Estate-agent-ese

[owl]

Why is it that estate agents seem to be incapable of writing English, but instead produce pamphlets full of their own weird jargon?

First of all, the thing they are selling is always a 'home'. Not a house, a home. Sometimes it's a 'comfortable family home', but the horror can increase, as sometimes it's a 'prestigious home' or a 'unique home', or worse yet, an 'almost unique home'.

Then there's the main body, so to speak, of the copy. Usually it's semi-literate, with the most basic errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar. The thing to remember about this part is to take it with a liberal amount of salt.

For example:
Mature garden=overgrown wilderness à la the Sleeping Beauty's castle
In need of renovation=in need of demolition
Convenient to [major road]=built beneath the underpass
Quiet rural setting=back end of nowhere, reached by twelve miles of unmetalled lanes
Spectacular views=perched on cliff edge

and so on.

The end is in sight when you see a floor plan. However, there are still the labels: 'lounge' and 'sun room' or possibly 'reception area' or even 'vestibule'. Did anyone ever call a room in their own house a 'lounge' or a 'vestibule' when they meant sitting-room and hall? (Even in an airport, 'departure lounge' seems to me a shabby wriggling out of 'waiting room', in an effort to suggest the passengers are enjoying themselves. No-one could lounge on those chairs, and the carpet's too thin to do it on the floor.) As for sunrooms, that's a little over-optimistic in Northern Ireland, don't you think? Surely 'weather room' or 'windowed room' would be more appropriate? I suppose it's a minor improvement on 'conservatory' meaing 'PVC lean-to with own muggy micro-climate'.

Usually there's a photograph, or for 'new builds' (what has the poor gerund ever done to estate agents to be so rejected?), an artist's impression. Of course it's to be expected that the artist's impression should bear little relation to the muddy building site, cluttered with bits of rafter, heaps of topsoil, concrete blocks, assorted rubbish and Portaloos, of reality, but how do they work those photographs? Surely they can't all be taken on the three days of fine weather per year? And the ones of the gardens always seem to be taken at ground level to give a Borrowers-eye-view of the size of the place.

Comments

[merkuria-lyn.livejournal.com]

We call our sitting-room the 'lounge'. I think it's some kind of regional thing - most of D's friends seem to use the word. Maybe something to do with Yorkshire?! In any case, it's not to make it sound more grand, and I certainly have never used the word vestibule to describe our tiny hall! ;-)

And so true re. the use of 'home' in estate agent pamphlets. Annoying.

[owl]

Hmm. No-one I've ever met calls it a lounge, it's mostly sitting-room or occasionally drawing-room. We call both our large front rooms sitting-rooms, because we mostly live in the back room off the kitchen.

[anthon1.livejournal.com]

Ours is a lounge too...

[owl]

Are you from the same area as merkuria_lyn? Odd, if it is a Yorkshire word, because it always seems terribly pretentious to me, and so more likely to be used by London yuppies and so on.

[anthon1.livejournal.com]

I'm Hertfordshire born and bred - which is fairly close to London really, geographically speaking...

[yubsie]

When I hear the word lounge, I think of a common area in a university residence. :p

[owl]

Here, we call theose 'common rooms', originally enough.

[yubsie]

Creative. :p

[owl]

Oh yeah.

[leeflower.livejournal.com]

Here it's almost always a living room. Or a 'Den,' if it's the one in the basement where the old, expendable furniture is relagated so that the children can be sent there to play without damaging anything important.

My personal favorite stupid label on a building plan was 'storage hall.' Because that's apparantly what we're calling unfinished atticks with no floor these days.

[owl]

Or a 'Den,' if it's the one in the basement where the old, expendable furniture is relagated so that the children can be sent there to play without damaging anything important.

We call that one a playroom or gamesroom (depending on the age of the children concerned), except mostly it's over the garage or in the attic, because basements aren't common here (I only know of one house that has one. The bedrooms are all below ground. Rather them than me.)

[leeflower.livejournal.com]

yeah, out west (california), where my mom's folks are from, they don't really have basements either, so they're dens/gamesrooms are either in the attic or just attached as a seperate room or screened porch (because it never ever rains in Los Angeles. It apparantly drizzles sometimes in January. The 'LA River' is really hilarious, because it looks like someone left their garden hose on).

[leeflower.livejournal.com]

...and please ignore the almost criminal lack of grammar and usage in the above. I think I'm going to go turn myself in to the syntax police for this.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time in the UK there used to be an estate agent who told the truth and then some (Roy Brooks, I think; something like that): "poky little box loomed over by the neighbouring houses; garden gets approximately 10 minutes sun between July and September" and the like - only stronger. Despite the fact that the houses advertised sold like hot cakes, nobody else tried to follow suit.

(In fact, the ads, in the Sunday paper we took, were so entertaining that part of our Sunday ritual was to read them aloud)

[owl]

But how wonderful! I'm absolutely charmed by this.
Despite the fact that the houses advertised sold like hot cakes, nobody else tried to follow suit. Why do they say honesty is the best policy, when no-one seems to actually go in for it?