Definitely, Charlie has a spreadsheet open in front of him. My name and Sammy’s name is in cell A3, and next to it in B3, is our offer on the property we viewed on Saturday.
Charlie’s an estate agent. He enjoys showing people round houses. He polishes his shoes every night and straightens his massive tie-knot in the mirror every morning. He likes the office banter about West Ham and Love Island, and he has a little lego palm tree on his desk to remind him of those giddy Ibiza nights.
Under A3, column A is filled out with six or seven other names, each accompanied by a similar offer number in column B. He’s colour-coded the highest and the lowest. Some make him smile thinly; some make his eyes light up.
Charlie twiddles the plastic leaves of Lego and then squares his keyboard up to the monitor. Column C has telephone numbers in, D: email addresses, but columns E and F are working hard to calculate a tidy commission. The numbers glow in their yellow highlighted cells as though lit by the Balearic sun.
“Hello Sam?” he says, phone pressed to ear. “Sorry Matt, I mean.” He’s understandably got my name wrong. I don’t mind.
“Hi Charlie,” I say, lightly. I’m struck by his consonant-free West London footballers’ accent, juxtaposed with the slick professionalism of a man who polishes his shoes every night. We talk.
“Yeah so we’re at the stage now where we need your best and finals, obviously as you know the property genera’ed a lotta interest so to be fair to everyone at the end of the day…”
I explained I needed time to talk it over with my partner. Charlie agreed and so we disconnected the call and started the countdown clock to tomorrow morning. I imagined him going back to column F.
Buying a house is weird. A professional comes round and values it for you. They say it’s worth a certain price. They’re not impartial though - they know the more they can sell it for, the happier their boss will be. And in fact, it trickles down to them in commission too so it’s worth their while if that price is as high as possible without seeming ridiculous.
That’s not unusual I suppose; the shopkeeper adds labels to items on the shelf in the same way.
What a shopkeeper doesn’t do though, is spark a sort of bidding war for Mars Bars. That would be like only opening the shop for a half an hour in the afternoon and letting the kids in one by one to have a sneak peak at the chocolate bars, then getting them to guess how much they think Mars Bars are worth.
It’s worse than that though. The shopkeeper gets someone else to do it. He gets the Charlies of the world to let the kids in on Mars Bar Day. Charlie’s good with children. After all, he has a Lego palm tree on his desk.
So in troop the children one by one. Charlie makes sure they’ve got the right pennies in their little hands and then they’re in to view the Mars Bars.
“Can’t I just pay for it?” asks one. No little girl. You have to write down what you’d like to pay for it on this piece of paper. Then at the end of the day, the shopkeeper’s going to come back and he’s going to choose which one of you he’s going to sell the Mars Bar to.
“Won’t he just pick the one with the highest number though?” she says, wide-eyed with worry. Meanwhile, outside, a posh boy in short trousers and a blazer is scribbling zeroes on a piece of paper. He has a greedy look in his eye. Charlie nods.
“Then what was the point of the label?” she asks.
And all over the land, in newsagents and corner shops, Mars Bars would be getting sold that way, each only ever worth what someone was willing to pay, however close to the numbers on the label. In fact, as shopkeepers realise what’s happening, they see that they can play this guessing game over and over, and can keep pushing up those prices on the labels until suddenly all the posh boys are living in absolute palaces of chocolate, and the little girls have to put up with just packets of biscuits.
Meanwhile Charlie’s off to Ibiza for the summer season.
I’m no economist, and I’m not a socialist either, but doesn’t that sound all a bit bonkers? Sure, everyone has to live somewhere, sure this has been happening for generations. But at some point, surely, that bubble bursts and the posh boys can’t afford to sell all their chocolate/negative equity? I mean surely it would have been simpler if those prices were regulated, kept the same somehow, without the grinding wheels of greed getting in the way?
Best and finals eh. This is where we write our last guess on a piece of paper, hand it in to Charlie and wait for the reaction.
It’s going to have to be a Mars Bar and a half if it’s worth it.
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