and more ranting

Last week a family came to view the house at late notice on Saturday (luckily the house was still more or less spic and span.. since I'd been running around the place saying to everyone "Don't do that" "Put that back" and "Did you flush?"). I sent Rich and kids out of the house and showed round a couple and their 3 children. They were moving for the same reasons we want to ... catchment. They want their daughter to get into the school this house is in catchment in... I was VERY nice to their kids... I could sense they liked the place... an offer was hovering in the air... I could smell it (either that or someone hadn’t flushed).

On Monday morning, one of the minions from estate agents figured out how to string 7 numbers together and rang me (or he had me on speed dial) with the news that the couple DID really like the house and were going to put an offer in (Aha, I'm not forking out £3000 a year on a psychology course for nothing) but just to be sure they looked up the history of the house and saw that we'd only paid 240K for it 2 1/2 years ago (ah feck). This put them off and they'd bid for another house. I managed to restrain myself from saying that unless they managed to meet Doc. Brown, and do a Marty McFly back to 2009 so they could offer 241K for this house, I didn't really see what their point was.

Anyway I made the point to him that since we were renting at that time and the property bubble was just starting to burst we'd had people chasing after us with contracts, knocking £40k off house prices and throwing their house keys at us. The people we bought from were retiring, downsizing and had already found a place they wanted… they could see their dreams of a new life slipping away with each day bringing more gloom and uncertainty. So being the kind of people we are, we took advantage of them and got this house for a steal. I told him to tell the couple to go take a look at any other house that sold at that time and they'd see this was how the market was at the time, and not a reflection of this property. I also wanted to add that if that was the way they were picking a house I would have appreciated them doing their online research BEFORE I’d spent 2 hours cleaning the house from top to bottom to save us all the bother. But I didn’t.

We heard no more from our friends for the rest of the week. Then this morning a phone call from EA to say the couple have put forward a bid of £290... very politely said I'd rather not sell at all then sell at that price. EA at this point is trying to push us into lowering my price, with the fact that our contract with them runs out in 4 weeks no doubt on his tiny mind. Luckily we're in no hurry though, Noah is very happy at school and with the help of friends we're managing the school run. Plus we really like this house, and as yet have not really found one we both agree on.

However this couple are going to view the house next door (which is up for sale for £315 with a different agent... This could go one of two ways. It could be that this viewing puts our house and our price in a better light for them OR they are going to become our new neighbours ;)

Rant

I won’t mention the name of the estate agents we’ve gone with, but they are named after of an ancient civilisation that once conquered the world. This lot couldn’t conquer an ironing pile belonging to a naturist. If I don’t laugh I’ll probably cry... well ok not cry, I’ll probably attack one of them with the FOR SALE sign they’ve erected in our front garden.If you’ve got something better to do then I suggest you go do it.. otherwise let me begin.

It all started to go wrong the day I went in to sign the contract with them. That morning an invitation arrived in the post, stamp and all, to an open house at the house of my dreams(if I were dreaming of a 2 bedroom house in the catchment for the Walter school that is). I pointed out the error to our guy, telling him he’d wasted a stamp sending it to us when we clearly are not looking for a property of that size or location. And I’m sure the seller would not be happy about them spending their marketing budget in such a manner.
“Oh yes Mrs MacLachlan, you’re on our system as looking for a 4 bedroom house. That was just an error. Not sure how that happened”.

A minor setback.. nothing to worry about....I’ll just sign the contract and turn into a Tasmanian Devil cleaning my house for the next few weeks...

The next week I’m looking frantically for a house that we might want to buy, and more importantly can afford to buy. Unfortunately these two criteria do not happy bedfellows make. A phone message on my house phone from the estate agent who drives a convertible sports car and is far too young, pretty, thin and did I mention young for me to regard her with anything other than contempt, goes something like this..

“Hi Mrs. MacLachlan, it’s the young, pretty, glamorous blond from the agency that makes you reassess your life and look at your love handles and advancing years in a whole new light here (ok I’m paraphrasing). I’m just wondering how your search is going? We’ve got a fantastic property new to the market. Not sure it’s the location you’re looking for. It’s on Manor Road”
Luckily for her she hadn’t got me on the phone, as she was actually trying to sell me my own house. I know people say a good salesman can sell sand to the Arabs, but this was a stretch. However, it did cheer me up to know that she might look a pretty picture, but there’s not much going on behind those mascaraed to within an inch of their lives eyelashes. In fact, her saving grace that she wears so much mascara that it looks like two fat spiders are trying to escape from her eyelids. Otherwise, I’d really have to hate her. In fact I did think later maybe she made the error because she had something in her eye, something like an entire tube of mascara. Anyway, I rang her back and left a message saying I was really excited to hear there was a property we might be interested as I wasn’t having much luck, but since I was currently living in the property I wasn’t interested in buying it at the moment. Surprisingly enough she didn’t ring me back.

THEN yesterday while looking through the free property paper I find our house on there with the open day advertised for tomorrow with the location of the house as BARKHAM.Where the heck is Barkham??? Has there been a huge mudslide overnight and our whole property has slid to a new location? So I rang the office and catch some poor unsuspecting guy at the other end
Me (trying unsuccessfully to disguise my Irish accent “Hello there, I’m just phoning about a property I’ve found in the free property paper. It’s a 3 bedroom in Barkham”
Unsuspecting prepubescent (by the sound of him) boy at the other end (from now on to be known as UPBATOE) “Oh yes madam, just let me find the details of that for you now (pause) Where did you say? Barkham? I’m sorry I can’t actually find that property listed on our system...
Me “Yes I know, the reason you can’t find it is because it’s my house and it’s actually located in Wokingham, NOT Barkham. Where is Barkham?”
UPBATOE -series of excuses and platitudes that I won’t bother repeating that ultimately end in estate agent fashion of blaming someone else..i.e. the newspaper.

Then this morning my friend with the spider swallowing eyes knocks on my door a full 15 minutes early to show someone round to a viewing... causing me to throw various items I was trying to tidy up into my wardrobe upstairs, and open the door to her in a big fat, "I'm older and fatter than you" sweaty panic.

Open house is on tomorrow... it’ll be open season on estate agents if they don’t find someone to buy our house soon!