Room 101: The Estate Agent

So we put in an offer on the House From Hell a week ago now.

As the days drained by, we heard the same thing day after day. Apparently Mr Fat is still at sea (which we're beginning to suspect is a euphemism for something truly horrible, suggestions for which include he is beneath the patio or Mrs Fat may have eaten him, or perhaps he is buried beneath the sweaty rolls of excess flab about her person) and has still not responded to the email.

So, taking matters into my own hands, I organised a few appointments to view two other properties on Sunday afternoon, one of which could have been the one, or encouraged us away from the fiery jaws of Hell, or on the other hand assured us that investing thousands of pounds of someone else's money into a property that Sarah Beeny would do one of those omnipotent, condemning and sarcastic voice-overs when reviewing was really the right choice after all.

Unfortunately for those property sellers, both of reasonably priced, modest yet promising houses (although each with their imperfections which meant Hell is still firmly settled in the top spot, regardless of the fact that they don't actually seem to want to sell it to us), the agent who showed us round was so utterly abhorrent that I actually felt the need to physically suppress all manner of Nasty Things To Say, at one stage gripping my boyfriend's hand so tightly I'm sure my fingernails pierced his skin (he was, incidentally, gripping my hand with an equal intensity).

I don't like estate agents. Not that I've ever been involved with one on any level before, but having lived in London, where you can only walk a few hundred yards before being mown down by an erratically driven, heavily branded Foxton's mini, complete with smug, small penised agent casually masturbating inside at his recent reaping of another poor, unfortunate couple's beaten souls, I feel like they have interfered with my daily life to such a degree that I may as well have signed on that dreaded dotted line. In my blood. And, what the hell, that of my nearest and dearest too.

Subsequently, Estate agent car branding, really doesn't go down all that well with me. It says 'this company sucks the very lifeblood out of innocent home buyers and sellers that it can afford to throw endless reams of cash away telling people as such on its motor vehicles'. And it says of the driver 'look at me, I'm a twat'.

I instantly had my back up when our assigned agent arrived in such a heavily branded car. This hadn't started well.

Showing us around the house, the agent, complete with trowel applied foundation and clipboard accessory kit, barely broke those carefully hidden lines, for fear of fracture, in discussing the property. Instead she waxed lyrical about how the property had recently been sold, how it was sure to go by the end of the day, using words like 'delightful' so laden with patronising, sugary tones that I believe she may have been a primary school teacher in a previous life, if she hadn't terrorised small children by the mere mention of her name or the echo of her footsteps.

I don't know exactly what she thought we were after in a property but telling us that the (absolutely hideous) wardrobes were staying in the house to insinuate that leaving behind furniture would influence our purchase positively lead me to believe she just didn't think. At all.

On leaving the first property, after continuing to reel off the list of other potential buyers that were still to view the property that day, she said, pushing me to the dangerous point of doing something that I might have been arrested for, 'I think this would be an ideal property for you'.

Yes, okay, an ideal property. For someone who doesn't have a boyfriend who plays the drums, who doesn't sing loudly and painfully at inhuman times of the day, who doesn't have a boyfriend who thinks its a really good idea to play extremely inappropriate morning music at the volume that it was set to the night before, to someone who doesn't own a Newfy.

Had we not had to endure a second viewing with this agent, I would perhaps have escaped a little ruffled but recovered after a nice cup of tea and a flapjack.

But we followed her, up through estate after estate of properties still adorned with Christmas lights (an immediate concern) to the second property.

The agent new nothing about this property and had never visited it before. But she swept into room after room, exclaiming something wildly inappropriate on entering such as describing the pocket sized bathroom that would have fitted neatly on the back seat of my car as 'spacious' and oozing praise for the admittedly lovely view to the point that it really wasn't all that lovely after all.

On exiting the property, we asked if she had any details for it, knowing we weren't interested, but trying to prise ourselves away from her venomous barbed tongue as swiftly as possible. She exclaimed, loudly enough for the owners to hear, that if we were to wait for the details we'd be far too late and we really would need to put an offer in immediately as (mentioning for possibly the sixth or seventh time about that particular property) she had many more viewings to conduct (all this with the undercurrent of a laugh that would reduce Mumrah the Ever Living to retreating back into his cocoon).

The final nail in her coffin was, on walking back to the car, she asked us if we had the available finances to buy the property, laughing in a manner that made me want to rip out her tongue and post it through her ear canal until it came out the other side, that we'd be surprised how many people didn't organise this side of things before viewing a house.

Now, I may look twelve. But I, unlike her, have several useful brain cells that I have put into good use with this whole purchase process. No, thank you, I do not want to see your Independent Financial Adviser. No I will not be sending you a Christmas card. And no, most certainly, I will not, under any circumstances, ever be buying a house from you.

Before, estate agents were a problem that other people had, like genital warts or hair loss. Now, it appears, that they are under my skin, picking apart the delicate strings that hold together my sanity, poisoning my thoughts with their presence. I haven't said so many nasty things about one person in such a very long time that I shocked myself in being able (with the help of my boyfriend) to discuss each one of her foibles, down to mere (but probably accurate) predictions about her character, and then was able to do the whole thing again once we arrived home with my parents.

Our estate agent, the people who are occasionally calling us to inform us that, no, still nothing has happened, are, I fear, not much better. The fact that they informed my boyfriend, when he mentioned (read: threatened) that we were beginning to look at other houses, that they 'were doing a lot of work for us' (read: calling Mrs Fat to ask for news, then calling us, or not calling us, to inform us that there was none), despite the fact that we are among the only people willing to even consider stepping inside Hell, let alone to put an offer in on such a grotesque building, in 6 months, and that we have waited a week now to hear back. I strongly resent being told by an estate agent that they are doing a lot of work for us, especially over such pitiful claims as a few phone enquiries, when in fact isn't it their job to sell us the house? And, correct me if I'm wrong, don't they actually get paid if they sell the house? So, technically, the work they are doing is THEIR JOB?

The justification of the existence of an estate agent, as far as I am aware, is to make unnecessary paperwork, create reams of unimportant yet totally undecipherable red tape, increase the rate of alcohol abuse and raise stress levels to hospitalisation points.

Yes, okay, it isn't very nice to have to negotiate directly with someone, to tell them that you won't offer that sum of money for their house, because it isn't worth it. And for that reason I am thankful the estate agent does that bit (although even if it was down to us, I'd make my boyfriend do it while I hid behind the sofa, loudly whispering inappropriate comments and writing incomprehensible scribblings on post-it notes during the phone call, then subsequently getting angry when he doesn't address any of my points).

But really, if that's the only reason, that terribly English reason of not wishing to offend anyone directly to their face, instead employing a costly and incompetent middle man purely for the purposes of negotiation to hide behind, if that's the only reason we have our very souls tainted, beaten by their presence, surely there's a better way?

Or perhaps, like the PE teachers, the parking attendants, the insurers of this world, its kind of secretly nice to have professions we can all gang up against and feel suitably smug that we aren’t one.