Mortgage advertisements really sold us a pup regarding the home-buying experience. I thought it would be all about walking around from room to room mouthing “wow” to my significant other before our bank manager would appear with a steaming mug of warm tea and the contracts to sign.
Then I’d put my hand on his chest (my partner not the bank manager, but I suppose needs must in this current economic climate) and we’d stare out of a window wistfully planning where we’d put the swing-set for our future children (or shed for drinking cans in).
There’s been none of that. It’s mostly being told a house is going for one price, only to turn up and have it go for much more at auction. Because getting people excited about something then crushing their dreams in front of them in the hope they’ll pay a bit more is apparently a sales tactic. Imagine being told a packet of biscuits on the shelf at Lidl is €1.50 but having them scan for €10 at the till and having the checkout person shrug their shoulders while telling you “that’s the market, it moves fast!”. Insane.
Aside from underquoters, there’s another shower of proverbials first home buyers need to look out for – house flippers. You can see their work a mile off. They’re the reason a house comes back on to the market a few months after you were outbid on it. But now they’re asking for at least an extra €100,000 or so for putting in a flimsy kitchen and shite laminate floors that you’ll have the pleasure of having to rip out and redo yourself.
The steady diet of home improvement television has breathed undeserved confidence into a generation of flippers. People who see homes as not places to live in but to acquire, tart up as cheaply as possible and sell off at maximum profit.
I’m not talking about folk who invest in derelict properties or cleverly convert abandoned shop fronts or underutilise warehouses to increase the housing stock on the market. It’s a certain breed of flippers that I’d like to have it out with in the car park. The ones who claim the kitchen has been “fully renovated” but it’s just a paint job whacked over old cupboards that’s so slapdash I can see paintbrush fibres embedded in the Dulux.
I’ve inspected a house where I, a woman who has not lifted a weight on purpose in her adult life, could easily lift the fake quartz kitchen countertops off. Painting the stairs “funky” colours is not “fully renovated”, neither is replacing the showerhead with one from Lidl’s middle aisle. But God loves a trier because these absolute chancers are there trying our patience on real estate websites.
What are flippers leaving behind? A shed with 50 shades of grey paint tins and a painted-over exhaust fan that will never work properly again
Good flips have the decency to fix the roof, install windows, invest in energy-efficient heating and have features that make the home more liveable, like sun lights or built-in wardrobes. Bad flips take a property full of potential, charm and attainability for first home buyers and then paint everything different shades of grey. Grey walls, grey floors and dark grey bathroom tiles. All offset by harsh blue-white downlights so the house looks like a millennial Instagram influencer’s morgue. Until we are left with homes without any personality and we all live soulless aparthotel brochures.
I could think of nothing worse than having my interior decor described as “inoffensive”. I love wall-to-wall tat. I have a true grá for every place that ends up on the @uglyirishouses Instagram account. Which is really an ode to people who had the money and an “arra f**k it” attitude to interior design. This is what I want to see more of.
[ I’ve moved to a suburb so posh, it makes me uneasyOpens in new window ]
Sistine Chapel-esque murals over the downstairs bog? Lovely. Crushed velvet walls and floors? Fantastic. A house with a fake turret replete with MDF “medieval” arched doorways and painted-on castle “bricks”? I love it, give me 10 of them. These people had passion. They had personality. They had a hot glue gun and a dream. At least they’re leaving behind a legacy. What are flippers leaving behind? A shed with 50 shades of grey paint tins and a painted-over exhaust fan that will never work properly again.
We are neighbours of David Bowie’s old Sydney crash pad. He lived there on and off for 10 years until 1992, allegedly decorating it with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and a chest-high mirrored shelf that ran around the livingroom. That place undoubtedly saw some good times and many Windex spray-and-wipe bottles. We may never know what it looked like. Because the people who bought it ripped it all out. The last available photos show it painted white. With beige carpet.
We need to make houses weird again.