The shop window of a particular South Dublin-based estate agency always gives me a titter.
The display panels depicting the properties for sale all start their descriptions with the exact same words: “A unique opportunity…”
So if there are 30 properties in this window then this agency has 30 “unique opportunities”. For more than five years, everything this agency sells has been “a unique opportunity”. Very strictly speaking, I suppose they’re right. They’re not alone. Searching the term on a leading property portal reveals that there are currently no less 671 “unique opportunities” for sale on Ireland’s property market at the moment.
Irish estate agency jargon is a sectoral language that not only stands on superlatives but also corrupts the meanings of many commonly used words and expressions.
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My personal bugbear is “stunning”, which so happens to be applied to 2,873 Irish properties currently advertised for sale online. That’s 13pc of everything on offer in a country where most homes are cookie-cutter, snoozefest boring. According to one dictionary’s definition: ‘stunning’ means “to have the power to cause utter awe, confusion, shock or loss of consciousness”. So bring the smelling salts if you’re going out house-hunting this weekend.
Irish property sales literature utilises a supremely limited vocabulary toolbox. It’s always been that way. With a number of superlatives you can count on the fingers of one hand, you cover almost every single home for sale today. Five adjectives keyed into the keyword search function of one well-known property search portal – “unique, stunning, delightful, charming and spacious” – brings up 20,802 properties out of 22,000 for sale. That’s 95pc.
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Among the terms more commonly used/abused are those whose meanings have been altered beyond what dictionaries know; or deployed in directions in which the spoken English language has never veered.
Only in Irish estate agency patter do buildings “boast”, and so much. This house boasts a massive back garden and that one boasts a double driveway.
Meantime property marketing jargon is perhaps the only language in which there is no word for “no” and where negative adjectives are entirely banished.
Instead there is a whole gamut of terminology designed to relay negatives in positive mode. For example, the word “style” takes the place of “not”.
So when you see the term “Adams style” chimney piece or fireplace, you know only one thing is certain: that it is absolutely not an Adams. Similarly, “period style” means it’s definitely not period. Other negative eliminators include phrases like “plumbed for” a washing machine (the house has not got a washing machine). There’s “subject to permission” as in “an extension subject to permission” or “off-street parking subject to permission,” which translates into “no extension” or “no off-street parking”.
Take bijou, a sparkling French term which is being used to describe 30 homes currently for sale. When applied to Irish property, it means “painfully tiny”. Perhaps the very best example is the cheering term “sunny”, which in property jargon actually means “north facing” or “east facing”.
Because if a garden is south facing or south-west facing (the best aspect for sunshine exposure), then the estate agent will write that in. But if it is east or north facing (that is, the worst aspects for sunlight), then the agent will tell us instead that it is a “sunny” garden. True, the sun will of course get to it, at some point in the day.
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A house which has had nothing done with it since it was built 80 years ago is described as being in “original condition”. And we all know to steer well clear of a “blank canvas”, particularly one which “requires imagination”. Worse again is a “builder’s dream”.
In fact it turns out that 300 properties for sale at the moment in Ireland proffer descriptions that involve “dreams” of one sort or another. And when they’re trying to sell you stuff that can only be imagined or dreamed, then you know it really is time to run away.
Exaggerated sales terminology also applies to the agents themselves, who proclaim themselves to be teetering about in a constant state of ‘delight’ (dictionary: “A feeling of very great pleasure”).
In fact among the jargon written for almost a full quarter of all properties now for sale nationwide (5,007 out of 22,000), the selling agents proclaim that they are “delighted” to be selling that home.
We’re getting more of it on our TV screens too as property programming becomes more popular. It now seems obligatory when the presenter walks into every just-finished abode/room to throw his or her arms in the air and go: “Whoah”/”Wow”/ “Ohhh”/”This is just stunning!!”
Irish property sales patter is somewhat unique (by the dictionary definition) but it’s also mostly harmless given that few of us are ever taken in by it. They didn’t think so in the UK where, since 2008, legislation forbids agents from using anything other than dictionary correct terminology and very few superlatives.
Perhaps it stems from resurgent property TV but it is somewhat disconcerting to hear property marketing jargon now starting to spill out into day-to-day conversations. I’ve noticed that those talking about houses lately have started wittering about “generous proportions”, ”sylvan settings” and pads that are “deceptively spacious”. Someone told me their living room “boasts” surround-sound.
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Nor is it helped by baking TV shows with presenters touting cookies with jellytots on top as “stunning”. But today, when someone walks into another’s fairly average home or garden, it seems to have become customary to throw up the hands and go: “Whoah! Stunning!”
In the last few months I’ve had people tell me that everything from a bog standard new hatchback car to a photo I took on holidays of a bowl of noodles, is “stunning”. No, they’re not.
However. Were I to take a fully-charged cattle prod, hold it to their neck and press play; now that would be stunning. Hello?
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