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Le Monde diplomatiqueJanuary 2009
`FEW EXPERTS WARNED THIS WEALTH WAS NOT REAL BUT VIRTUAL´
Farewell to property porn
For years the topic of choice at smart London dinner parties was
the escalating value of one's own property. This led to a darker
trend: houses were treated not as homes but as commodities to be
relentlessly exploited
by Aditya Chakrabortty
At the start of this century, a new race took over British
television. They didn't look so different from the people in
whose living rooms they took up residence: they had the same
receding hairlines and weight issues. But they had one
apparently magic power: they could turn bricks into money.
They were property presenters, and they had come to teach
viewers how to cash in on the real-estate boom. Their
programmes fell into the genre of reality documentaries,
where real people did real things (such as buy or sell or
renovate houses), only with a film crew breathing down their
necks. The format was stale, but the subject - investing in
property - was intoxicatingly new.
Real-estate debutantes could watch To Buy or Not to Buy for
advice. Once you'd bought your home, the House Doctor was on
call to tart it up. Fancied seeing how the neighbours were
doing? Television allowed you to spy on Other People's
Houses. And when the time came to cash in and sell up there
was Trading Up. Within a few years, the genre had advanced
onto Property Developing Abroad - even this risky, fiddly
business was now considered fun. Only one subject was
guaranteed never to be covered: what to do if you couldn't
keep up the mortgage payments.
This flood came during the biggest real-estate boom in
British history, with house prices rising by around 20% a
year. Mid-market newspapers regularly splashed property
surveys across their front pages, while venerable
home-furnishings magazines junked features on the perfect
table lamp for spreads on kitchen extensions.
Still, it was television that really got the housing bug,
showing 20 different programmes a season at the height of the
bubble. Every day of the working week, a property-drunk
nation could stagger back to their homes - which had
appreciated more that day than their owners had earned at
their jobs - and soak up an evening's advice on how to cash
in on the boom. Digital channels offered repeats to keep one
going into the small hours.'
television. They didn't look so different from the people in
whose living rooms they took up residence: they had the same
receding hairlines and weight issues. But they had one
apparently magic power: they could turn bricks into money.
They were property presenters, and they had come to teach
viewers how to cash in on the real-estate boom. Their
programmes fell into the genre of reality documentaries,
where real people did real things (such as buy or sell or
renovate houses), only with a film crew breathing down their
necks. The format was stale, but the subject - investing in
property - was intoxicatingly new.
Real-estate debutantes could watch To Buy or Not to Buy for
advice. Once you'd bought your home, the House Doctor was on
call to tart it up. Fancied seeing how the neighbours were
doing? Television allowed you to spy on Other People's
Houses. And when the time came to cash in and sell up there
was Trading Up. Within a few years, the genre had advanced
onto Property Developing Abroad - even this risky, fiddly
business was now considered fun. Only one subject was
guaranteed never to be covered: what to do if you couldn't
keep up the mortgage payments.
This flood came during the biggest real-estate boom in
British history, with house prices rising by around 20% a
year. Mid-market newspapers regularly splashed property
surveys across their front pages, while venerable
home-furnishings magazines junked features on the perfect
table lamp for spreads on kitchen extensions.
Still, it was television that really got the housing bug,
showing 20 different programmes a season at the height of the
bubble. Every day of the working week, a property-drunk
nation could stagger back to their homes - which had
appreciated more that day than their owners had earned at
their jobs - and soak up an evening's advice on how to cash
in on the boom. Digital channels offered repeats to keep one
going into the small hours.'
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