17 ways to tell you are Obsessed with Property

  1. You throw away the news and sports section of the Sunday papers and concentrate on the property section. Armed with a thick red marker pen you outline your best buys.
  2. Your computer desktop is a picture of Kirstie Allsopp.
  3. You calculate you spend more time talking to estate agents than talking to your own children.
  4. You are able to sniff out boxes in a supermarket, you can’t see them but you know that perfect box to help you with your move is close by.
  5. If asked directions you find yourself navigating by estate agents rather than pubs and churches.
  6. When walking into a friends house for the first time you enquire about the number of bedrooms and if planning permission has been given for an extension, before asking them how they are. You then quiz them about local amenities and possible flooding.
  7. If you’re a bloke, instead of enjoying a copy of the latest lads mag you are more than likely to be reading a stack of property particulars at lunch time, muttering to yourself in the corner about period features. If you’re a women, a pile of Heat magazines lie unread in a corner, whilst the local property section is scoured, front to back, as soon as you get your hands on it.
  8. You are on first name terms with your local estate agents and even some not so local, in fact you are now the godfather to one estate agent’s child.
  9. You know which day the interest rates are announced and can give a reason why the inflation rate has effected the Bank of England’s choice to raise or lower rates.
  10. You own all of Sarah Beeny’s property books and have watched every episode of Location Location Location.
  11. A walk down your local high street takes three times as long as most peoples as you have to stop at every estate agent’s window to look for that bargain.
  12. You can now visualise square footage when listed in property details and know exactly how much you need.
  13. Your moving day plan is akin to the D-Day landings in complexity, the folder containing the plan is heavy enough to squash a small dog if it were to land on top of one.
  14. Your Internet bookmarks groan under the weight of property websites and you have become such a frequent visitor to some property websites that they have invited you to be a shareholder.
  15. When traveling to a new area you find yourself calculating the demographics and statistics, wondering if this could be your dream neighbourhood.
  16. The bulk of your email inbox is made up of property email alerts as you have set up so many requests with property search websites.
  17. Your house sale playbook contains more psychological tricks than Derren Brown, going beyond the simple “baked cookie smell”, wafting through the house. You hang prints on the walls containing auto suggestions regarding how great the house is.

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