It’s organic, you know

The article below appeared in The Times the other week. There are probably a number of places across the country this applies to but the moment I read it I just knew it could only truly be East Dulwich.

 

When I moved here nearly ten years ago people said it was up-and-coming. There was talk of a van driving up the high street soon after with an Alessi lemon squeezer in the back. But it didn’t stop. However, from this unpromising start my London locale has gentrified beyond measure. It’s not all good I must say and like the writer of the article below my heart really sank when I realised The Triad of the estate agency world had opened up shop. Bastards.

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From The Times

October 6, 2007

Foxtons! No! Bang goes the neighbourhood

Janice Turner

The evolution of an up-and-coming neighbourhood happens in five stages.

1) A greasy take-out joint turns into an edgy, postmodern fish’n’chip brasserie, with stark benches and organic mushy peas.

2) Sequined scatter cushions and tea-light holders become available in at least three bijoux new boutiques.

3) A posh butcher and deli open, replacing the cheapo ones bankrupted 12 years ago by Somerfield. 4) You see nine sets of twins in the course of a 30-minute stroll: this does not, as my friend feared, augur the Apocalypse, but the arrival of richer, older, IVF-requiring mummies. 5) Just when you’ve bored your friends about the gastropub, cheese shop, the Saturday street market selling five quid organic olive bread, the “villagey” feel, the “ironic” old-fashioned sweet shop where penny chews cost 23p . . . meanwhile, over at corporate HQ your incipiently groovy ’hood has triggered a flashing green light. Caffè bloody Nero opens. And then a huge swath of high street is covered in builder’s hoardings. “Please, please let it be an M&S food hall!” pants your disloyal heart.

Six months later the covers come off. So what is this treble-fronted glass-plate emporium? The gargantuan Gaggia coffee maker, steel fridges stacked with Perrier and funky Italian furniture suggest a swanky bar. But no, oh God, it’s a “café-style” Foxtons.

So it’s all over then, in these parts, for the young couples with first babies, the teachers or PAs or junior doctors. They had better wonder if they need that second bedroom or prepare to commute from Kent. Foxtons are here to drive up house prices, it’s their avowed intent: their founder Jon Hunt, who this year sold up and pocketed £370 million, liked to talk of “going to war” for his sellers. Foxtons takes a bigger commission than any other agent to flog your house – 2.5 per compared with an average of 1.5 per cent – which it justifies by promising to wring from a buyer the highest possible price.

So they will be raising their chilled Peroni beer at Foxtons to George Osborne’s pledge this week to exempt most first-time buyers from stamp duty. Aha! you have an extra £2,000 in your budget? Well, let’s ratchet up that no-garden maisonette (which you can barely afford) just that little bit more.

On Saturday morning Foxtons foxstrels are handing balloons out to babies with the legend “0 per cent”. Already, their one-time-only start-up offer to flog your house for free has vacuumed up whole chunks of the neighbourhood: they have 250 houses on their books and counting. Their message to all the long-standing estate agents is “you’re dead, look upon our coffee shop and despair”.

“I’ll have a property list and a regular cappuccino,” I say to the estate agent/barista behind the front desk.

“Ah,” says the good-natured, signet-ring-wearing fool. “Not sure how to work this thing.” He fiddles about, scattering Illy grinds, and ten minutes later appears with a cup.

“That’s very good,” I say. “If all else fails you could get a job at Caffè Nero.” He gives me a rather melancholic smile.

Perhaps he was thinking that over the road he might be better paid. When I ask a sales agent why I should sign with Foxtons, he says, straight out: “Because we only pay our negotiators £10,000 a year. They can’t live on that. So you can be sure they’ll work their arses off to get you the best price.” How depressing that these kids could earn – if you take into account their 12-hour-day, six-day weeks – well below the minimum wage.

A BBC Whistleblower documentary last year, in which a reporter went undercover into a Foxtons branch, found underperformers were heckled, the office atmosphere cutthroat as negotiators delighted in gazumping each other to bag a sale. No wonder Foxtons employees have been driven to rip down rivals’ boards or erect their own unbidden. But is a recasting of Glengarry Glen Ross in South London really to anyone else’s advantage?

My husband, who grew up in this area, noted a fourbed house on a so-so street, which once belonged to his schoolfriend – a taxi-driver’s son – on sale for £1.4 million. Even under Mr Osborne’s proposed new allowances, the heirs of this fairly ordinary home would pay a fair wad to the Treasury. Do they too have the right to be outraged that such legacies, such great dynastic sums, won’t be received intact?

It was a masterstroke by the Tories to reject the dogwhistle of immigration for the great bugle horn of property paranoia, the chief angst of our age. Yes, how will our children ever get on the housing ladder, poor things? Well, not by lopping off a couple of grand from their tax bills. So red in tooth and claw, so unregulated is the housing market, it will only disappear down Foxtons’ gaping maw.

And not by awarding our children humungous sums after our deaths. Why will they need a million quid then? They’ll be what, 40, 50, even 60 years old themselves? It is young folk of 23 who need help with a deposit. Which is when parents wealthy enough to do so release a bit of equity in their homes or dig out some savings to help them get started. Which in turn lessens their likelihood of paying death duties.

“You can’t take it with you!” was the cheery preface to a senior spending spree. But that is now exactly what we want to do. This inheritance tax obsession is not about our children, it is about us, our greed, our revelling in our luck; amid a climate of such rapacious consumerism we now fixate on what we own even into the grave. And for this tax break Mr Osborne will have to find £3 billion, not all from nondoms I’d bet – on Question Time he displayed the worried uncertainty of a man who’d done his figures on the back of an envelope – but from those who cannot rely on massive unearned lump sums in middle age.

So Foxtons will make my house worth more. But bang goes the neighbourhood. All the useful shops, the hardware store, the glazier, will go. Chains will suck money from local firms to head offices. The shops will get poncier, the staff will get Notting Hill attitude, like the waitresses in the prissy new tea salon. All I can suggest is that everyone troop into Foxtons every day for coffee. Let’s put them and Caffè Nero out of business in one double shot.

Comment:

 

The neighbourhood went bang years ago how many overpriced nik nak shops and seven pound a Cocktail bars does an area need. I moved from East Dulwich 3 years ago ,it is full of people who moved from Fulham and Clapham are they surprise Foxtons followed them!

h.campbell, london,

I have been living in East dulwich for over 10 years and I can say that I am gutted at the arrival of Foxtons – it may be the end of the area. What makes the area great is the number of owner managed businesses – unfortunately they will be replaced with bland chains stripping the character from the area as property prices and rents are driven up by Foxtons.

I have not bought anything from Neros, will never go into White Stuff and will happily take a free coffee from Foxtons in the hope that if enough people follow my lead then maybe, just maybe, they will pack up and go home.

Jason Peck, East Dulwich,

Well done – you have very effectively communicated what I was trying to convey on Saturday to a young mum at a kids party in East Dulwich. The view that “I don’t care because I’m signed up with Foxton’s and they’re going to get me loads for my house” is precisely the issue I have with them. The reason I moved to the area 5 years ago was that after 18 years in Battersea I’d had enough of the community being destroyed by greed.Northcote Road was the oldest food market in London and now is full of rubbish All Bar One’s and the like.The problem with pushing up prices is that more and more of the local/original community will be tempted by the over inflated prices and decide to cash in and move out – making way for a more impersonal mercenary breed. Cafe Nero was a shock, White Stuff a disgrace and now Foxton’s – I don’t think it could get much worse – what on earth is going to turn up next week?
I also find Foxtons incredibly devious and some local parents very gullible.Balloons to kids!

Hugh Wahla, East Dulwich,London,

Funny how the arrival of Foxtons and other estate agent chains destroys everything that makes the area good in the first place.

Estate agents shops add nothing to the community and take prime sites that could be used for shops/restaurants/bars etc that are actually of use to people, they also push up commercial rents meaning that independent enterprises cannot afford to get established resulting in chains being the only ones able to afford the rent hence our highstreets are full of pizza express, stada, all bar one etc etc.

Tabitha, East Dulwich, London

I have to say I feel the same about the arrival of foxtons, I spent 6 months wondering what was being built too, and was not happy when I saw what it was.
I still feel the same, however I have been in to check it out pretending to be a customer a couple of times, and although I do not like the way they do business, every time I have been greeted by a very polite and smiling face, which is not the usual reception in an Estate Agency. One of the girls who welcomed me was so friendly that I felt terrible for being so nosey, and so I really take objection to the way you have referred to the young man who served you coffee, it seems very unnecessary and probably completely incorrect. He was just doing his job, and I hardly think him a fool for not knowing how to use that machine, I certainly couldn’t.

Mark Welham, Dulwich,

Although I get the jist of your article – your comments on ‘richer, older IVF requiring mummies’ is ill informed. I have lost 4 pregnancies (3 ectopics) and have no choice about how I will hopefully conceive. I am not rich and do not consider myself old – as for twins…well I would love some …

Kate, London, UK

East Dulwich, by any chance?

Ben, London, UK

Janice Turner’s view of East Dulwich (any resident would recognise the description) is very accurate. Even the chandelier shop is now a posh tea room (though it still sells chandeliers). East Dulwich is a rare jewel in South East London in that it has retained its community feel. But as the corporates and chains move in we’ll begin to lose that identity. Our high streets are turning into soulless, glass fronted vacuums. I mourned the introduction of Foxtons as it could easily have been something more useful – a shop people need. Therefore we’re also grateful that the new East Dulwich Warehouse, a place where the community can gather and sell their wares is about to be launched. I think people power in East Dulwich might eventually make Foxtons think about packing up and moving out themselves.

Jonatha Richards, London, UK

My local Foxtons has become an expensive clothes shop–is this progress?However, in defence of Estate Agents, Hotblack Desiato of Islington gave their name to a character in Douglas Adam’s ‘The Restaurant at the End of the World’.

Dectora, London, U K

Don’t understand why it should be considered ‘good’ to have your money taxed on death, so that a proportion of it can be ‘bequeathed’ to government to squander, rather than to help your own flesh and blood. We already pay enough in direct and indirect taxation with underwhelming results. And isn’t it somewhat fanciful – in support of the argument for inheritance tax – that more neighbourhoods will become ‘aspirational’ and so out of the reach of ‘ordinary people’? Not even Gordon has used that one yet, but he might have to consider it – if all else fails.

anne, bournemouth,

Foxtons is an operation founded and funded by big capital interests who have an eye to privatising the property scene or consolidating a principal interest. That is to say that Foxtons have been doing their best to persuade council property owners to sell. I have had regular letters from them to that effect. They are doing their best to suggest to people that they can offer special advantages, and in the Lottery age many people don t need much persuasion to draw what they will see as an obvious conclusion. The glass fronted emporium with it s Gaggia coffee maker sets up the idea, but the quote you give actually gives the game away. They are, ostensibly, merely agents, and if they are getting you the best price, someone else is getting the worst price. The appurtenances are merely adding to their costs. Furthermore the quote is self-contradictory, because negotiators desperate for a sale does not imply the best price. You will know more about this than I do, but I ll bet they are buying more property than they are selling back on the open market.

Henry Percy, London, UK

So, “Leaving people money cripples society and creates a load of dumb people with money”, according to Messrs Gates and Buffet. Well, most of us are well outside their financial league and consider it entirely reasonable to leave a comparitively modest inheritance to our children, not to “create a load of dumb people with money”, but to make their lives a little easier than were our own.

Tony Adams, Deal, Kent

The 3 billion quid required to fund raising the Inheritance Tax Threshold to 1 million is really small beer to the Exchequer – less than 0.5% of the annual total Government spend, so raising it is not an issue – Osborne could probably find it stuffed behind an old cupboard in the Treasury. As for IHT, you have to understand that it is not just about being able to leave your life savings to your offspring, it is about keeping it out of the grubby, grasping maw of central government.

Richard Marriott, Worcester, England

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have all stated “Leaving people money cripples society and creates a load of dumb people with money”. I feel all estates should be taxed and the higher the amount the more tax.

Frederick, London, UK

After what Foxtons has done in the US there are a lot of Yanks hating Jon Hunt and the British way of doing things. He would be well advised to stay on his side of the pond for pretty much the rest of his life. It is not safe for him to walk the streets over here anymore.

Evan R., Marlton/NJ, USA