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It's a Mini crisis... estate agents' runarounds lay idle
Valentine Low, Evening Standard21.07.08
It is either the starting grid for the inaugural estate agents' championship rally or a very sorry comment on the state of the housing market.
Here, parked up in a layby near Hampstead Heath, are no fewer than seven cars belonging to the agent Foxtons.
The photograph was taken at midday one day last week in West Heath Road. The casual observer might wonder why the distinctively customised Minis are not being used to ferry potential buyers to viewings in the area, which has seen some of the biggest rises in property prices in the capital in recent years. Could it be that the market is now in such a parlous state due to the credit crunch that there are just not enough properties - or buyers?
Or is that Foxtons has gone green and all its agents go round by bicycle these days? Whatever the reason - and it could be that our photographer simply caught them on a slow day - it does leave one question unanswered: what is the collective noun for estate agents' cars? Foxtons was unavailable for comment.
Reader views (4)
Apparently the new collective noun for our favourite profession:
a dole queue of estate agents.
- Mart, London, UK
A crash of estate agents' cars, of course!
- P Ann Reid, Aberdeen
I'm astounded that Valentine Low needs to be reminded of the common collective noun for a group of estate agents' cars - it of course "a gazump of minis".
This is a common term - refer if you will to "a zimmerframe of Micras", and the well-known "battery of G-Whizzes". These are not to be compared to the rare and little-known (due to the discrete nature of their owners and habit of not congregating together) - "a pomposity of Volvos".
Me - I drive a hard bargain.
- Bernie, Chesham, Buckinghamshire
I know they are estate agents, and it is almost de rigour to be obnoxious, but without exception the drivers of those are so awful.
- Martin, Teddington
