten viewings with five offers or five viewings with one offer. One buyer is all you need, two’s great and as we used to say, three’s a bun fight. I openly admit that some sellers do get lucky with a private buyer, they get a great or fair price and the deal goes through without too much stress (more of that later, a lot more). Agents can’t sell them all and there are some genuine private arrangements that end up suiting all parties.

When an agent takes instructions and signs up a new vendor, both parties sign the contract agreement. The agreement both parties sign includes a section for private buyers. This is where the owner may genuinely know a potential buyer who could be a friend, colleague or acquaintance. Someone, being one themselves, once tried to include any doctor at the local hospital (hmm, there are hundreds, if not thousands) and the discussions ensued that if they found it through our marketing methods and the owner had never met them or knew them then they were not a private buyer in the usual sense of the word.

The ‘under the counter’ deals I have brokered come about for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the owner wants no publicity as there is an ex-spouse in the background that they don’t want to know about an impending sale, nosey colleagues or troublesome neighbours etc. Again the situation can arise that you can never be sure the best price has been obtained but there’s the rub, if it’s sold for what the seller finds acceptable then it’s a done deal. One facet of such a deal is the power it can give a seller over the buyer because if they start to play up or make unreasonable demands as the transaction progresses then the seller can threaten them that if they continue with their tack then the option to put it on the market is available and then the buyer runs the risk of losing the property to an alternative party, possibly for a higher price.

When selling residential property, it is ultimately a business transaction, it’s important all parties involved remember that and more importantly continually have that at the forefront of their mind. An element of tension is not necessarily a bad thing to keep the buyers on their toes but too much of an aggressive stance from the seller (or their agent) can be off-putting, can cause resentment and ruin any feeling of goodwill that may have been evident. Some buyers make unreasonable demands or requests and that has to be managed and dealt with accordingly. Sometimes a blunt conversation has to be had and the buyers are reminded that the property is being sold the vendor’s way not being bought their way. The prevailing market conditions and the owner’s circumstances dictate how blunt this conversation can be. The old adage ‘there’s no sentiment in business’ very much comes to mind.

The arrival of the internet, seemed to make everyone an expert in property matters and all because they had seen a few photos and a floor plan online. After more than 33 years at the Coal Face, I’m still confused most days as every deal is different, the buying and selling of property is an art, not a science. There is always a buyer with more money or less sense than the rest or with a different reason for buying than the other parties. I’ve encountered all sorts of situations that make me smile somewhat bemused and also make me even more frustrated as experience doesn’t always help going forward but perhaps helps you understand the past in a better light.

The economic data available to anyone wanting to lose the will to live is easily accessible, changes on a daily basis and to be honest doesn’t really help but sometimes comes in useful. On occasions when I’ve met someone new at a social function when they hear I’m an estate agent they immediately ask, What’s the market doing? I politely ask Are you buying or selling? Invariably they reply no, so then I politely reply, So does it really matter? What it’s like when you decide to move is what really counts whether it’s a buyer’s market i.e. lots of sellers and few buyers or the opposite, a seller’s market where a shortage of property is chased by lots of buyers. The former means prices are poorly supported; the latter sees values rising and vendors or agents being more bullish with their outlook. Think of a triangle where the base is the lowest value, there are buyers aplenty whereas at the point, the highest price, there are very few. For a £200,000 property, there is a wide audience but not many takers for one at £20m but then as previously stated, one buyer is all you need.

The advertising of property online dramatically changed the housing market. I remember the new tag lines to adverts along the lines of ‘buy a house with a mouse’ or ‘clicks and mortar’ becoming prevalent. All of a sudden the exposure of a property (whatever it was) increased dramatically as mentioned previously it could be viewed locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Your potential buyer could literally be next door or across the world and everywhere in between, north of the county or north of the country. The onset of the internet didn’t make things easier, it just gave you the hassle quicker, whether you were the seller or the agent. The onset of the digital age was a serious threat to the existing traditional model of estate agency that included invariably a high street office. The fees being offered by the early protagonists of the online-only proposition were a fraction of the normal percentage cut and people were taken in by it. For decades estate agents’ fees were always the discussion at dinner parties and other social gatherings and I am fully aware that people, perhaps with envy, really thought it was money for old rope i.e. all you had to do was stick a board outside, maybe put an advert in the local paper, the owner showed the viewer around the property and the agent got the fee. The public’s perception of the business has also long been the source of much angst for every estate agent and I believe always will be.

As time progressed a new breed of agents (no names mentioned but there are a plethora of them) broke away from the pack and offered a low fixed fee instead of the usual commission. It could sometimes be a saving of anywhere between 50-75% of a normal fee, the only catch was it was payable up front regardless of a sale or after a certain time period (with one agency deferment of paying the fee meant you had to use their in house legal services which I subsequently learnt were a lot more expensive than a local solicitor and geographically remote i.e. a long way from the subject property). These agents may argue otherwise but they really don’t care if a property sells (or not) or what it sells for, it should be painfully obvious that if the business model is getting clients to pay upfront then that is what the agent is going to spend most of their time doing. Attending viewings and co-ordinating a sale etc. is going to stop them from doing exactly that so it becomes of secondary importance. Also, the majority if not all of these agents worked alone out of their homes, so had no office for a vendor or buyer to visit if they had to, no one to help out with something urgent if they were busy doing something else, possibly a valuation or maybe the school run! At least with a traditional agency, the higher fee ensured other members of the team could assist you or your buyer so you weren’t reliant on one person all the time.

This is probably one of the more contentious parts of this book but as a long-standing traditional agent, I and my colleagues were totally aghast at this scenario unfolding in front of us as a profession. I don’t deny that some people saved money on the fee but at what cost? I’ll explain – If an agent is on a fixed fee, they won’t really care what a property sells for and if they have been paid up front, they won’t care if it sells at all. After all, as an employer, you wouldn’t give your new employee their month’s salary on day one and if they hadn’t come in for the rest of the month having turned up on day one, you again wouldn’t pay them, would you? If you did, you’d be very foolish.

The gamble was the so-called saving between the two fees. The commission a traditional agent charged wasn’t just to agree on a sale and pass it to the solicitors to progress to completion, the real hard work started then with a lengthy eight-week, or sometimes more, co-ordination of the legal and financial aspect of the deal and the related transaction(s) and the standard ratio within the industry is that approximately one in three sales fall through so no commission was payable in that scenario (an invoice is only raised on the exchange of contracts and paid on completion out of the sale proceeds). The agent would then have to start all over again but sometimes the existing buyer remained in place if it was their buyer who had withdrawn. Don’t forget that out of the commission received, all of the running costs of the office (the list is endless) had to be paid and most of these items had to be paid whether sales were made or not. I have often thought that if it really was as simple as people thought and it really was money for old rope, then everyone would be an estate agent (perish the thought). My closing thought about the fixed fee model is quite simple, a fee or commission paid to a professional should not only be linked to the value of the contract but also the performance of the contract, if it isn’t then it’s just an administrative charge.

When you knew nothing different, you just went with the existing status quo and followed the herd like the rest of your fellow professionals. Now, virtually every estate agent posts their property online but prior to the onset of the internet the only medium was newspaper advertising normally in the local weekly evening paper. In 1999, being of interest to me as it dominated every waking moment, I did my own personal study of the latest edition of the property newspaper (yes, I really did and I kept a note too). It became very apparent then, and it still prevails today, that a glaring homogeneity was evident. For example in that latest edition of the weekly paper, ignoring properties that were for rent and builders promoting new homes, there were 836 properties for sale and believe it or not bedrooms were mentioned in 97% of the adverts and interestingly 63% mentioned them as their first feature (I’m not sure if we’re sex mad or love a good nap). Some were studio flats, some mentioned they were detached, semi-detached, extended, neo-Georgian or mock Tudor, for cash buyers only, others claimed open plan accommodation or were ripe for re-development, ideal for the first-time buyer etc. Boring? Predictable? Repetitive? Yes! Only one stood out from the crowd and without blowing one’s own trumpet, it was mine. Beneath the photo, the area and the price it simply stated, Don’t buy anything until you have viewed this house. It sold and whereas I was encouraged to think about future adverts in a different direction I rarely re-enacted this scenario. A week or so before I was talking to a builder who was selling a beautiful new detached house that had it all, a half-acre plot backing onto woods, a stunning kitchen with an open plan family room, four bedrooms, two en-suites and a double garage. The adverts weren’t working and I sensed I was close to losing his business. Walking around the house with him, admiring the quality of the specification I recall saying, Someone’s going to buy this house and make their friends jealous. He turned to me and simply said, Well put that in the bloody advert then. I did, it attracted numerous enquiries and it sold. The buyer’s friends were very jealous and it proved to me that if I’m bored writing out the same old text, then the public must be bored reading it. It pains me to admit I didn’t use it again, at least not in print, only on viewings.

I was never as brave as a long-forgotten London-based estate agent called Roy Brooks (his firm is still in existence today long after his demise). Back in the 1960’s he broke away from the crowd and said what he really wanted to say, they were almost anti-adverts. He was a professed socialist and satirised other estate agents and in doing so became a cult figure. A typical advert would read, Brothel in Pimlico untouched by 20th century, reeks of damp or worse but still habitable judging by the bed of rags, fag ends and empty bottles in one corner…ten rather unpleasant rooms with stymie backyard, £4650 freehold. Apparently, he wasn’t so concerned about the value of the house and he liked to undo the upwardly mobile of the 1960’s. A lot of his clients were art dealers and the creative sort (Bohemians if you’re looking for the perfect adjective). Another advert on behalf of a painter read, Who must sell shepherd’s cottage, Hampstead Heath to move to Mevagissey, leaving still life of cornflakes, £6785. He didn’t like rising areas and another advert read, Fash. Barnes, a few minutes to West End by car (in middle of the night) £6275. One read, Do not be misled by fash. Chelsea exterior, all is not well inside, or Will no one take pity on a nasty house adjacent to Regents Park Terrace? Friendly howl of hyena £7250. My personal favourite was along the lines of ‘This room is ideal for a long thin horse.’

As agents paid for column inches (forgive the expression) in newspapers abbreviations abounded, or should that be ‘abb. ab’d?’ As a buyer, you soon became accustomed to the jargon the industry was famous for. For example, first-time buyers became FTB. Off-road parking-ORP, gas central heating-GCH, OIEO offers in excess of, OIRO – offers in the region of, STP-subject to planning and so it prevailed for years. With the internet, no such problem arose so the secret code has almost become lost lingo.

Upmarket press advertising meant glossy magazines such as Country Life and these still grace the newsagent’s shelves today. The properties were of substantial value and of national if not international importance (if you believed the hype). Invariably there was a detailed description including proximity (in miles) to London and other regional towns or cities, stunning professional photography which was nearly always at the height of summer and everything you could possibly need, except for the price. This followed the maxim that if you had to ask the price you obviously couldn’t afford it. But even the most seasoned of professionals let alone buyers would be struggling to say with some degree of accuracy if a property was £4m, £6m or any other believable figure, it really was taking it to another level. Some fudged it by stating ‘substantial offers invited’ but then how substantial did you have to be thinking or able to afford? Higher values don’t make it simpler or quicker, if anything the opposite. If a property has large areas of land, additional dwellings such as staff cottages (yes, you read that right), fishing rights, public rights of way etc. then things are going to take a while to sort out legally, it won’t be a quick deal that’s for sure. A certain amount of elitism crept onto the agenda as some agents became associated with market-expensive houses and some owners bragged that ‘I’m on with so and so’ as if any other named agent wouldn’t be keeping up with the Joneses, or should that be the Fortescue-Smythes? I also noticed that then and now the agent’s name has to fit the bill, so you’ll need to contact Sebastian, Hugo or Rupert, Cressida, Jemima or Prudence. The typical cost of a page in one of these periodicals was about two and a half times the average page in the local rag where lots, possibly 30 properties, were advertised, the main difference is that the client paid via the pre-agreed marketing budget for the national advert, the local agent always paid for the ad in the local newspaper. Marina houses or properties with moorings were sometimes advertised in yachting magazines as people who owned yachts might just… No! I appreciate it was thinking laterally but if you wanted to buy a house you wouldn’t look in yachting magazines, but then again there’s always an exception to the rule, and I stand to be corrected.

The majority of properties appeal to a small, local market. Some are more appealing to a wider audience and a very few select ones have national attraction but these are very far between. The international buyers are seldom met by the large majority of agents and their clients, me included, so I’ll make no further comment. I did meet the occasional buyer who had moved abroad some 10 years previously and then returned to their old stomping ground to settle down but they are probably counted on one hand. The only times international situations crossed my path was when clients were selling up to retire to sunnier shores or relocate to be closer to grandchildren and family in some far-flung part of the world.

I said earlier that a high value doesn’t make things easier or quicker. The same goes for the enquiries you receive as once exposed to the market anyone can view your property details. One particular house with a value at the time of £950,000 was the subject of a matrimonial sale. The wife had moved out, it was the early days of the internet and it wasn’t selling as at the time it was one of the more expensive properties for sale. The wife’s solicitor was an aggressive character demanding a full statistical analysis of the internet leads. Well, the facts showed 600 hits but only one enquiry that had viewed it but didn’t like it. I was asked why there weren’t more viewings. What are you doing about selling it? Was it being shown to London buyers? (Here we go again).

There lies the issue, You can have a lot of hits but that’s all they are, They could be anyone including inquisitive neighbours, other estate agents (undoubtedly), surveyors, bank managers, journalists or students doing a thesis on the housing market (good luck with that one) and one I definitely know of was me making sure the advert was correct. The other occasion when this whole scenario was perfectly demonstrated to me was when we received an email (with no telephone number) asking for the brochure of a £7m country house to be posted. I recognised the address as one of the low value but gave the situation the benefit of the doubt, after all, it could have been someone’s PA, I weighed the hardback brochure and is a large 50-page publication it was going to be over £10 to post, it was cheaper to hand deliver it later. Upon arriving at the address I sensed something wasn’t quite right so I knocked on the door and with all due respect the guy who answered the door was not the one who had asked for the brochure, it was his seven-year-old son, who it transpired had a hobby that included surfing the internet and asking for expensive house details to be posted. As Dad closed the door handing me the brochure back he said, I’ll have a word.

The reasons people and property come to the market are varied. Normally they are driven by life events such as first-time buyers getting their foot on the property ladder, couples upsizing to a larger home as their family expanded, more mature owners selling to downsize when a house and garden become too big, divorce situations when houses are sold for re-development and repossessions with the saddest and most poignant of all being deceased estates. This latter scenario led from the distant past to the creation of the current estate agency profession as we know it today. Long ago, when a country house had to be sold invariably following the death or bankruptcy of the owner, an individual was appointed to assist in the disposal of all of the assets, goods and chattels. They soon realised that there was a much more lucrative fee to be earned from the sale of the most valuable part of the estate, the principal property, than all the smaller items, hence the term ‘estate agent.’ So now you know.

It’s widely acknowledged that in Europe there is a culture of renting whereas in the UK property ownership has long been ingrained in our heritage, it seems forever, after all that timeless adage ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ still prevails. Further back in time, 1581 to be precise, Richard Mulcaster, a headmaster in his treatise on education is quoted as, He (the householder) is the appointee of his own circumstance and his house is his castle.

Since at least the 17th century it has been a legal precept that no one may enter a home (typically male-owned) unless by invitation. In 1628 Sir Edward Coke stated, For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sum clique est tutissimum refugium (and each man’s home is his safest refuge), This became established in common law.

William Pitt the Elder in 1763 said, Compared to our European neighbours the English really do have a predilection for home ownership. He further stated, The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail-its roof may shake-the wind may blow through it-the storm may enter rain may enter the king of England cannot enter. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when selling off council houses in the early 1980s famously said, The most important word in our language is freehold or to give its correct legal title, fee simply absolute in possession. Apparently, the French do not have such a word in their language to match ours, touché! (To borrow one of theirs).

People enter the housing market willingly to embark on what without a doubt will be probably the biggest purchase of their life (until the next time). Having said that my in-laws bought a bungalow in 1961 as first-time buyers and never moved, now in their dotage they don’t have to and never had to experience that next part of the learning curve, becoming a first-time seller. Like so many life experiences when it’s your first time you do what you feel is right and are often guided by your heart, other people’s experiences who are close to you and their advice which was gleaned from their own circumstances and course the advice of professionals involved with the transaction. Over the decades of my career, I have met so many people from all sorts of backgrounds and some very successful in their chosen career but when it comes to buying or selling a property, it soon became painfully obvious that they didn’t have a clue. Even experienced solicitors who practised conveyancing (the legal process of transferring the title of a property from one party to another) needed their hand held on occasions. Even experienced estate agents (me) had some bad luck and were at the vagaries of the market as so many aspects of a transaction are beyond your immediate control.

Most people stare in disbelief, mouths agape when I implore to them that January is a great time to sell as there is little on the market. Most of the buyers think, We didn’t move last year like we said we would so let’s move this year, Oh look, this year’s started so let’s go looking. Most sellers wait for the Spring when the clocks go forward, the lighter evenings arrive, the garden comes alive, perhaps the Budget (with a property-related giveaway) or the Easter weekend but then more properties come onto the market so for a seller there’ll be more competition. The number of people who ring us the day before Good Friday wishing to place their property on the market for the Easter weekend seems to have forgotten several things. Firstly, it’s a 3-5 day process, we’re already fully booked up so no chance of doing a viewing and (we ask) where have you been all year? The market is no longer as seasonal as it used to be, from the 2nd January right through to the 23rd December it’s a time to sell. Any Friday is good, not just Good Friday.

When we had to move to a larger house to accommodate our