Foreign Perspectives

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We’ve had our place listed with several estate agents for a while now and had sort-of settled into the thinking that it would sell “sometime” but probably not that soon.

These days, you get a lot of “window shoppers” when you’re trying to get a decent price for your place and we’ve had our share of those through normal estate agents.

However, one estate agent that we listed with some time ago and heard nothing from since got in touch last week to see about a visit on Saturday. They’d said at the outset that they pre-vet purchasers to the extent of checking in advance not only what they’re looking for but also that they’ve got the resources to pay for it and made a point of saying that they’d only be around with “serious buyers”.  Total estate-agent speak if ever there was an example of it we thought.

The call was surprising on several fronts. We’d not heard from them in ages so figured that they’d forgotten about us which was a shame as we’d originally thought that they would be the people who’d sell it for us. More surprising in some ways was that the appointment was for Saturday morning: I always figured that estate agents were strictly Monday to Friday people but apparently not.

Although our place is pretty large, usually we’d people round it in maybe an hour and then a little chat afterwards. These people were here well over two hours and were only asking the kind of questions that you’d ask if you were pretty serious about a place: can we buy that land for a pool?, can we build on that section? and so on.

We still don’t know if they’ll buy the place as they’d seen several other places in the area but the estate agent was talking of getting an architect in to see how much the changes they’d like would cost. If they run to that, I think we may need to start preparing for a fairly quick move as they seemed very proactive.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Funnily enough I’m usually the last person to notice blinds or sheer curtains in a room and the OH always gives off when I take a promotion photo of our rooms and haven’t bothered to arrange the curtains properly.

Having said that, I find that discount mini blinds are a great way to completely change the look of a room for very little money indeed. My own favourites are the light filtering sheer shades which are fantastic for creating lighting effects echoing the decorations in the rest of the room (watch the colours that you choose those: some can make people look quite sickly!).

Popularity: 68% [?]

It’s nearing the end of the winter so it’s a good time to start thinking about how you’d like your garden to look this spring.

Garden Furniture will no doubt feature highly in your thoughts and it’s good to see that it’s available online these days as often the selection in local garden centres seems to be exactly the same as that which you saw 20 years ago. It doesn’t have to be like that and you can get some really stylish furniture in your garden if you look around.

Don’t think that just because it’s for the garden that it’ll be cheap. Cheap just means that you’ll end up throwing it out next year but if you choose well good quality garden furniture will last for many years and make a major difference to how your home feels too: think of it more as a home improvement than just a few cheapo chairs to put in the garden.

Popularity: 30% [?]