HOUSE HUNTER:We're getting a refreshing level of attention from agents as a new balance is being found between vendors' expectations and buyers' purchasing power, writes DON MORGAN

NEVER JUDGE a book by its cover, they say, but being superficial worked out last week. The house near our flat in Fundrum is full of loveliness, but is it worth the money?

I’d been busy avoiding arranging a viewing. Eventually I relented, when Maureen looked like she might take her chances and throw me out of the car, despite the fact that I was behind the wheel at the time.

I rang, looking for a slot on Friday afternoon. We finished early on Friday, so how’s four-ish? “We can give you Monday,” the voice said, though Monday isn’t Friday. Eventually, Friday was agreeable. Perhaps the debris in their office reminded them that the economy is in the toilet, like a drunk chick at a house party. It’s likely to stay there, head first, for some time.

We called in on our way home from work. The agent was early, we weren’t. We went in hearing her talking, so we assumed that she was showing other prospective buyers around.

She was on the phone, mouthing apologies, before she ended the call, apologised again and showed us room by room through the house, micromanaging her sell.

If she wasn’t that interested in our small talk, she hid it well. She did her damndest to show the house in its best light, a real family home. If the neighbourhood is an accurate guide, then it must be 1930s. The house was clean, and well presented, which again, a lot of houses haven’t been. Four rooms, three big, one Ronnie Corbett.

The downstairs livingroom opened out into a back room, with not a hint of mint green paint in sight. The house wasn’t dark, despite its awkward aspect. The only real niggly bit of the house was the kitchen, which wasn’t so much 1930s as old. Old, yes, but perfectly useable, just like Garret FitzGerald.

There’s also only one bathroom, but it’s a good sign when the quirky nonsense, the original corner shelf and the mad looking pre-war toilet roll holder, are items to be retained and cherished. They have a bid on, under 500k, but just how under 500k will dictate whether we’ll make an offer or not.

The agent hadn’t the exact figure of the bid, and sensed we were put off. What were we looking for? Maybe not this, but another house? Six months ago, punters didn’t get this refreshing level of attention.

She wasn’t the only agent to do this, either. Another agent called the other evening, following up on a viewing in Portobello, when all of Dublin went for a nose through the bedrooms and kitchens of Dublin 8. We hadn’t really given it a second’s thought; the prices are beginning to feign reasonableness, but they’re still too high for us, redbricked beauty or not. I told the agent as much, who also wanted to know what we were looking for and for how much.

Following that weekend, the Portobello house was reduced by 50 grand, still out of our range sadly. So much money can be knocked off – that’s the deposit on a house, and to be able to knock off as much off the asking price, “just like that”, would normally require the wearing of a fez and a crazed expression.

The world isn’t populated exclusively by high-paid DINKs (Double Income No Kids) called Franz and Hans, and vendors are coming to understand this, as the market settles at a more modest level than in the crazy days. Prices, whether people like it or not, were bloated like a drowned corpse. Combined with easy credit, people mistook this for real wealth.

Whatever your particular buzzword is for this era, it reveals one simple truth: asking prices are meaningless if people don’t have the readies to match them. With banks painfully slow to lend, agents have to call every person who goes to open viewings on a Saturday morning.

Times have changed, for the better hope some, as a new balance is found between vendors’ expectations and purchasing power. We won’t pay more than we want to, which is significantly less than the bank will lend us. Our own understanding of what we can afford has changed, and we’re not alone.