NIGEL THE PHANTOM ESTATE AGENT

Once upon a time, and it seems like a fairy tale these days, the price of houses went up rather than down. It may seem strange, but it's true. In those days you could make a lot of money by buying a house, waiting three months, and then selling it again. And a lot of people made a lot of money. The people who really made a lot of money were estate agents. In those brash, materialist days of the early Eighties the world was full of estate agents. In every town they spread like athlete's foot, except with a less pleasant appearance. And you can get rid of athlete's foot.

Nigel was the King of the Estate Agents. Nobody ever sold so many houses so quickly. He sold houses like they were going out of fashion - which was quite appropriate, since they were just about to.

Nigel's great strength was the imagination of his adverts. He advertised a house next door to the West Coast Mainline by advertising it as "handy for the railway". He then sold it to someone he took round during a rail strike. There was a one-bedroom studio flat, with just enough room to swing a hamster provided it was a very small hamster. Nigel sold it by stressing the location was "close to schools and backing onto a playground". A house in Wolverton was "within five minutes of Junction 14". And so it was - in Nigel's Porsche at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Nigel believed he could sell anything to anyone. And maybe he was right. In those days people didn't worry that a house was built on a nuclear waste dump and all the cats glowed in the dark - they just bought the house, waited three months, and sold if for a huge profit. Nigel would have advertised that house as "set in a unique location, on an estate with unique lighting facilities", but of course there weren't really any houses in Milton Keynes built on nuclear dumps. At least, if there were, Nigel wasn't telling.

Nigel was always very discreet about the amount of money he earned. He normally had to be halfway through his second pint of the evening before he started boasting about it.

"Talent, you see, that's what it's all about. The world rewards talent" he would tell his estate agent friends in the Fountain or the Ship Ashore. (Estate agents, contrary to popular belief, do have friends - other estate agents. After all, even lizards hang around with other lizards).

"Twenty-five K so far this year - and that's just in commission," he would tell his estate agent friends halfway through the third pint.

"The Conservative Party would never let property prices go down - that would be stabbing their own people in the back", he would declaim halfway through his fourth pint.

He would normally collapse face-down into his sixth pint. Then his friends would carry him out to his Porsche so he could drive home. Nigel quite often woke up in his car, parked on his drive, and wondered how he got there. This was in the days of police road-blocks on the grid roads to catch drunken drivers, but Nigel used to avoid detection by driving along the redways. Meanwhile the police were harassing old-age pensioners who'd drunk nothing stronger than a lager shandy last Christmas.

And so the property market continued to boom, and house prices soared inexorably to higher and higher levels, and the pundits continued to say there was no end to it. Nigel plunged into the market in a big way. He sold his little two-bedroom house, and bought a mansion in Aspley Guise. Eight bedrooms. Three acres of paddock. Indoor swimming pool. He managed to get the mortgage because his relatively modest salary was inflated with huge amounts of commission. The mortgage company that advanced the money to buy Nigel's mansion also thought the good times would never end. He bought it in August 1988. And in October the property market started to crash.

A series of interest rate rises, combined with the loss of mortgage tax relief for new buyers, stifled the market. The interest rates raised Nigel's mortgage payments, while the subdued market cut into his commission. Nigel started to realise that talent alone did not guarantee success. After a few months he could no longer afford his mansion - his savings had all gone into the deposit. He tried to sell the house, but the price had dropped like a stone, and in any case there were no buyers. He rented the mansion out and moved into a one-bedroom house in Conniburrow.

"Close to the shops, handy for the railways, and only five minutes from Junction 14", he told himself as he moved his designer hi-fi into his new accomodation. It had the advantage that he could now walk to work - the petrol for his Porsche was getting too expensive. He could no longer afford to spend his evenings in the pub, and took to drinking supermarket own-label lager in front of the television every evening. Even with all his economies, the rent from the mansion did not cover the mortgage. Nigel was starting to fall behind with his payments. The mortgage company was no longer so friendly, and started to doubt Nigel when he told them, "The recession will soon be over - the Conservative Party will make sure the good times will be back".

The good times didn't come back. Nigel's employers decided it was time to economise, and cut back on Nigels. With his three months' pay he just about filled up the petrol tank of his Porsche. He tried to find a new job, but the bottom had fallen out of the jobs market, particularly for estate agents. The debts continued to mount.

In the end Nigel could take it no more. He took his Porsche up the A5 to Wolverton, and drove it off the side of the road into the Ouse. And that was the end of Nigel.

Well, not quite. It is said that, on dark quiet nights, Nigel can still be seen hanging around houses that have "For Sale" signs outside. "A stone's throw from the shops with panoramic views of Brinklow warehouse" is sometimes heard by people walking round Walnut Tree late at night.

It is claimed that sometimes, in the small hours of the morning, you will hear what sounds like a Porsche tearing down one of the grid roads past you, and yet see not a sign of the car itself. An aural illusion caused by the wind in the trees? Or Nigel, proving Emerson Valley is only three minutes from Xscape?

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