Transcription
I've often said that estate agencies would be a lot better if they actually were forced to list the downsides of a property as well as the upsides. Because the shrewd way to choose a house is not to say, "What's my perfect house?" It's to say, "What do other people hate that I don't mind?"
Okay, so an example in my case would be next to a railway line. Absolute bonus. You know, I love trains, right? They stop at midnight. They don't keep you awake. I never go to bed before midnight anyway. I actually pay extra to have trains going past my house.
Equally, my children have left school. So the school catchment area can be, you know, some crackhead's academy. Doesn't bother me, right? Because again, my kids are 22.
And the other, the third one, which would be a massive bonus to me, I couldn't believe my parents-in-law once didn't buy a beautiful Georgian house. Wait for the reason: because it was next to a pub. Right? I think, sorry, I'm totally confused here. That's a, the best garden in the world, right? It's not Sissinghurst. It's a beer garden, right? 'Cause it's a garden and it's got beer.
Now, I actually knew some people who lived next to a pub and they had such a good relationship with the landlord, they could actually order over the fence. So if they had a barbecue, they could just go, you know, "Four pints of the usual."
Now, to a lot of people, being next to a pub is an absolute nightmare. You know, flight path. Okay? If you're, if you're completely deaf, go and buy a place in the Heathrow flight path 'cause it's not going to bother you, but it's going to bother everybody else.
So the other thing about this very regimented mode of choice is that it prevents you from gaming the system.