Sent in by email from an EDA reader – we couldn’t resist it!  We did want to cull some words but decided to leave it as sent.

 “I am a fairly wealthy property owner. I have a very big, but rather dilapidated Victorian seaside house with lovely views with a modern extension in Sidmouth. Also in Sidmouth, but some distance away from my house, I own a block of garages, though the road they are on is rather narrow and a bit bumpy nevertheless people use these garages on a daily basis. I also have a large plot of land in Honiton with a mobile home on it belonging to some people I know. Someone very wealthy has said that they want to build a shopping centre on this land, which makes me VERY excited, though the mobile home will have to go, of course. I have a plot of land in Cranbrook too which I own with a couple of my (rather difficult) relatives.

I have decided to sell all my properties and move into a mansion on the Cranbrook land costing, I think, around £4-5 million pounds (bear with me here!) with my difficult relatives charging me about £1 million for their share in the land (though they want to keep a foothold on the land too, the beggars). On the plus side, they have said they will sort out the new house and build it for me for a fixed price. Sweet!

I decide to spend around £700,000 working out whether this is a good deal. I engage someone whose job it is to deal with these things so that I don’t have the headaches of doing so. This person costs a large proportion of the sum I have decided to spend on, let’s call it, relocation. I know, very few people would spend around a quarter of the cost of the new home selling the others, but, hey, that’s just me and it’s my property and my land and I can do what I like.

I don’t get my Victorian/modern house valued by three estate agents. I look at something called a “Red Book” and have a rough guess at what it is worth – this is a cost guide that is a “one size fits” all exercise in valuation and I find the costs that seem to suit my situation, though it is rather difficult when one part of my house is Victorian and one part is modern and I haven’t done any maintenance on it for years and years. I decide to throw in the garages as part of the package, though I have not sought advice on whether this is a good idea and I don’t get them valued at all. I give the people in the mobile home notice to quit. I have all my ducks in a line.

So, my mansion in Cranbrook is coming along nicely. Oh, the pleasure! In the meantime, I negotiate with my relatives who own the land there.  They are VERY difficult and put all sorts of obstructions in my way that I had never thought about (not even with the £700,000 budget I have) – EU regulations and the like. What tosh I say. But it turns out not to be tosh and, with great reluctance, I decided that a mansion in Cranbrook is no longer on the cards. Still, the costs had doubled for some reason so maybe it wasn’t such a good deal after all.

What to do? I DEFINITELY want to get shot of the Victorian/modern house and, if the garages make it a sweet deal then that’s what I want to do – sell them both together. So, without further ado, I put them on the market. I don’t put an asking price on them, I decide to ask the buyers what they think they are worth. I trust the buyers to give me the best price, even though they probably have an idea that things at Cranbrook are not working out all that well. I believe in the market – it will come through for me.

But now I have to decide where to live. And then another bombshell – the guy who wanted to build the shopping centre on the land at Honiton has changed his mind! Something about “market conditions”, and now all he wants to build is a newsagent’s shop and off licence and he doesn’t want to pay me much for those! Back to the drawing board.

I still have the tenants in the mobile home – quick, I must tell them I don’t want them to leave. In fact, whizzo idea – I will build a new house NEXT to the mobile home and we will all be happy – won’t we.

But it won’t be big enough for me and my 500 kids – only enough for 170 of them! No matter: I know a bloke who wants to sell a smaller Victorian house at the seaside (though it doesn’t have the lovely views and the grounds of my current home) and he is willing to do a deal to put up 70 of my kids there.

Problem: what to do with the other 250 kids? This is made even more difficult as I have just entered a menage-a-trois and they have THEIR kids to sort out too, so it is a real headache. We all decide that some of the kids will just have to be thrown out. It’s time they stood on their own two feet and got proper jobs anyway. So, that’s sorted – 250 of my kids will have to sort themselves out as best they can. And if they think I am going to help them, they have another think coming – I’m not a charity.

Then, another bombshell, the buyers of my current home tell me that it isn’t worth what I thought it was worth and they don’t want the garages! Did they get wind of the fact that my offer on Cranbrook fell through and the shopping centre is off and they know I’m in a pickle? Surely not. Still, better cut my losses, get the seaview property off my hands as fast as I can before the roof falls in (I haven’t paid it much attention since I decided to move about 4-5 years ago). I’ll just have to keep hold of the garages – perhaps they will come in useful one day.

So, that’s sorted. I’m not building the mansion in Cranbrook for me and the 500 kids. Instead I am building a set of Portakabins in Honiton for me and my favourite 170 kids and I’m sending 70 of them (the ones I sort-of like but not enough to have living with me) to the Victorian house that needs refurbishment in the other seaside town – I’m waiting for the cost for that as the old tenants have only just moved out. I’m selling the seaside house for less than I expected, holding on to the garages and telling the tenants in the mobile home they can stay. And I am NEVER going to speak to my relatives who own the land in Cranbrook ever again. I have new friends now in my menage-a-trois – people who REALLY understand me. True, there is talk that there are too many chiefs and too many Indians, but I will sort that out, you wait and see!

Actually, that was always my plan. I never planned to live in the mansion at Cranbrook, I was just having people on, I always thought the Victorian/Modern house wasn’t worth much, I never planned to get rid of the garages and I only told the tenants in the mobile home that they would have to move because I wanted them to be extra grateful when I said I would let them stay (though I haven’t talked to them about the new rent yet). 

So, another set of ducks in another row. Now all I need is £10 million to build and refurbish the new (smaller) houses and we are sorted.

And, did you know, I once worked for an estate agent?”