Ageism - 21 November 2007

Posted by Paul Collins 3 comments

I have always been someone who has enjoyed the property market, and often find myself spending weekends going to new developments and product launches with friends who are looking to buy in the near future. This means that up and down the country, I spend time ‘secret shopping’ around property developments.

As you can imagine, I see varying levels of service, and many different techniques to selling the properties on offer. Sometimes, the salesperson is professional and attentive, showing individual rooms and then leaving the group to wander alone. At the other end of the scale, there are some occasions when the salesperson is clearly less than enamoured with their lot, and barely looks up from desk/computer/sports pages/nail varnish in order to inform us that the house is open for us to walk around freely.

Now, while a good salesperson is unlikely to be able to make a bad development appear good, a bad or disinterested salesperson can quite easily spoil the customer’s view of a reasonable development. I am not suggesting that show homes should be populated by hundreds of smart sellers with dazzling smiles ready to escort potential buyers around as if they are incapable of opening a door on their own. What is important is that there is some form of acknowledgement of my presence, and not to be made to feel that my arrival is somehow a problem for the salesperson comfortably ensconced in their sales office or the living room of the show home. After all, if they can’t be bothered to get their toes away from the warming electric fire under the desk, why should I do the same in order to buy one of their houses?

A consequence of this semi-obsession with property means that as soon as any plot or building in my immediate area has the merest hint of scaffolding near it, I want to know what is going on, and more often than not I will find my way to the show home as soon as it is open.

This happened recently, last weekend in fact, as I walked along the road and saw an old art-deco style building that is now being converted into loft apartments. At this very early stage, there is nothing to see on the site itself, so I pointed my browser toward the website indicated. There, I found that most of the developments listed were reserved exclusively for the over 55s.

While I have no doubt whatsoever that this is an important and lucrative market for the developers to target, it does tend to make me bristle somewhat. It is hard enough for first time buyers (and, in the current market, the rest of us) to be able to afford to buy a property and make the best decisions for their future.

I am not suggesting that younger people would want to live in a development where septuagenarians may be considered youngsters, and it is vitally important to make sure that older people have places to live where they feel safe and secure, as well as comfortable. At the same time, I can’t help considering the furore that would be created if a development that excluded anyone over the age of 30 were to come onto the market.

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