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Over the past month or so I have been spending a lot of time with everyone’s least favourite professionals. Our house is up for sale and alternative homes are being sought for various members of the family, which means that every day I speak to assorted estate agents, either to discuss progress in hawking our place, or the possibility of paying an unconscionable sum to buy someone else’s.
近一个月来，我花了很多时间和人人都不待见的一种专业人士打交道。我们要卖掉房子，各个家庭成员也在找不同的新家，这意味着每天我都要和各种各样的房地产经纪人交谈，或者是讨论卖房进展，或者是讨论要不要支付不合理的大价钱买下别人的房子。
Until this exhausting, exciting and thoroughly unsettling process began, I would have told you there were four things wrong with estate agents. For a start, they charge too much. If they sell a house for £1m they stand to gain about £20,000, a pretty steep return for taking some photos and showing a few people around.
这个过程令人精疲力竭、兴奋不已，同时又十分焦虑不安。在此之前，我可能会告诉你房地产经纪人有“四宗罪”。首先，他们收费太高。如果卖出一套100万英镑的房子，他们就能坐收2万英镑，不过是拍拍照片，带几个人参观，这样的回报也太优厚了。
Second, they are untrustworthy snakes, always keen to assure buyers there is “a lot of interest” in some pokey basement, while at the same time telling sellers that a mingy offer is the best they will get. Third, they tend to be dim: flogging houses requires no particular qualifications and attracts those too thick to get into the City or the law. And finally they butcher the language with their dumb, transparent euphemisms.
第二，他们都是不值得信任的小人。他们总是信誓旦旦地向买家保证，某个狭小的地下室“有很多人感兴趣”，然而同时他们又告诉卖家，房子顶多能卖少得可怜的价钱。第三，他们往往不怎么聪明：卖房子不需要什么特定资历，这吸引了那些笨得去不了伦敦金融城(City of London)或者法律界的人。最后，他们经常说一些自以为圆滑其实轻易就可以识破的蠢话，简直糟蹋语言。
It took me a couple of weeks of dealing with these loathsome types before I realised something was wrong. They weren’t being loathsome at all. Not one of the dozen or so I’ve met from various firms has been more than slightly aggravating. On both buying and selling sides they have been civilised, bright-ish, borderline trustworthy and some of them have been downright agreeable. They have been on time for every appointment. They have not tried to push properties at me that are obviously hopeless.
我和这些本来应该让人生厌的家伙们打交道了几周才意识到有点不对劲。他们根本就不令人生厌。我遇到的来自多家公司的十几个经纪人，没有一个让人感到哪怕有点讨厌。不管是在买家还是卖家一方，房地产经纪人都礼貌、聪明、几近可信，其中有些人还相当讨人喜欢。每一次会面他们都能准时到场。他们也没有试图向我推销显然没有希望的房子。
The outfit selling our house appears to be doing the job according to my instructions. As for the language, it is true that a house I was interested in with a “large private garden” turned out to have a medium-sized yard that looked like Steptoe and Son had just moved out, but mostly estate agents play no more fast and loose with words than other professions.
帮我们卖掉房子的经纪公司看起来是按照我的要求工作的。至于语言，的确有一栋挑起我兴趣的带有“私家大花园”的房子，其实只带有一个中等大小的院子，看起来就像英国情景喜剧《斯特普托和儿子》(Steptoe and Son)的主人公们刚刚从那里搬出去那样。但在大多数情况下，房地产经纪人并不比其他专业人士更爱打马虎眼。
The only real duplicity is over the photos. The camera never lies — except when it has an ultra wide-angle lens attached. In the sales document for our house a two-seater sofa looks long enough to seat eight comfortably.
唯一真正存在欺骗的地方是照片。照相机从不说谎——除非用了超广角镜头。在我们的房子的销售材料上，一张两座沙发看上去坐8个人都有余。
Even though estate agents may be less bad than we think they are — and less bad than last time I had anything to do with them 15 years ago — this doesn’t answer the central question. Why do estate agents still exist? Travel agents are gone — or going. Estate agents, who were hated long before Tim Berners-Lee gave up train spotting to invent the world wide web, were always going to be the first to go, come the internet age. Instead the reverse is happening: as I cycled through Islington on my way home the other day I counted 17 estate agent shop windows in one street.
尽管房地产经纪人没有我们想得那么坏，也没有15年前我打过交道的那些经纪人讨厌，核心问题还是没有得到解答。为什么现在还有房地产经纪人？旅行社已经消失了——或者至少正在消失。在蒂姆•伯纳斯-李(Tim Berners-Lee)放弃数火车，发明万维网之前，房地产经纪人早就遭人怨恨了。随着互联网时代的到来，房地产经纪人本应是第一批消失的人。然而事实正好相反：有一天我骑自行车穿过伊斯灵顿(Islington)回家，我数了数，在一条街上就有17家房地产经纪人门店。
It makes no sense. In the old days you needed them to tell you what was for sale. Now the internet does that. Google Earth tells you what the place looks like from the outside; the seller can take their own pictures; and videos to show what it is like inside. Even pricing could now be done by an average eight-year-old, who could look up what the neighbours’ places went for and adjust accordingly.
这没有道理。过去你需要房地产经纪人告诉你有哪些房子正在出售。现在通过互联网就能知道这些信息。Google Earth会告诉你一个地方的外观是什么样的；卖家可以自行拍摄照片；还有视频能向你展示房子内部的情况。现在一个8岁的孩子就能做好定价，查一下邻居家房子标价多少，相应地调整一下就行。
The only bit that would be hard to do yourself is show people round, as most sellers are out in the day, and in any case it’s not nice to listen to prospective buyers’ plans to rip out the yellow lino and the William Morris wallpaper that you have so very recently and lovingly installed yourself. But even this function could be easily disrupted: there could be an Uber of house-showers, who could let prospective buyers into properties, charging not £20,000, but about a tenner an hour.
这份工作里唯一难以自行完成的部分，就是带人看房，因为大多数卖家白天都在外面。而且，亲耳听到可能的买家计划把你最近刚刚满怀爱意地亲手装上的黄色油毡布和威廉•莫里斯(William Morris)设计花样的墙纸撕下来，在任何情况下总不是一件愉快的事情。但即使是房地产经纪人的这项职能，也可以被轻而易举地颠覆：可以雇佣一个Uber司机带人看房，他可以让可能的买家进入房屋，这项服务不需要花费2万英镑，一小时大约只需要10英镑。
Despite all this, when our house is sold, I will hand over a king’s ransom to the agent with only mild resentment. The reason they exist has little to do with logic. It is because when buying and selling houses people are at their most irrational. Houses are not only where we live, but where all our money lives too. They are by far our biggest and most emotional asset, and even the sanest people become unhinged when it comes to buying and selling. They change their minds. They dither. They are gazumped. Chains break and everyone gets stuffed.
尽管如此，当我家的房子卖掉的时候，我还是会向房产经纪人支付大笔佣金，顶多有些不满而已。房地产经纪人存在的理由并非关乎什么道理，而是因为人们在买卖房子的时候是最不理性的。房子不仅是我们生活的地方，也是我们大部分财富的归属。房子是我们最大，同时也承载最多情感的资产。即使是最理智的人，在买卖房子的时候都会失常。他们会改变主意、犹豫不决或者变卦抬价。一旦买卖的链条断裂，每个人都会遭到生硬的拒绝。
If animal spirits move markets, the animal spirit in the property market is like a maternal Canada goose on the rampage to protect her young. It’s too frightening out there to do it on one’s own, and we are grateful for the services of the nicely turned out young men and women who stand at our side.
如果说动物精神能够左右市场，房地产市场中的动物精神就像是横冲直撞、护雏心切的加拿大雁(Canada goose)。自己做这样的事情太可怕了，我们很感激有这些衣冠楚楚的年轻男女站在我们这边为我们提供服务。
And this, I think, is why we really hate estate agents. Because they are doing something we could do for ourselves if we trusted ourselves more, if we were not so afraid of such ginormous sums, and if we were more level-headed about the places where we live.
我认为这就是我们讨厌房产经纪人的真正原因。因为如果我们更相信自己，不那么害怕庞大的金额，对我们生活的地方保持更冷静的头脑，我们本可以自己完成他们所做的事情。
