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The Best...property show

Sarah Beeny
  • Posted at 1:53pm
  • 30 October 2007
  • by RhodriMarsden-RT
  • 4 comments

There was a telling exchange in a recent episode of Property Ladder.

The much-lusted-after presenter, Sarah Beeny, was questioning a particular couple's decision to give up their careers and become property developers despite having poor organisational skills, and no money behind them. They replied: "But you CAN make a living doing this!" "Who says you can?" asked Sarah. "The television programmes say you can!" wailed the couple.

And therein lies the power of Property Ladder. It allows us to indulge our own pie-in-the-sky dreams of making thousands of pounds profit for virtually no effort - maybe just painting a few walls in an off-white shade, sticking a few downlighters in the ceiling and seeing how many dozens of cushions we can pile up at the headboard of a king-size bed.

Budgets and shopping lists scroll up the screen in a friendly blue font - a few grand frittered away on some oak floorboards, a figure for "miscellaneous costs" that's bigger than most people's average earnings for the year - and the whole thing is like a fantastic game, a mixture of an afternoon playing Monopoly and an evening playing with a doll's house. Of course, with dolls' houses you generally don't make plans to knock through downstairs to create a kitchen-diner that fits perfectly with the lifestyle of a young family from Guildford.

But the Property Ladder developers have big dreams. They want to convert a bungalow into a 15-storey palace, despite the fact that they don't have planning permission from the local council. They're blinded by a mixture of sheer greed and delusions of being top-notch designers. As they reveal bathroom plans that involve mounting fish tanks in the side of the bath, or kitchen designs that centre around a giant revolving spit that could support a 400lb wild boar, you hear them sighing, "Oh, this is our dream home." At which point the wonderful Sarah Beeny will witheringly point out that they aren't actually going to live there. They're going to be selling it as soon as they possibly can, not least because their interest payments are spiralling out of control.

Beeny is a saint, mainly because she manages to avoid swearing loudly when the developers reject yet another of her soundly thought-out ideas. It's hilarious, really: Beeny has been involved in property development for years and has a string of successes behind her, while the poor saps being filmed are desperate to get out of the rat race, have thrown in their jobs teaching English as a foreign language and have read a couple of interiors magazines. At home, we clutch our heads in astonishment at their stupidity.

But then, at the end of the questionable development, an estate agent wanders around making positive noises, saying things like "slightly tight into the eaves, but very attractive", before valuing it at half a million - purely because of the booming property market.

And at home, we sip our tea, and think: hey. We could do this. We could be property developers. No, really we could. And another successful series of Property Ladder is born.

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Comments

  • Posted on 10 September 2009
  • at 12:03am
  • by lyric

As a homeowner abroad I love watching a Place in the Sun and other such programs. But I always wonder what happens once the credits roll. Firstly hardly anyone ever buys anything, and good for them because I don't think it's as simple as just saying yes. There is so much more to owning a place in the sun that would make a program on its own; the reality of local taxes, council and land tax, how do you pay utility bills before the point of being cut off, if you aren't there to receive them? Who will clean and prepare your property before you come and do the annual thing like infestation cleanouts, ordering winter fuel etc? Every time we go to our place it isn't just a case of unpacking and heading for the pool or beach. We spend at LEAST the first 24 hrs sorting out all the things that have gone wrong since our last visit; the leaks, the power cuts that have caused problems; the fruit trees that have developed parasites and died; the sewage problems. I think a really good property program would go into the ongoing maintainance and reality of owning a place in the sun and the best way to handle it.

  • Posted on 28 August 2009
  • at 5:10pm
  • by glenda

Phil Spencer..omg what a deeeeelicious guy.Not the only reason I love relocation relocation,it's a great prog if your a nosy so and so like me.I still thought escape to the country with Catherine Gee was the best but this is a good second.

  • Posted on 06 May 2009
  • at 6:38pm
  • by glenda

no comment on this particular show,,but....where oh where has our lovely Catherine Gee gone with the addictive escape to the country??? I think she is great for that show next best is dominic and diggers in to buy or not to buy.I met Dom in battersea..what a lovely guy.

  • Posted on 20 February 2008
  • at 10:10am
  • by teihop
The Property Programs also tend to avoid the tax implications. If you don't earn anything from a normal job, then you pay 20% on the difference between the buying price and the selling price, up to £35,000 and 40% above £35,000. Irrespective of the amount you've spent on it. If you do have a day job, then those earnings are added into the profit total and taxed accordingly. Very few of the Property Programs show the developer living in the project to make it their Primary Personal Residence and thus tax exempt. Or going to jail for tax evasion :)

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