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From The Sunday Times

November 11, 2007

Snakes and ladders

It’s funny, but does Sold ring true? Our property-finder and television presenter views ITV’s new sitcom

SOLD, a new six part comedy drama for ITV, is set in the world of Colubrines Estate Agents, where the unscrupulous staff are masters of high-pressure selling and dirty tricks.

Phil Spencer

Given the phenomenal amount of screen time devoted to property on British television, it seems incredible that, until now, there hasn’t been a sitcom set in the dog-eat-dog world of estate agents.

Despite our national obsession with property, few of us really know what goes on in the fancy agency offices that dot every high street. Agents, like most of us, are trying to do a job and pay their own mortgages. Yet they hold the keys at the milestone events that often accompany buying and selling homes – getting married, having a baby, divorce and death – and they are the people we love to hate. This combination makes Sold compelling viewing, even though it is played for laughs.

Years ago, I worked briefly in an estate agency, although I never sold a house and hated much of what I was asked to do. Watching the first couple of episodes of Sold brought it all back: pretending to be fussy about the type of homes being sold; erecting boards anywhere; ramping up fees; sabotaging competitors; enforced drinking nights in the guise of “team building”; sales-figures contests; and the constant threat of the P45.

Sold is set in a fictional agency called Colubrine (which means “snake-like”). The staff are masters of dirty tricks and high-pressure selling. Though slightly over the top, this is a good depiction of what can go on in an agency when the owner has no scruples – and there are certainly a few of those around.

Its fictional owner is a shady figure who rules his gang with an iron rod via a web link from his tax haven. He doesn’t care about customer satisfaction: it’s all about getting them to buy a house. If they buy the wrong one, they’re more likely to come back and sell it – and that means more commission. At the agency’s weekly Big Night Out, he rewards those who have clinched the most deals and humiliates the “geek of the week” before a baying mob of drunken colleagues. Sounds fanciful? Believe me, this stuff really goes on.

Money can bring out the worst in people, so, given how much is sloshing around the housing market, it is no wonder the profession attracts the occasional rotten apple. In the series, it is Matt, the office manager, who is the biggest liar, the biggest poseur, the most self-obsessed and the most focused on money and glory. In my career as a property-finder, I’ve met plenty of “Matts”. One I knew used to invent stories about his (nonexistent) children in order to appear “fatherly” and, by extension, trustworthy. I remember some agents using vendors’ beds during office hours, for sleep or sex. One I once worked with used to help himself to a bath and a brandy on cold winter afternoons; another used to fill the locks on a rival’s office with superglue at weekends. Giving “feedback” from fake viewings to sellers, and punch-ups between people erecting boards, are fairly common.

Nor are clients above chicanery: backhanders from buyers wanting to know what to offer in a sealed bid can be too tempting to refuse. I even know of one team whose manager allegedly let them buy one “underpriced” flat each a year. These never reached the open market, and were owned by people abroad, too old to realise they were being swindled, or dead. Known as ring-fencing, this is the worst trick in the book – and illegal. Then there is the emotional manipulation used to close sales.

If all this is making you determined to buy or sell without an agent, cheer up: in Sold, a young agent, Danny, slowly becomes the hero, outperforming Matt through a mix of intuition, empathy and honesty. He wants to find people homes – rather than flog them houses – and it really works. Thankfully, there are agents like him in real life.

Joking aside, there are serious messages within Sold. Agents are paid to look after the seller and to secure the highest price, so they’re unlikely to care who buys a property as long as they get their fee. Buyers must remember that agents are excellent relationship-builders. The more they know about you, your lifestyle, your requirements and your finances, the easier they find it to sell you a house.

They are trained to win your trust, and will try to override your opinion with their own or nudge you into spending more than you wanted.

So, what to do if you think you’re dealing with a real-life version of a Colubrine employee? First, ask direct questions about any worries you have: to the selling agent, the seller, your solicitor, another agent from the same office, even the receptionist. If you’re still unsure, ask them all again. If somebody’s bluffing, it will emerge. And ensure that there is a paper trail: dodgy agents prefer doing business by phone, where there is room for misunderstanding. Writing everything down and sending it through for their files should end “misunderstandings” and bring them sharply back into line.

Hopefully, the average person is too clued up these days to take what goes on in Sold too literally – probably because they’ve been bombarded with property shows for the past five years, something for which I feel guilty and grateful in equal measure.

I’m bracing myself for a call about a series vilifying the buying-agency business, which must be the last one not to have been given the sitcom treatment. It’s a good job we’re all so squeaky clean.

Sold, starring Kris Marshall as Matt, begins on ITV on Thursday at 9pm

Phil Spencer is chief executive of the home-search consultancy Garrington; 020 7376 6780, www.garrington.co.uk

Does the series include a final episode (to air in about six months' time) where all the staff are fired, the clients go bankrupt from their BTL 'investments', the agency is shut down and the owner arrested for investigation by the fraud squad?

That'll make entertaining viewing...

MB, Edinburgh,