Haddenham Cottage Adds A Nought As Nation Cuts Prices

On Tuesday morning, while sellers across the country were quietly knocking money off, a man stood at the end of his own front path on Church End with a tape measure, measuring his thatch. He measured it lengthways, then crossways, then stood back and looked at it the way a farmer looks at weather. Then he went inside and added a nought to the price.

His argument, delivered to a neighbour who had only come out to move a bin, is that the house and its features are now trading as separate concerns. The thatch is doing well. The beam in the front room, which he describes as structural in the emotional sense, is doing better. The view of the duck pond he regards as a holding of its own, quite independent of whether anyone is standing in the house to look at it, and he has begun referring to the ducks as tenants.

"The bricks are flat, I'll admit that, bricks are flat everywhere," he said, folding the tape measure. "But you're not buying bricks. You're buying a beam, a roof made of a field, and the right to watch a duck do nothing in the morning. Those are three different markets and only one of them is having a bad year."