Keya Sarkar: Some property hunting

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

A couple of times that I had to find accommodation or commercial space in my years in Mumbai, I remember being particularly put off by the species that are real estate brokers. Before the advent of real estate portals, if one was pressed for time, there was little choice but put up with their manner, their over promises, their lies, their negotiating tactics. But whatever my opinion of them, I have to admit that they never failed to deliver. If one could put up with their aggressive hard sell, you were sure to find something which was in the locality of choice, within the budget and within reasonable compromise with the wish list that one had started out with.

A few friends and I run a little lifestyle store, a bookshop and a restaurant in Santiniketan and we had outgrown our current premises. In order that we find a permanent solution we decided to look for buying a larger property rather than renting one.

In Santiniketan, where many bhadraloks have inherited property but have now shifted West, we thought it should not be a difficult task to find something suitable. We did not realise that the first hurdle would be in finding a broker. "Two of them normally frequent a chai shop near the post office," a friend told us helpfully. "They are there only in the evenings though," he had added. A few trips to the chai shop and many messages left with the stall owner yielded results. We got calls from both of them.

They heard our requirements, our location of choice and confidently said they could help. Our next hurdle was adjusting to Santiniketan time frames. When a broker in Mumbai said he would get back to you, he normally did in a day or two. Here it is a couple of weeks. But what is more exasperating, normally to report that there had been no progress but that he was hopeful of it.

Finally, we did manage to get a few leads, but the follow up was painful. The normal POA was that in the first visit one saw the property from inside the compound but outside the house. If you were lucky in the next visit, you could see the insides of the house. Bhadraloks being forced to sell ancestral property are very reticent to quote a price, so that too takes a while to figure out and then, of course, negotiations have to wait for the owners to visit!

Frustrated with our tryst with brokers, we decided to take the initiative and make a few enquiries ourselves. The progress was impressive. Just by asking around we were able to put together a list of land/house owners who may be willing to sell. But alas! On the phone, many of them admitted that they had not been to Santiniketan for many years and could, therefore, give only sketchy directions to their property. Addresses do not mean much as they follow no scientific logic and many houses are abandoned. Thus, these phone calls led to us looking at various property, conjecturing about possible price without actually knowing whether we were looking at the right property.

And then we saw an ad in the property column of a Kolkata newspaper about an NRI settled in North America who wanted to sell his property in Santiniketan. The ad had an email address and a mobile phone number! We were delighted. We were actually going to make contact with people who believe in making it easy! And had actually paid for it.

The email got us no response and the mobile number was answered by a young boy who said his uncle who owned the property would get in touch with us. And so he did many phone calls later. He knew the area in which his property was located but no landmark which could actually allow us to see it before he arrived. But he was from North America and could not help the hard sell. "It's all gone I can tell you. My land is the only one left in that area!" he said before putting down the phone.