I'm spending the August lull flirting with a television production company

The super-prime property market is quiet, well it is dead really, bar a few Middle Eastern purchasers over here escaping the heat of Riyadh

It’s August which means the hours and days have begun to blur somewhat into one another as the pace slows, days at work become shorter and evenings out longer. The super-prime property market is quiet, well it is dead really, bar a few Middle Eastern purchasers over here escaping the heat of Riyadh.

Our clients are cruising the Med on yachts, catching the waves in the Hamptons, lolling on a beach in Patmos or have ventured further afield to avoid the inevitable summer crowds at these favoured hot-spots. It’s the moment to catch up on that hateful word to me – admin: putting the office in order, preparing for what the French call la rentrée. It’s something that I’m not good at and tend to look for, sticking with the French theme, divertissements.

This has taken the form of a flirtation with a television production company. I’ve been approached in the past but it’s never seemed right or the proposal has proved not quite what one would want it to be. It would be the easiest thing in the world to poke fun at what we do. It’s hard to create empathy for clients and their travails in the pursuit of the right pied a terre (which would inevitably add to their existing portfolio of properties around the globe) for a budget of anywhere from £2 to £20 million.

Obviously the word that comes to mind is ‘perspective’. The fact is, if portrayed in that vein, you’re opening yourself up to envy and derision. What you can show is that buying and selling, whoever you are and whatever the budget is an emotional experience that can bring up all sorts of other questions.

Why do we choose the property and area that we do? How does it reflect on us and what do we want our home to say of us? When budgetary restriction are removed these questions becomes more pertinent. Do clients want the ‘wow’ statement or would they rather go the other way and have a modest façade that belies a grand interior.

As the way we dress, the one and ones we love, the friends we choose to spend time with, how we pass our time all have a bearing on the manner in which we present ourselves to the world, so does the home we choose to live in.

That’s the interesting part potentially of this property programme; the psychology behind how we perceive ourselves and how we wish to be perceived by others. I may be over-analyzing this for the very fact that it is August – but a bit of summer reverie is no bad thing.