Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

Estate agents just don’t get it – I want a house, not a building site

I see bare bricks and I start hyperventilating

[Getty Images/iStockphoto]

‘What is this, please?’ I said to the estate agent, as he showed me into the building site he was calling a house.

‘This,’ he said beaming, ‘is the kitchen and breakfast room area.’ I picked my way over the rubble and stood in the dark, pokey room with its walls of hideous grey breezeblock.

‘I thought I asked you not to show me anything without a second fix, Sedrick.’

‘Well, yes, but,’ said Sedrick, one of those perky young estate agents you can’t keep down, ‘you just need to use a bit of imagination. If you stand over here you can really get a feel for it. The space, I mean. You can get a sense of what it will be like when…’

‘Stop!’ I said, clutching at my chest, ‘I’m having a panic attack. I thought I was very clear on the phone. I don’t want to look at places that need work and I can’t begin to contemplate anything with cables and pipes hanging out of the walls.’

‘Yes, but with some imagination…’

‘I don’t have imagination. I’m all out of it. I used my last bit of imagination last Wednesday.’

‘Yes, but it gives you an idea…’

‘It gives me no idea. It gives me hives. I see bare bricks and I start hyperventilating. I don’t want to look at this. I would rather not know what a house looks like underneath. It’s like staring into the heart of darkness. I want to leave now and try to forget that I’ve seen any of this.’

Poor Sedrick looked a little put out. ‘If you just come and look in the hallway…’

But in the hallway it got worse. ‘Agh! There aren’t any stairs! It’s just a hole going upwards. Oh, dear god. I need to get out.

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