Estate Agents The Psychology of Estate Agents

Date Published:

28/05/2008

Type Seven - The Enthusiast

Sevens are defined, but also doomed, by their relentless enthusiasm. It all starts out so promisingly. Silver-tongued and sweet-natured when they arrive at your home, full of charming anecdotes, witty aphorisms and a raft of messianic promises. Whereas type Ones will tell a vendor what they don't want to hear, Sevens will ingratiate themselves by simply agreeing with you. 'Yes the house is great and I love that 3 storey extension on top of the garage.'

With their large appetite for small talk, Sevens are good at establishing rapport with their punters, aided by their bewildering happiness in parroting an almost identical conversation with 100 different punters.

Somehow they are able to routine it, recycle it like it never happened before. To achieve this, you need an abiding fascination with minutiae - or a terrible memory. Maybe extreme Sevens have a form of Korsakov's syndrome, where any memory of recent conversation disappears as soon as the sound waves flatten out. Oliver Sacks describes it as like 'a man without a past or future stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment'.

So what goes on beneath the cheery veneer of a Seven? What black demons fight for tenancy in his head? Nothing much, save some borrowed gravitas, wheeled out on appropriate occasions. When a fellow estate agent gets bitten by a vendor's dog and dies of rabies, the Seven utters, in the tones of someone impressed by his own profundity, 'Well that puts life into perspective, doesn't it?' or 'And there was I, worrying about my sales figures', or 'Makes you think doesn't it?' Well no, Mr or Ms Seven, it probably doesn't.

Sevens end up resembling David Brent from The Office. Brittle charm disguising sadness. Rhetoric masking an inability to finish anything. Enthusiasm shrinking into a hollow parody of itself. And you, the vendor, turning anorexic on a diet of empty promises.

Your challenge, then, is to Know Thy Type. With a bit of practice, you should be able to clock each Type as they tether their horse to the gatepost.

As you can see, all the Types have virtues and caveats. Unfortunately, as with life, there's no chance of combining the best parts of each Type. You have to choose, then grin and bear the consequences. At least until the Sole Agency Agreement expires.