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From The Sunday Times

February 18, 2007

The secret agent

With interest rates rising, our property pro recalls the repossessions of the early 1990s

The assistant manager, T, approaches me, more jittery than normal. “What about interest rates going up?” “What about them?” I say, knowing full well that he is on the cusp of buying his first home, albeit under fiancée duress.

“Do you think they will rise again?” he asks. “Only I’m really stretching myself as it is.”

“It tends to be cyclical,” I tell him, not entirely helpfully, but then I had just read a reprimand from my line-manager about our mortgages-placed-to-sales-penetration ratio.

“I’m crapping myself,” he adds, and suddenly he looks like a schoolboy.

I sigh and toss the boss’s stroppy memo in the bin.

“Have you got any savings at all?” I ask. “Just in case the rates rise?”

“Nope,” replies T sheepishly. “We are pretty much maxed-out.”

“You could sit tight, see if things flatten out, maybe drop a little.” “But what if they don’t?” he whimpers. “What if we are priced out of the market forever?”

I’m sorely tempted to tell him I’m just as clueless as he is. Every time I think the market has peaked, another flurry of stretched-mortgage-multiple deals pump it a little higher. But I also have a long memory — one he invokes with his next question.

“When were rates last this high?” “I was paying 15% when I bought my house,” I tell him, still barely able to believe it myself.

“Strewth, how did you survive?” “Burned through most of my savings, praying it would get better before we ran out of funds.” I shiver at the recollection.

“God, that must have hurt,” says T through pursed lips.

“Yes and no. I did get to repossess my neighbour’s house.”

“You’re kidding?” “No. It’s okay, though. I never did like him much.” I pause. “And better still, he hated me.”

“Did you deal with many repos back then?” asks T, wide-eyed.

“Half of our business for about 18 months. We’d try to shunt the new mortgage to a buyer who’d take a loan out with the existing lender and we’d bag the endowment. But not any more.”

“Too many regulations?” asks T. “Nope, bad publicity. Just can’t flog endowments any more.”

“Critical illness and payment protection is where the dosh is,” interjects M, the mortgage man.

I return later in the day from a brace of valuations, owners’ expectations so far out of kilter with reality that even I would be embarrassed to have their homes in the window.

T still looks agitated. “That woman on the television,” he says, “you remember we talked about her once.”

I vaguely recall an earlier conversation about one of the buxom so-called property experts.

“Well, she is convinced prices will never drop,” says T, “so she ought to know, shouldn’t she?”

And the old frustration surfaces. “Look, as far as I know, most of these people have never been estate agents, so how are they qualified to speak? They are just talking heads. Anyway, you fancy her, don’t you?”

“Yes, he’s got the hots for her,” says S, the negotiator, from across the office. T’s slightly oedipal fixation with his older girlfriend is suddenly explained.

“I’d give her a full structural survey, too,” offers F, the trainee, as usual lifting the tone of the conversation. “No sign of subsidence yet.”

“Well, she does nothing for me,” concludes S, as she comprehensively scuppers another idle fantasy.

“Look,” I say wearily, “I quite like Fiona Bruce,” and several faces frown with incomprehension.

“The newsreader?” I offer. “Anyway, I’d listen to her give bird flu advice but I wouldn’t take property tips from her.”

I’m rewarded with a trio of nodding heads and a round of giggling. Occasionally, I still love my job.

Took a phone call just before leaving the office — advance warning of a repossession next week, paperwork to follow. Pencilled it into the diary. Now that’s definitely no laughing matter.

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