Selling your home is a strenuous activity. To sell two, multiplies the general air of panic. I’ve never sold a property before as we were first-time buyers when we moved here, so the challenge was there for me to embrace. My initial strategy was to make sure everything look spick and span and to really try and impress the viewers with my sales patter. In the first couple of days of the house being on the market, I saw dozens of people and after a while I realised that my sales patter just wasn’t working – so I toned it down in stages until I was almost grunting at them.
“Living room…kitchen…cupboard…garden…bathroom…toilet…small bedroom…cupboard…large bedroom…cupboard…massive scope for expansion.”
You get the idea. One fellow, who we shall call Mr B, was very interested. In fact, he was the first person to view. However, he required subsequent viewers and I was very accommodating, smiling and pretending it was OK when he turned up at 9.45pm with his Eastern European girlfriend. Trying not to be offended when he reappeared suddenly with a burly “builder” friend who virtually called me a liar when I said that we’d had a quote for a loft conversion and they believed you’d have to get planning permission from the council for such an extension (like duh). These people left greasy fingermarks over the paint surfaces and the loft access panel. And then two more people turned up from his party to view. The effect of them turning up late meant that all my subsequent viewers were queuing on the doorstep and even when Mr B and his party left, they spent a further 45 minutes outside my house visually examing the roof and eyeing up my further appointments as they arrived and left.
Mr B made an offer, but I didn’t think he was serious and I didn’t like him much as a person, so I pushed him up. He backed down and the offer fell. I was glad because this guy was going to rip out the heart of the house and build, build, build. I know I am not a big fan of my neighbours, but not even I would put them through the possible mess and chaos caused by such invasive building work.
Anyway, more people arrived and some appeared interested and some were just here to have a nose. The Missus said at the beginning that we’d sell in a week, but I said it might take longer. She was getting a little concerned about the lack of serious offers, but I said that we needed to wait and that a man would come and he would buy both. I knew he was out there, I just needed him to turn up.
All the while I was also trying to sell the bungalow next door. The bungalow isn’t in as good condition as our home, so it needed a little more of a push. A queue of people came and went, but no offers. The only sniff was a couple of chancers who threw in £110,000 – which was just stupid. So we waited. And then my man arrived.
Mr K turned up early Saturday morning, but before I can talk about our deal I must tell you what happened on the Friday night. It was about 12.30am and we were heading up to bed when I received a call from my mother telling me that there was a gang of youths outside the house and that they had ripped up our “For Sale” sign. I went up to the bedroom window and spied out into the blackness and a group of 6-8 “youths” were staggering off into the night, peppering the air with expletives and threats to each other as they went. I put my boots on (the ones with the steel toe caps, so I was ready for a fight) and grabbed my claw hammer in order to do any repairs.
When I checked the damage, the little scrotes didn’t quite manage to rip the “For Sale” sign off our gatepost, but ripped the entire post from the ground and left it propped up against the tree in the front garden. Now this was our good post – the post that still stood firm and held against the elements. It wasn’t our slightly droopy, not so good post that was wonky and caused the gate to swing at a funny angle. I was mightily pissed off, so I set off after them but by the time I had reached the corner of our road, the group had disappeared around another corner and I decided it was a little too far to wander on my own. So me and The Missus did our best to secure the post, but the damage was such that it wasn’t going back into the ground and it would not hold. As we tussled with the sign, a lone figure staggered past the house: it was one of the little shits who had been with the group that damaged our gate post.
I confronted the guy, but here’s a handy psychological tip for those of you who want to get to the truth. Always choose your words carefully and create a verbal trap for your protagonist to fall into. Here’s my example:
“Hey, why did you feel the need to rip up my gatepost?” says I.
“Why would I want to rip down your ‘For Sale’ sign?” the little bastard replies.
Now notice what I did there. I didn’t say “For Sale” sign – I said gatepost and our “For Sale” sign was out of sight to the casual observer, so it was patently obvious that this was my man. I squared up to him and gave him a verbal bollocking. I so desperately wanted him to take a swing at me, but the guy’s balls suddenly deserted him.
“Why would I want to rip down your ‘For Sale’ sign?” was his mantra until the Missus smartly interjected: “Because you’ve had a shit night and you want to ruin ours…” There really was no answer to that. Realising that I wasn’t going to get a fight out of the fellow, I told him to be on his way and that he had no right to damage our property.
The funny thing is that when I was a younger man, I’d done the same thing: I ripped down a sign outside a house. Ahhhh, but before you roll your eyes and call me a hypocrite, dear reader, let me explain. A good few years ago, we were letting a flat in Leytonstone and it was right near the tube station and it was very busy. The terms of our letting meant that there had to be a “Let By” sign outside the property at all times. This invariably got pulled down so many times I lost count. But whenever one got ripped down, a new one would almost automatically appear thanks to the magic lettings fairy. One night, after a boozy evening with works colleagues, I returned home to find the “To Let” sign at a funny angle. Someone had unsuccessfully tried to pull it down and I was so pissed (off and drunk) that I finished the job with a drunken roar. Don’t worry, the sign was replaced a few days later. So people damaging this signs are a bit of a bugbear. I can’t stand the damn things, but when you sign the contract with agent, there’s little you can do about it.
SOooo…back to my dream man. The man who was going to buy both our properties. He arrived on that following Saturday morning and I wasn’t in a good mood. The sign was in our front garden, lying on the lawn, looking a bit crappy. The gatepost was missing and I hadn’t bothered to tidy the place. But as soon as we finished the viewing he named his price and we shook on it. It was as easy as that. Then I took him next door and the same thing happened. He named his price, we haggled and then we shook on it. I took a slightly lower price because I wanted an easy life and a buyer taking on both properties makes it a lot easier arranging completion dates, etc.
Anyway, the next viewers arrived about an hour later. There were three of them: two men and a woman, all in the latter stages of middle age. They were very keen and I think they must have caught the reek of booze when I opened the door. In the interceding hour, we’d had a celebratory lager between us and were a little ebullient with the sale. At the end of the viewing, one guy said:
“You are going to sell this today.”
“I already have!” I remarked with a chortle.
Sure enough, these people made a higher offer on the Monday morning, but I turned them down. While it would have been nice to have the extra cash, I realled wanted Mr K to buy because he was a nice chap, who wanted the bungelow for his ailing mother and he was like me: a no-bullshit kind of guy. Of course, we’ve still got to get through surveys and contracts, but I wish the guy well at this old place because it has been a real home to us and I hope it is a real home to him. So after twelve days and 24 viewers, we were one step closer to selling up.
