theRatandMouse - London's property blog

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Foxtons mini photograph upsets reader

20070221Mini A very long time ago, in January 2005, the Rat and Mouse published a photograph of a totaled Foxtons Mini. We weren't gloating, but we were intrigued by the details of how a Sloane Street branch car had ended up rolled in the middle of the Dorset countryside, and how the resulting photograph had become the subject of a popular email, sent from London estate agent to London estate agent. Foxtons remained tight-lipped... and we assumed (still assume) that the car had been pinched and wrecked. We were flooded with emails - most of them unprintable in their Foxtons-rage. Regular readers will know that the Rat and Mouse treads a careful path on the subject of estate agents. We respect and feel and a certain amount of sympathy for the good agents, the London property market foot soldiers, of whom there are many, even though that doesn't always play nicely with our readers. Out of a packed emailbag, we printed one response (which - I can now reveal - actually came from an estate agent). Anyway - cut to this afternoon - and this comment:

I cannot quantify the disgust I feel at this picture and the reaction. You people think car crashes are funny? You people would want an agent to crash his car and hurt himself? You think that your property experiences mean you can joke about young people getting hurt in car accidents? I'm afraid I take this very personally. Good bye Rat and Mouse.

For a (very) brief moment, it made me feel like the bad guy. Now I've reviewed the two posts, I've regained my real estate fu. But I do think the comment deserves being read, which is why I've posted it below the original post, and dragged it from the bowels of the Rat and Mouse up to the front page.