How to speak estate agent

I haven’t written for a while because I’m buying an apartment. I say “buying”. I actually mean shopping. The inner fishwife in me loves looking around other people’s apartments. Sometimes, you get good design ideas: the rest of the time you can gasp at their terrible taste.

It also brings you into frequent contact with estate agents, a strange breed who, I am starting to realise, are pretty similar both sides of the Channel. Crucially, they have their own language. So in the absence of any deep insights into corporate communications, this week I’m serving up the guide to estate agent speak - in London and Paris:

Charmant	Extremely small.
Atypique	The shower is in the kitchen.
-ette	Kitchenette. Cuisinette. Studette. Whatever the language, “-ette” translates as “unliveably small”.
Bijou	London estate agent term for “charmant”.
Has potential	Start learning about plumbing, now.
Good investment	Don’t even think about trying to live there.
Coup de coeur assure!	The owners are in the middle of a messy divorce and need to sell this apartment immediately.
Vaste	Anything over 35m2*. Still considered unliveably small by anyone who has the social misfortune to live outside the Periphérique.
Sans perte de place /  bon agencement	“The number of square metres might look terrible, but this apartment really is worth the extra €20,000”.
…Village	As in, “Abbeville Village”,“Harringay Village”… Description for a small row of shops including Sainsbury’s Local and Starbuck’s used by London estate agents to play into every tired urbanite’s dream of the rural idyll where Mum and Dad live.
…Borders	Highbury Borders is Finsbury Park. Hampstead Borders is Finchley Road. If it’s bordering, it isn’t actually there.
Dans quartier en pleine restructuration	Gangland.
Recently regenerated area	Some prostitutes and drug pushers by the tube station, but a few gay interior designers have recently moved in.

*Paris estate agents – and Parisian buyers – are completely obsessed with square meterage. This is because the difference between a large apartment and a small apartment is a washing machine. Don’t even think about a dishwasher: these are for people living in the provinces.