Monday
Today was probably the slowest day I can remember since I started my practice twenty years ago.
Having already sorted through old course notes, I sorted out a box of cards, putting most into the recycling bin, and updated my own information forms. The opportunity to review a sales pack for an auction towards the middle of the month was a welcome reprieve from tidying my office. And that was the point at which I remembered why I love my job – auctions have always fascinated me. The idea that there is something being hidden that we need to find – that probably sounds harsh but on the occasions when I have acted for sellers who have placed their houses for sale in an auction, it was because they were unable to sell on the open market. And the times when I have acted for those who wanted to buy a house at auction, I have always found something that has made me doubt whether it is a good idea to proceed. There are also those clients who turn up at the office, the afternoon of an auction, having bought a property but not having asked for the legal pack to be checked before they went to the auction and spent their hard earned cash. One of the most memorable cases I had was when a property investor or dealer arrived at my office with a legal pack – he told me that he could not understand why the house was in an auction as it was ‘a good buy’, until I pointed out to him, from a very quick perusal of the documents, that there was an old coal mining shaft in the back garden. Auctions – what fun!
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us
