Talking Property

The black economy is back and cash is king, says ISABEL MORTON

I’VE EXPERIENCED a number of déjà vu moments recently and find it all quite disconcerting. Bands like Spandau Ballet and the Nolan Sisters have reformed and apparently Dynasty shoulder pads are back in fashion.

For me, the entire decade of the 1980s passed in a blur. Half my life was filled with babies, nappies, school runs and sleepless nights, and the other half was packed with breakfast meetings, off-the-wall advertising campaigns and demanding clients.

It was a decade when property prices barely increased a jot and nobody dared borrow a penny from the banks for anything much more than converting the attic into extra storage space (children’s bedrooms) or the garage into a playroom.

They were the days when interest rates were in double figures, 100 per cent mortgages were unheard of and everyone wanted to be paid in cash. And by cash I mean hard currency. Even in those days, they knew better than to leave behind a paper trail.

But by the time we celebrated the Millennium, cash had somehow become a dirty word, as everyone from the landscaper to the window cleaner e-mailed you an invoice within hours of completing a job and they all became experts on VAT rates and could calculate percentages in seconds.

Only losers or criminals dealt in cash during those heady days of easy credit, display and decadence. It just wasn’t done.

However, over the last few months I’ve noticed that we’re gradually reverting to the 1980s modus operandi.

Recently a variety of tradespeople have (uninvited) provided me with two entirely different quotations. The “much reduced” formal quotation printed out on the last of the headed paper and the “cut to the bone” version, which is casually mentioned in passing.

The black economy has been quietly proliferating like the mushrooming spores of dry rot hidden under floorboards. It was given perfect conditions in which to flourish so there is not much point in feigning horror about it now that we suddenly notice that the floorboards are disintegrating.

With so little cash in circulation at the moment, maybe we should be thankful that there are still some people left who are lucky enough to be sleeping on lumpy-bumpy mattresses and who are prepared to extract the odd bundle or two every now and then and spread it around.

Perhaps we should also be grateful that so many are still managing to find work, as even if it is below the radar, it’s still better than sitting back, doing nothing and relying on state handouts.

Most are saying novenas that they will survive until the banks are forced into lending again but are resigned to the fact that, between one thing and the other (Nama, the Lisbon Treaty and the budget), it is unlikely to happen before next spring at the earliest.

However, those who are less affected by the downturn are bored waiting for some action and have discreetly begun to get on with living, albeit a very different style of living.

Since trading up is still out of the question for many (banks will not even countenance the notion), cash is being spent on sprucing up existing homes.

However, many demand that all building and renovation work be conducted as discreetly as possible.

Covert operations now take place behind high hedges and electric gates. Clients battle builders about obvious signs of activity, such as security hoardings and signs advertising which architect and builder are on site.

Vans with logos are banned from the driveways and telltale yellow skips are only ordered when sufficient rubble and rubbish has accumulated to fill them completely. They are then removed again as quickly as possible.

One painter/decorator told me that he had recently removed all logos and had his van sprayed a discreet Morgan green. “They don’t want everybody on the road knowing what they’re up to,” he said about his clients, “and it’s all interior work now as nobody wants the front of their place looking too smart these days. Mind you, it suited us fine this summer, with all the rain we’ve had.”

The recession police are out and about. Any sign of activity is queried, questioned and remarked upon. Although, there is now a certain cachet to having a handyman who was, in his former life, a site foreman for a (now bankrupt) property developer.

Indeed, so many people are wistfully looking back on their former lives these days that no doubt we will soon be referring to events as being BR (before recession) and AN (anno Nama).

However, having missed out on so much of the 1980s first time around, I'm throwing myself into its revival with a vengeance and I'm manically sewing in shoulder pads and savagely backcombing my hair while tunelessly humming Abba's Money, Money, Money.