Removals men have the real story says Isabel Morton

We’ve been very busy, in fact, it’s been a hectic summer” she said with a touch of that manic enthusiasm which makes one feel slightly uneasy.

I returned her crazed smile whilst wondering if perhaps, some firms of estate agents have been taken over by an obscure religious cult, determined to spread a cheerful and positive message even as we go down in flames.

Later that day, I was doing things the Irish way: organising a house contents move from a place north of London to central London via a chap from McCann’s Removals, Durrow, Co Laois.

Of course, there was method to my madness, as the man himself, Tom McCann, lived and worked in the removals business in London for decades and having returned to the “auld sod” spends half his life driving to and fro between the two countries.

While we were chatting on the phone, he mentioned in passing that he was as busy now as he’d ever been during the boom years.

I called him back for an explanation the following day. After all, there’s no quicker way of getting a true picture of what’s really going on in the property business, than to chat to furniture removers. They are my favourite source of up-to-date, honest property information.

Had I misheard him or had he been joking? No, apparently. It really is the case that having gone through a particularly bad patch between late 2008 and mid 2009, McCann’s Removals are as busy now, as they’ve ever been.

“When we had the so-called boom in this country, nobody was leaving, for obvious reasons, and a lot of people were returning, so we were sending empty lorries out of Ireland, to bring people back into the country. But now that the recession has taken hold, an awful lot of people we moved back here over the past 10 years, are now going back again to England, looking for work. Although, there are still people returning here to retire, especially now that they can buy cheap properties and get a good exchange rate. Last week, I had one for Kerry and another for Galway and this week I’ve one coming back to Leitrim. So, the lorries are busy on both routes.”

McCann’s schedule this week also includes Bristol, Wolverhampton, Birmingham and London. “People are moving back to England because they have financial difficulties. They’d love to stay here but they can’t afford to.”

The aforementioned expats, returning home to retire, are usually happy to move back here, but it doesn’t always work out as intended.

“We moved a couple back to Ireland to retire about five years ago, who left their own grown-up children behind in England, but now theyre moving back again.” It seems many emigrants dream of retiring “home” but forget that they are likely to be leaving their children and grand-children behind them, “and they think they are retiring back to the Ireland they left 40 or 50 years ago, but of course it’s all changed.”

Most leaving in search of work have tried to but can’t find buyers for their houses. “Some are renting out their homes here but others aren’t even bothering to do that, as it would cost them more to get the properties in good order and keep them maintained, than they would receive in rent”.

George Stevens of the well known Bray based firm GA & Stevens Son confirms that most of the work these days, does not relate to property sales.

“It’s all about people moving from one rental property to another or people storing their furniture for six months or so, while they renovate their homes. There was a lot of that this summer and at one stage in early August, our storage facility was completely full.”

“A few years ago everyone was trading up but that’s completely gone now. They’re selling up if they can, in an effort to reduce their mortgage and are either downsizing or moving into rented accommodation. Stevens doesn’t just move people, he listens to their woes too, it seems.

“A lot of our customers are destroyed, people who would have always been rock solid. We have customers, a couple, who were downsizing and sold their house before the crash and decided to rent for a while to see how they liked apartment living. They invested €1.7 million in bank shares with four different banks and their life savings ended up being worth only €59,000. That’s happened to a lot of people and they certainly couldn’t be blamed for being greedy.”

Some of his customers, he says, can’t afford to sell as they’d have to take such a hit, so they rent out their own place and rent something else themselves. This mess has put generations off buying property ever again.”

Back to my encounter with the happy estate agent; had she been indoctrinated, or hypnotised, or was her morning coffee drugged? Or perhaps the reduced staff numbers, salary cuts and lengthy negotiations with ruthless purchasers and browbeaten and broken vendors, had taken their toll? Or maybe, it’s just that she’s been moved from sales to lettings?