Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of modern Ireland
Here's the deal. It's the biggest property boom in history. Prices double, then treble, then go into some wonderland of euro symbols and zeroes. People queue in their cars for three days to get a house, an apartment, a bedsit, a trench, anything. And your job is to take a juicy percentage for selling something that everyone wants to buy at inflated prices anyway.
You wait a decade for the market to collapse or for the revolution to come. But it doesn't happen. And, gradually, you begin to relax a bit and enjoy it. Although you still can't sleep too well at night.
There are, it must be said, many fine estate agents; professionals who put a lie to those surveys that place their profession as among the least respected, behind only politicians and, bizarrely, journalists. But so often estate agents spend the bulk of their time just trying to keep buyers and sellers from meddling in the whole buying-and-selling process. It's the biggest financial transaction of their lives, so they should not be allowed to interfere.
It is imperative, for instance, that the seller be kicked out of the house 10 minutes before someone comes to view it. This is desperately frustrating for the seller, not to mention deeply uncomfortable as they crouch in their cars across the road, watching to see who's come to view the house, how long they're there and how much dismay is on their faces as they leave.
The estate agent's mission seems to be to create mystery, which breeds paranoia, which often blossoms into panic. If the estate agent says another bidder has offered an extra €5,000, then it must be true. It could never be that the anonymous bidder is Mr Makey-Uppey of Fantasy Road. Were anyone to say it is, they'd direct you to the exhaustive paper trail, detailing each bid and phone call. If they were actually required to keep an exhaustive paper trail.
At a time when much of the population has a digital camera, a computer, a printer, access to the internet, the same level of qualifications as an estate agent, and a deep knowledge of the business built up from watching countless episodes of House Hunters, it's amazing that the attempts to cut out the middleman have not been more successful.
In fact, if the only unique service the estate agent offers is a window to stick the brochures in, then surely all every town needs is a billboard that people can stick their details on, so people can contact them directly. All we'd need to do would be to find a nice little plot to put the billboard on. Maybe an estate agent could help us find one.