Bed and board

Have you had to move home lately? And if you did, have you had the extreme misfortune of doing so in London? If so, you have almost inevitably had to deal with those dreaded middlemen — estate and lettings agents. My fiancée and I were recently flat hunting in the bleak housing midwinter of December, traipsing around London seeking rooms, if not at the inn, then at least in a nice mansion flat. And a cold coming we had of it.

In that time, we experienced the full range of commercial experience. Some agents, let it be said, were kind, conscientious and honest, making a difficult time and nightmare market tolerable, (worth noting they were from smaller local firms). But more typically, we experienced either greasy salesmanship — with agents desperate to push at the limits of our budget and patience — or utter indifference to us, their notional customers.

Having finally arrived, and not cheaply, at a rare pleasant and convenient property, we imagined our troubles were over. But one month after signing our lease, the agent’s “Let By” sign was still looming outside our window.  A constant reminder not to get too comfortable; a great bat signal letting the world know “renters living here! Temporary people dwelling within!”. After multiple unanswered emails to the letting agents — a small branch of a vast, foetid corporate organism — it remained, mocking us. Following a (kindly delivered) complaint from a neighbour about it still being up, I had had enough. I cut it down from my fence, in a small suburban re-enactment of the toppling of the statue of Saddam Husain. And, rather like that fateful moment, hope soon gave way to despair.

It must be annoying having a tacky “Let By” sign you didn’t ask for outside your office — I’d be angry too

Rather than throwing the cursed banner of rent seeking capitalism into the nearest skip, I conscientiously returned it to the local office, just down the road. Had you been there to witness it reader, you could have seen me bearing the “Let By” sign on my shoulder as the rain poured down on my personal Via Dolorosa. But like previous bearded guys trying to do the right thing in an unjust world, persecution awaited me.

I had assumed they’d be rather embarrassed that they had left the wretched thing up for so long. But no sooner had I explained that it had been outside my house for some time, and my emails about it had been ignored, screaming employees informed me that the landlord had “agreed” to let them advertise for two months, that I was a “bloody idiot”, and that if I didn’t let them put it back up it would “come out of my rent”.

Clearly, this was an audience unprepared for my message. Forgive them lord — they know not what they let. To be honest, I could sympathise. It must be very annoying having a big tacky “Let By” sign you didn’t ask for standing outside your office — I’d be angry too.

What followed was an email. But in this — and further correspondence — no apology was forthcoming. Oh no, just a reiteration of their god-given right to use the front of the house I was paying (quite a bit) to live in as their personal billboard. And, the next day I awoke to a terrible sight — the “Let By” sign was back, now directly outside our window, hovering over our property like the Sword of Damocles.

A brief consultation with the law, or The Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007, anyhow (of which not one jot or one tittle shall pass till all be fulfilled), assured me I was in the right. “To Let”, and “Let By” signs do not have deemed consent for planning permission after 14 days, a fact confirmed by the local Council, who agreed that we were in the right and the sign should be taken down.

An attempt to phone the agents with these facts in hand — by my fianceé who was determined to act as peacemaker — was not met in the spirit of diplomacy. Unbeknownst to us, a neighbour had been round to the agents to complain. We were roundly blamed for this by the person on the phone, who seemed to think we constituted some sinister local cabal. After some shouting at my blameless fianceé, they eventually, and with bad grace, agreed to take down the sign. Our brief and bitter battle for dignity as renters in London was over, and we had won.

But the incident did make me wonder — why on earth are estate agents like this? My squabble is no doubt silly and quixotic, but I felt like it reflected something larger and more disturbing. These are people who are in a customer-facing, sales-based job; yet my experience in London has been of persistent rudeness, arrogance, and indifference. And I’m not alone.

Estate agents in London regularly leave signs up long after the law directs them to take them down. And why not? It’s free advertising for them, and time and effort to take them down. That it angers tenants and neighbours, and disfigures streets and buildings, seems not to bother them one bit. So why don’t they care?

The chilly Machiavellian answer is that in London’s vastly oversaturated market, where much of the population is international or transient, the reputation of a company matters very little. Most of the customers won’t know it anyway, and even if they do, they may have little choice but to do business if they want a particular home. National and local government does little to regulate London’s chaotic and overheated trade in land and property. The middlemen have few incentives to keep anyone happy once the ink is dried on a contract, and often not even before either.

With so much market leverage, and so little legal accountability, large estate agents are not only rude and incompetent but — as I discovered — quite casual about the law. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Many London estate agents are involved in money laundering, and large firms often engage in practices like “conditional selling” in which clients are forced to use an in-house mortgage broker or solicitor.

Whether it’s using your house as a billboard, or leveraging customers into giving them more money, big estate agents systematically engage in practices that skirt the law, yet in the absence of enforcement by the authorities, there is often little ordinary people can do about it.

Far too much of London has become like this — temporary, transactional, un-policed and subject to low-level petty abuse by those with the power to do it. Landlords will try and take your deposit so they can refurbish their flats, employers will hire workers without visas so they can pay them below minimum wage, and money launderers will operate shamelessly on the high streets.

Perhaps the worst thing about the modern estate agent — and all the other hustlers worming their way through the underbelly of the city — is how little they care about the beauty and history they are blindly trading in. For too many people, our great capital is just a place to make money, rather than a home. It goes unexpressed and unspoken, but there is the war for its soul going on — between the citizens of London, who love and cherish it, and its miserable, clawing denizens, who want to sell it off for parts.