Sunday

Browsing the Sunday papers’ property sections – always good for a laugh. Lots of them covering the recovery in the housing market – prices up for the sixth month in a row. New-builds are still shaky though, so the FT is already talking about a housing shortage – should be good news for landlords, right?

Turn a couple of pages though, and it’s doom for buy-to-letters: over-regulation will kill rental market, shouts a headline, with obligatory “grumpy landlord” photo. The Press’s view of the housing market is always either feast or famine – and quite often it’s both.

Monday
The week begins with a call from an elderly tenant: he has a little bit of water coming through her ceiling and could I come and take a look? When I get there, it’s immediately apparent that “a little bit of water” is the understatement of the year: his living room carpet and sofa are soaked, and the ceiling is sagging alarmingly while brownish water drips into a variety of saucepans.

It’s obviously been going on a while: why didn’t he call me earlier? Oh, he didn’t like to bother me at the weekend. If only everyone were like that…

Tuesday
If I disappear today, you can find me under the mountain of paperwork which seems to have arrived from out of the blue. There’s the insurance and repairs for yesterday’s flooded flat (plus I need to go and buy a new carpet). And a pile of information for some new tenants: I’m sure they want to know who’s holding their deposit, but I wonder if most of the rest of the info I have to give them doesn’t go straight in the bin – oops – in the recycling.

Wednesday
Running round like crazy today, first to a tenant who says her boiler “smells funny”. This is one of those problems that can be anything from nothing at all to a serious safety hazard, so I meet the gas engineer at her house. He checks over the boiler and pronounces it in perfect health. The funny smell seems to be coming from a bit of burger that’s been mysteriously tucked behind the boiler. We leave with the tenant glaring at her young son.

Then to check on the progress of a new property we bought last month. This fixer-upper had been a student house, with – ahem – interesting decor, including all the bathroom fittings painted matte black. With brand new everything, it should make three lovely flats though. Jeff, my usual painter and decorator, and his lads are doing a great job at covering up the lurid orange kitchen the students left behind. I think – not for the first time – that reliable workmen are worth their weight in gold.

Thursday
In the evening, am booked to show a flat to two lots of prospective tenants. The first couple are charming and complimentary about the property; they’ve got other places to see but I have a good feeling about them. The second guy never shows. I wonder if it would have killed him to make a phone call, and take myself home via a restorative pint in my local.

Friday
Back to the fixer-upper to take photos: Jeff’s not quite finished, but I can shoot around the odd paint pot, and I need the properties advertised, not sitting empty. I have a reputation in my family for taking particularly terrible pictures: I cut everyone’s heads off at weddings. But an auto-everything camera and a tripod was the best money I ever spent: back on the computer, and I’m really pretty pleased with how they’ve come out.

Saturday
Thursday’s viewers of the flat phone: they’d like to take it. How soon can they move in? The existing tenant isn’t moving out for another two weeks, so we arrange for them to take over the property the same day. No void period at all: that’s exactly the way it’s supposed to work. I take my two boys to the park for a celebratory game of football.