A Landlord's Life

"What goes around, comes around." I find myself saying it more often than I like, being averse to repetition. However, its essential truth is borne in on me relentlessly.

Take the spot of bother I found myself in, when the sale of an apartment fell through.

The likely reason given to the estate agent is often not the real one, being instead an "acceptable lie" about mortgage problems or difficulties with the bank or a change of job. Or whatever . . .

In spite of a deposit being paid, as long as contracts have not been exchanged, the buyer who was so keen to purchase a week ago, hurrying along the process and ringing anxiously about closing, now wishes to walk away . . . Because, usually, something big has changed in their life.

Maybe their partner got cold feet, not only about the apartment, but about sharing it with them, or a recalcitrant parent - against all previous form - suddenly comes up with the readies that allows them to seek a more expensive property.

One has to start the entire process all over again. The agent's valuable time has been wasted. So it's back to the drawing board with another bout of advertising, showing to another tranch of prospective buyers and weaning the seriously interested from the time-wasters - all of which takes time and patience.

Taking advantage of that disappointment, I set about "upgrading" the apartment. Although clean and bare on first viewing, second time around gave me the chance to enhance its overall impact. As the previous tenant had been a smoker, walls and ceilings needed a coat of paint, the only sure way to eradicate lingering smells and fetid air.

Then raiding Dunnes Stores for sparkling kitchen ware, and - again because of the smoker - buy new bedding. Curtains to be dry-cleaned, the whole topped up with some fetching prints.

All this to enhance both the appearance and "feel", sufficient to sway a potential buyer. As short notice was required, I called the nearest cleaning company as listed in the Yellow Pages. I was impressed when the smart four-wheel SUV pulled into the car-park of the block and even more impressed when the owner stepped out and greeted me with a big smile.

I remembered her as a tenant of some years back, down on her luck and returning from an unhappy domestic situation abroad.

Without much money, she had managed to get on her feet (if that is the correct expression) by recourse to the oldest profession. When tenants complained, she moved to a different location.

Now, here she is with her name and logo on the side of the company SUV and she clearly meant business of a different kind. With two female colleagues, she went through the place "like a dose of salts' By the afternoon, everything seemed larger and more receptive to a makeover.

When I asked if she knew a good decorator available at short notice, she conferred with her colleagues, named a price and said they would do the job.

Her mates, she said, were used to painting their own homes. Looking at them, I did not doubt their capacity to wield a (sweeping) brush in anger or to paint the town red on occasion. Being women of a certain age who had brought up families in a tough district of Dublin, they were humorous, bruised survivors of what is laughing called the mating game.

I agreed a cash price: exorbitant, frankly. They came back up from the four-by-four with an array of left-over paints from a previous cleaning job . On the spot, we agreed a colour scheme and using the cans, mixed the warm terracotta for the livingroom, light eggshell pastels for the kitchen and bathrooms, and used leftovers for the lobby. I left them to it, with a warning to smoke only on the balcony.

They worked late into the night and by morning it was a such a new apartment, I lashed out on new furniture and fittings. Here's the best bit, it sold for €22,000 more to that agreed with the defaulter. It sold within days and looked so well, I was tempted to hold onto it.

No, guys and assorted other landlords, sorry, you cannot have her company name, or telephone number. You have to earn it, really. Like I say, what goes around, comes around.