One of the joys of life when you don’t have too many other pressing obligations is to sit and look through the local estate agent web sites for a glimmer of what’s currently on the market around you. The avid fascination of what the houes look like on the inside – quite wonderful these days. There was a time when you could only get to see these properties by booking an appointment with the agent themselves and pretend to be house huting for that exact style and price. These days however, for some bizarre reason, one can only get to have an actual person to person viewing when you have actually got a property on the market yourself or sometimes, you have to have sold it first. This leaves no room for the spontaneous urge to move that would suddenly crop up occasionally.
These days the houses are all online – a few years ago it became a practice of the agents to advertise their posher properties in colourful brochure style, with bold technicolour photos of each room, the kitchen would probably be shown prominently if it had been refurbished in the last year or so. The living areas would show a well lit conervatory and maybe a neat inglenook fireplace in the sitting room.
The average three bedroom semi would not attract this attention and was described in formal proforma styling on an A4 sheet double sided with a small exterior view of the front, and possibly one of the garden if it was very attractive and well kept. It’s difficult to p rove whether one style is more successful at attracting the buyer – the housing market is definitely a niche one – the sheer cost of moving means that you really do want to have a particular style of house or one in an exact location, so there will usually be a targeted buyer anyway.