An Interview with Piers Whiting of our Totnes Office
When did you join Luscombe Maye?
1982. And 1991. I joined Luscombe Maye’s agricultural department from Cirencester in 1982 but left a few years later to sell houses in Kingsbridge for a different firm with offices across the south of England where I learnt a great deal about selling property. A nice chap called Roger King ran an office for rival firm across the road. He’s now at our Yealmpton office. I came back to Luscombe Maye to sell property a few years later.
When did you first think of yourself as an Estate Agent?
Although obviously I am one, I call myself a Chartered Surveyor - because I am one. Frankly, the language that some estate agents use mystifies me: Do they talk about first floors, dual aspects, external elevations, vehicular accesses and doors to rear when they're at home? And close couple WCs? Presumably made to accommodate two.
What area do you cover and what are your specialities?
Totnes and surrounding rural areas. I run our residential sales department at Totnes and sell anything from one-bedroom flats to much larger properties with land and agricultural property. I'm more than familiar with things agricultural and equestrian, having worked in the agricultural departments of this firm and of a previous company in Somerset, where I grew up, and having spent a good deal of my leisure time mucking out stables. I also do professional valuations.
Where do you live?
Near Totnes at Berry Pomeroy. We moved to our house there as a temporary measure in 1987.
Is Luscombe Maye the best Estate Agent in The South Hams?
I think that many of the firm's clients and customers think so and they’re the people who count. A lot of clients come back to us and a lot recommend us too. I try to give my clients what they want. They may want the best possible price, they may want their hands held through what can sometimes be a stressful process or they may want a buyer who's happy to wait six months before moving in. A number of Luscombe Maye’s people are or have been members of the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers, whose motto really is a good rule to follow: ‘Do what is right, come what may.’
How have you changed over the years?
I'm now often older than my clients rather than younger than them and while I wouldn't claim to be wiser than they are, I’m probably wiser than I was. My hair is greyer, but I was as bald at 30 as I am now.
What is it about the job that keeps you doing it after all this time?
The pleasure of achieving good results for one’s clients, of course, but also the unexpected. I once went to value an undertakers' former premises to find that I wasn’t, as I had thought, alone. She didn’t seem to mind me working round her, but they might have put the lid on. On another occasion, I was showing a young couple around an old, partly boarded up farmhouse, and they weren't altogether dressed for it or for the uneven overgrown garden full of brambles huts, and sheds. We fought our way past one of these, which had a wire pen attached to one end, and a huge hungry-looking tiger walked out right alongside us.
How do you see the property market in 2012?
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This year we’ve got off to a flying start in Totnes. I never make predictions but we’ve never had a year in which we haven’t sold properties. They also say that one can sell anything in any market if the price is right, so a prerequisite is the best advice from the best agents – ring us now…
Should Estate Agents be qualified and if so, who with?
I am a Chartered Surveyor and RICS is the world’s leading property and land qualification. Many of our sales people are members of either RICS or of NAEA and I have the impression that some unqualified agents don’t know the difference between a client and a customer. We act for our clients and to them and to me, that’s important.
What was the most interesting property you lived in or sold?
I thought I’d found just the people for an old, listed house that I was selling for the Church Commissioners. I rang the couple the day after they saw it to be told that while they’d loved it, they wouldn’t buy because their little boy had liked the ‘laughing man in the bedroom’. We lived in a house in Tuckenhay for a few years with a man in a black hat in the corner of my daughter’s bedroom. We told her that he was a friend of her uncle’s.
Best moment? Most embarrassing moment?
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A good moment came after a frosty woman came in to my office one day some years ago telling me that she'd had her house with an agent for 12 months without one viewing. I told her how we could sell her unsaleable house and having had a bad time with her first agent, she was initially distrustful. News of our first viewing brought a squeal of delight. As the number of viewings increased, the volume and length of the squeals increased. The noise when I agreed a sale was indescribable. She’d set her heart on a house in the Grampian Mountains and she showed me the particulars. The first time she actually saw that house was on the day she moved into it and she's probably still squealing. Embarrassing moments seem to involve beds. I turned up one day to show an empty house to someone, only to find that the owner was still using it for activities that his wife presumably didn't know about. I had shouted my 'hello' when I arrived to no response, so I was surprised on cautiously opening a bedroom door, when he lifted his head from a mattress on the floor, covering another occupant with a sheet and said 'excuse me?' as if this was my fault. I sold another house, the top floor of which comprised a let flat. The tenants had been given times when viewings could be expected. I showed an eager buyer the house and opened the flat's bedroom door. A large mound under the blankets, too large to be one person, froze as we came in. After some initial sign language, we had to pretend that we hadn't noticed anything, and the prospective buyer spent a mischievous amount of time looking at a room most of which was taken up by the occupied bed…
What was the last book you read?
Solar, by Ian McEwan. It’s about a slob of a philandering physicist who steals someone else’s ideas to overcome climate change. It’s both satirical and comic and some passages are achingly funny. I’m also reading Keith Richards’ autobiography, Life. People wonder how he’s lasted so long to which he says that he always bought the best.
What’s playing in your CD player now?
The MacCabees’ Given To The Wild – a wonderful third album by a great bunch of guys whom I met after one of their gigs in Exeter.
Where did you go on your last holiday?
Rome in May. A beautiful city of beautiful people who smile.
What would you change if you were Prime Minister?
I’d change the white shirt to one with a bit of colour. A little more seriously, I’d change to Double Summer Time. I don’t know what we’re waiting for - turn off the telly and get out into the garden.
Piers Whiting MRICS Luscombe Maye 59 Fore Street, Totnes, Devon TQ9 5NJ
Tel: 01803 869917 Mob: 07974 073218 piers.whiting@luscombemaye.com
Where do you live? This year we’ve got off to a flying start in Totnes. I never make predictions but we’ve never had a year in which we haven’t sold properties. They also say that one can sell anything in any market if the price is right, so a prerequisite is the best advice from the best agents – ring us now… I thought I’d found just the people for an old, listed house that I was selling for the Church Commissioners. I rang the couple the day after they saw it to be told that while they’d loved it, they wouldn’t buy because their little boy had liked the ‘laughing man in the bedroom’. We lived in a house in Tuckenhay for a few years with a man in a black hat in the corner of my daughter’s bedroom. We told her that he was a friend of her uncle’s. A good moment came after a frosty woman came in to my office one day some years ago telling me that she'd had her house with an agent for 12 months without one viewing. I told her how we could sell her unsaleable house and having had a bad time with her first agent, she was initially distrustful. News of our first viewing brought a squeal of delight. As the number of viewings increased, the volume and length of the squeals increased. The noise when I agreed a sale was indescribable. She’d set her heart on a house in the Grampian Mountains and she showed me the particulars. The first time she actually saw that house was on the day she moved into it and she's probably still squealing. Embarrassing moments seem to involve beds. I turned up one day to show an empty house to someone, only to find that the owner was still using it for activities that his wife presumably didn't know about. I had shouted my 'hello' when I arrived to no response, so I was surprised on cautiously opening a bedroom door, when he lifted his head from a mattress on the floor, covering another occupant with a sheet and said 'excuse me?' as if this was my fault. I sold another house, the top floor of which comprised a let flat. The tenants had been given times when viewings could be expected. I showed an eager buyer the house and opened the flat's bedroom door. A large mound under the blankets, too large to be one person, froze as we came in. After some initial sign language, we had to pretend that we hadn't noticed anything, and the prospective buyer spent a mischievous amount of time looking at a room most of which was taken up by the occupied bed… What’s playing in your CD player now? Rome in May. A beautiful city of beautiful people who smile. Piers Whiting MRICS Luscombe Maye 59 Fore Street, Totnes, Devon TQ9 5NJ
Tel: 01803 869917 Mob: 07974 073218 piers.whiting@luscombemaye.com