Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Interesting Times

Apparently in China, wishing someone "interesting times" is a curse, because in their culture stability rather than change is prized above all else. I have no idea if that is an urban myth or true but Ali and I are certainly facing interesting times. As you might have read previously on this log, we are having to leave our rented house because the landlady needs to sell the place. But following a visit to a Financial adviser, we now discover that we are possibly in a position to buy it.

We have made an offer but have not yet heard back if it has been accepted. So it is a strange feeling when people come round to view the place knowing that they are effectively in competition with us to buy our house. So how do we subtley try to put people off? Well first of all we make sure that all the windows are open so they can hear the noise of trains and planes going by (our house is next to a train line and on the Heathrow flight path). We considered putting up Bio hazard or Radiation notices to put people off but thought this might be a bit obvious! Today Ali put down a bowl of flour with a label next to it saying "Rat Poison". A bit more subtle but I'm not sure it will work.

What do you think we should do to put off prospective purchasers? We considered disgusting things like not flushing the toilet but discarded them since we still have to live in the place for the next month. Any inventive but none disgusting ideas for putting people off welcome. Interesting Times indeed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting times and an interesting co-incidence. I bought my rented place of my landlady some 8+ years ago.

In my case, I didn't need to disuade prospective buyers as it never got to market. The landlady told me she was selling and I offered to buy. Going directly saved her the 2% or so estate agent commission. A lot of incentive. Give the landlord a call ;O)

Ben
http://www.jaffacake.net

Mr Ports said...

Ben, I couldn't agree more. But our landlady decided to tell the Estate Agent about our offer (Doff!). Such a shame as it makes very little difference to us but could have saved her thousands of quid. But wadday gonna do?!