A bad day at the office: How the credit crunch is hitting estate agents

It's not long after 9am on a typically exotic Wednesday in Streatham. Estate agent sales manager James Brooks is reviewing recent vendor feedback with his slightly bleary-eyed negotiators. In more economically buoyant times, this pow-wow could well have brought news of trouble-free sales, cock-a-hoop customers and healthy commissions.

But there are no high-fives this morning. Dozens of worried vendors need to be persuaded to drop their prices, but rather than take this advice on board, many seem to be sticking their fingers in their ears and singing loudly. "August 29th, left message for vendor," reads James from a page plucked from one folder. "Left message. Left message... left message..."

He pauses, and looks around the room. "Let's face it," he says wearily, "this chap's just ignoring us. Anyone want to have another go?" To say that his team don't all shout at once would be an understatement. "Come on," he grins. "Anyone?" Assistant manager Emma Humphrys reaches over and takes the folder. "Thanks, Emma," says James, and in a plucky attempt to rally his troops, he concludes the meeting: "OK. Let's go!"

But as they make their daily calls, the professional gloss of the negotiators' phone manner conceals an increasing anxiety about their livelihoods. A survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors revealed that British estate agents sold an average of one property per week in the three months to August, thanks to a potent combination of cash-strapped buyers, nervous lenders, conflicting government signals over stamp-duty reform, and stubborn vendors refusing to admit that the value of their beloved properties might have fallen. And in the middle sit the estate agents, their only weapons being their gift of the gab or, as some might say, their prodigious capacity for bullshit.

But, as properties stubbornly fail to sell, what are these people actually doing all day? Flicking paperclips at each other? Defacing mouse mats? Crying in the toilet?

I've donned a stripy shirt and put a shine on my shoes to spend a day finding out at a branch of the London estate agency Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward – and the position of my ergonomic office chair offers a magnificent vantage point over the local competition. I can see branches of Haart, Winkworth, Townends and Thompson Vales estate agents, none of which seems to be doing much business. Local residents breeze past, mulling over far more pressing issues than how many bedrooms and bathrooms they might get for half a million pounds. If they had half a million pounds to spend. Which they don't.

Whether it's because there's a journalist in the office, or because they genuinely believe that they can talk their way out of a crisis, the negotiators are hitting the phones hard – certainly harder than at the estate agency opposite, where nail-filing seems to be more of a priority. But they're having to hone the skill of talking down the value of a property to the vendors while reassuring them that they will actually be able to shift it.

"I've never seen anything like it in 11 years as an estate agent," says James. "It's horrendous. Vendors have got used to waiting, and benefiting from waiting. But in a declining market, property will be worth less next month than it is today; with a £250,000 house, the drop could be as much as £4,000. That's the value of their TV, furniture, hi-fi and curtains, every month. Any estate agent who doesn't give it to their client straight is doing them no favours."

***

Negotiator Ninah Hier is trying to give it straight – but it's tricky in the case of two brothers, one of whom wants to sell their property while the other evidently thinks his sibling is being an idiot. Then she has to talk a panicking developer down from his window ledge (metaphorically, of course); he has no fewer than five different estate agents' boards outside his house ("Seriously, it's like a forest out there," says James) and he's desperately hanging on to the notion of what his property was once worth. "If you don't take some of the boards down," Ninah says to him gently, "people might start to wonder why it's not selling. And we really need to look at the price."

After 20 minutes of diplomacy, she puts down the phone with a sigh. "I told him what I could sell it for, and he went very quiet," she says. "It's tough making these calls, but your house is only worth what someone is prepared to pay. And we need to get to a point where we're receiving offers." If she fails, Ninah makes no commission. I don't ask what her basic salary is, but from the look on her face I'd guess that she'd like to sell a house pretty soon.

Of course, the precarious position estate agents find themselves in is viewed with little sympathy by the British public. Many see it as one of the few godsends of an economy on the slide: that a group of largely unqualified wide-boys with cheap suits, spiky haircuts and cars irritatingly emblazoned with company logos are finally getting their comeuppance, after years of pocketing huge sums in an overinflated market that was largely perceived as their doing.

While James talks down the influence of his profession on house prices, he concedes that during those "golden years" even bad estate agents did well. "Property owners would be flattered by high valuations, so they'd go with whoever quoted the highest," he says. "The job became too easy. Just queue the buyers up and see who'd pay most. So, yeah, we all reaped the rewards of irresponsible lending – but if you want the highs, you have to be prepared for the lows. We're down from a team of six to four here, and we're having to work a hell of a lot harder for a lot less money."

He does realise, doesn't he, that a nation will be miming a tear-jerking melody on an imaginary violin at this point? "Of course. I'm not expecting sympathy. It's like, I dunno, if traffic wardens were suddenly being laid off. But – and I know this sounds like I'm trying to find a silver lining on a pretty black cloud – this is our chance to shine. If you are going to survive as an estate agent right now, you have to be good."

***

Being a good estate agent, it seems, now means being a nice estate agent. Bullish, hard-nosed banter has been replaced by disarming honesty and sympathy. With frivolous property speculation at a new low, the main reasons for sales are the three Ds – debt, divorce and death – and the job becomes more about cosy chats and reassurance than slick patter and bone-crunching handshakes. "We really need to pay attention with this house," says James to his team, "because we can't under any circumstances give her ex-husband the house keys. And we can't give her his phone number. Everyone's getting really upset."

While my day of work-shadowing might, a couple of years ago, have included some hands-on experience of talking to buyers or vendors, I quickly realise that one wrong word could derail a precariously balanced sale. And as someone who shies away from making phone calls to people who might scream, or cry, or call me a wanker, I wonder whether my talents could rather be turned to writing some far-fetched blurb about properties – you know, describing a knackered shed as having "unfathomable potential", gushing about the skirting boards, that kind of thing. James laughs. "We don't do that any more," he says. "We just have a few bullet points, photographs and a floor plan." So, at something of a loose end, I slip out to the kitchen.

Amid the boxes of Sultana Bran and PG Tips, I find Ninah making a coffee. "How's it going?" I ask. "Pretty tough," she says. Her bizarre career arc has seen her move from art school, to the National Trust, to selling houses, to selling far fewer houses – and the recent dip has been a shock.

"It's all happened so quickly, and our lives have just been spun around," she says, sipping from her mug. "You see these horrendous financial headlines on the news, and it all impacts directly on our day at work." As we're chatting, the slump in HBOS shares is leading to merger talks with Lloyds, and through the window in the door I see Kinleigh's in-house financial adviser, Maria Matthews, emerge from her office and announce something to James, who rolls his eyes, shakes his head and drops his pen. "It's not all doom and gloom, though," says Ninah, perkily. "People will always need to move house, after all. Nice shirt, by the way." Oh. Thank you.

***

This sliver of hope is what Dan Treadwell is counting on. He's just put his Streatham flat on the market, and Emma invites me to hop into her car and go and take a look.

Dan bought the property for £185,000 four years ago, driven by what he calls "our obsession with the property ladder and all that shit – you know, buying, renovating, making money. But I realised pretty quickly that the process was so stressful, just hellish, and ate tons of cash."

Still, he's done a good job; the flat is substantial, well proportioned, desirable – I'm definitely getting the hang of the lingo – and Emma reckons it might go for £290,000. Dan's not holding his breath, though. "If it sells, it sells. If it doesn't, it doesn't... But I'm not going to panic," he says. "I know one thing, though, and that's that property doesn't allow us to print money. I really don't know why anyone ever thought that it could."

Back in the office, James has an announcement to make: an offer has just been accepted on a £190,000 flat. A sale! "Crack open the champagne?" I ask. "Cava? Um... Appletiser?"

But it's too early to celebrate; while Emma makes the call of congratulations to the vendor, James knows that the hard work starts here. With more than one in four transactions falling through before completion, vendors want to keep "sold" properties on the market and still have them shown to prospective buyers, as it's the only protection they have against the phenomenon of "gazundering". "It's a buyers' market," says James, "and the buyers can afford to play hardball on the price until contracts have been exchanged."

Gazumps and gazunders are loopholes in English property law that have long been cursed by buyers and sellers alike, and the introduction of the home information packs (HIPs) hasn't helped one iota, says James. "If the HIP included a survey, it might have been vaguely useful," he says, "but it's just a load of irrelevant paperwork. Vendors hate it, buyers don't even want to look at it, and all you end up with is this graph" – he waves a coloured sheet of paper – "that tells you how energy-efficient your home is. Which, in the case of Victorian conversions, is evidently 'not very'."

James can afford a few minutes to rant about government policy, because Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward are far from swamped with visitors. The only consolation is that none of their competitors are, either. At one point, when a young, urbane, professional-looking woman comes in, Emma bounds across to welcome her. Unfortunately for her, it's Teri, our photographer, who has already decided to limit her total spend in the Streatham area to a bag of crisps from Tesco.

Later, James and his other assistant manager, Rob, pass a few idle moments playing a game of "guess the square footage of the property that's been on the market for several weeks"; Rob wins with a guess of 1,710sq ft on a property boasting 1,721, which secures him the prize of a traditional estate agent's outing: a spot of board counting. "The only way we can gauge how the competition are doing," James says, "is by calculating what percentage of boards in the area belong to us. Boards are the biggest indication to a potential vendor that we're strong in their particular road, so it's really important to keep tabs on it."

Emma whisks me off to a viewing, and to meet Ben, who's looking to buy. Two years ago, he'd be queuing to view the house, he'd have to offer in excess of the asking price to have any chance, and even then he might well get gazumped. This certainly isn't the case today; if anyone is feeling reasonably contented now, it's those buyers who have somehow managed to assemble the colossal deposit required to secure a mortgage.

Ben shakes hands with the breezy insouciance of a man very much in charge of the situation. "I'm in no rush," he says. "I've been on Kinleigh's books for nearly a year, and I'm happy to wait for a place I really like. And pay what I need to pay when I find it." Emma is in no position to do the hard sell, nor to complain about Ben daring to be fussy about such matters as price or location. So she just asks politely whether he likes it. "Yeah, it's nice," he says, without much conviction.

But there's a further glimmer of hope back in the office – a new instruction for a £210,000 property – and the negotiators are back on the phones to potential buyers. It's a much-needed fillip at the end of a pretty slow day, and James continues to peddle lines of well-rehearsed optimism: stamp-duty relief is superb news for Streatham, people will always need to move, something great happens every day, it's a really good time to buy a property – and, tellingly, emphasising that the role of the estate agent is still very important.

He truly believes that? "Definitely. Transactions break down over the smallest of things, you know, like washing machines, or moving dates. And there needs to be that voice of diplomacy stopping purchases from falling through."

I raise my eyebrows. "I know it's not the most loved profession," says Emma, "but I don't feel the need to justify the fact that I'm an estate agent any more. I make people's dreams come true." We laugh, but I'm not entirely sure that she's joking. "Fingers crossed," says James, "that at some point we'll get back to normality." Normality being? "Good question," he replies, watching the cars whizzing past on the A23. "I just don't know."

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