Following a brief hiatus, my neighbour (remember her, shes the one in the story about Locum vet jobs) has resumed her policy of making repeated and vociferous complaints against us. Her chief gripe appears to be that we have the gall to lead a life that does not involve making absolutely no noise at any time. Our co-landlord is attempting to resolve the dispute with all the tenacity of a drunk trying to change a lightbulb. Time to move then.
At first, the prospect of a move is exciting. A larger, cheaper place to live, with a slightly longer and more poorly lit walk from the tube seems like a good swap. Then I start looking. Find-a-property.com has a grand total of 4 suitable properties, but one is perfect - 2 extra bedrooms for the same that we’re paying now. I get on the phone to the agency and am told that, regrettably, the flat has already been let. Pangs of our last moving experience, where flats seemed to be vacated and let again in the blink of an eye, come flooding back. The next line doesn’t help.
They’ve got something in the same area for 1050 per week. Just 150 above our already strained budget then. Next time you walk past an estate agent, try calling out your monthly rent budget through the door. They are rigorously trained to disregard it, to the point that it seems they physically cannot hear numbers. She asks for a list of areas we’d consider living in. I explain that we live in Tooting (hardly alongside St Tropez or Sandbanks in terms of exclusivity) and would like to stay in the area. At a push we might venture a half-mile outside in any direction. “How about Dulwich?”I put the phone down. I don’t feel excited any more.
Which leads me to the bigger question: why are estate agents so utterly rubbish? I accept that living in London requires me to accept inflated prices and smaller property, but it’s been the same everywhere I’ve lived. Estate agents only ever have properties in areas you don’t want to live, at prices you can’t afford. Either that or they’re keeping the cheap local modern penthouses to one side whilst they try and palm off the hovels festering on their books.
That’s the fundamental problem - it’s like going into a Tesco to get a packet of fags and being offered a pint of milk - but only if you walk to the next Tesco’s. I’m not aware of the loophole in universal commercial practice that you should try and give the customer what they want, but estate agents seem to exist entirely within its radius. The second you call an agent, you’re drawn into a web of mind games, where you go in wanting a studio flat in Clapham, and come out with a house boat in Clacton-on-Sea. Estate agents, I beg you: just give me what I want. I know you have it. I don’t want a free coffee, or a tour of properties I can’t afford; I just need help finding somewhere convenient and affordable to live. From what I understand, that’s what you do, isn’t it?
Update: In the time since I drafted my diatribe, the aforementioned agent has called back to offer me the £1050 property again, pointing out that it’s “stunning”. Well, if it’s stunning…