For The Love Of Money by Brian Doswell (best pdf reader for ebooks txt) 📕

with the grip of a Black Widow spider.
“I’ll get the details.” She said, getting up from her desk and pulling out the filing cabinet drawer, where only minutes before, she had placed a new stack of photocopies. She used the few seconds to take in a deep breath and think, what would Bill do next?
Jane placed the two leaflets side by side on her desk. “I think this is the nicer one. It’s a bit more money but it has actually got a garden you can sit in. This one has a very nice yard, but it’s not the same, is it?”
The bubbly woman pulled the leaflets towards her on the desk and began to study the details. Her fiancé looked at Jane with a weak smile that she would come to recognise over the years. This was going to be the woman’s decision, he would go along with whatever she chose as long as he could walk to the nearest pub and crawl back afterwards. Jane sometimes wondered if he was the reason she had never found a man to marry.
The woman was still engrossed in the fine print when Bill arrived at the door. He saw the clients and the hint of panic in Jane’s eyes. He signalled to her to carry on while he sat behind his own desk and watched.
Jane relaxed the tiniest bit and then in her best posh voice, “Would you like my colleague to take you to see both properties, they’re not far away and he can explain about them on the way?”
Bill laughed at the unexpected boldness of his protégé and rose from his chair. “My car’s outside. It’ll be my pleasure.”
The memory of that morning seemed a very long time ago. The couple had bought the more expensive house with the garden and Bill had made a point of including a commission on the sale in Jane’s wage packet as soon as the sale was completed. In many ways, that morning proved to be the start of their enduring but platonic, office partnership. Bill had guessed correctly that while Jane might not be suited to book learning, she was quite able to follow his example. He liked the idea of someone who would take their time in the day rather than some sharp little junior who would interrupt his lifestyle. Jane would suit him fine.
“The first quarter of the year is always a bit slow.” Bill would often say that, while Jane made tea for them when they had not seen a single customer for a week or more. She often re¬membered those words when things were quiet, as they had been for a week or so. The fact that she had inherited the house and office from Bill and had sold her own ‘two-up-two-down’ within weeks meant that she had no money worries. There were no overhead costs for Acherson & Co, unlike those glass and chrome palaces in the shopping mall. She had learned enough about the business over the years to know that she could retire in a year or two if she wanted, not bad for a kid who only passed art. It was time to put the kettle on.
From the back of the office, Jean heard the shop-door open and she turned back towards her desk, tea-cup in hand.
“Good Morning, I’m Lia Patel. I am a Financial Advisor with Andersons, the bank in the High Street. I wonder if you have some time to talk about Andersons mortgage plans.” She handed over a card bearing the Anderson logo and her name, PATEL Lia.
“Yes I know”, she said. “It’s the back-to-front name, isn’t it? Everyone has the same reaction, but it’s the Bank’s rules. Please call me Lia.”
Jane placed her cup on a tea-stained beer mat that she kept to remind her of Bill. “Always willing to listen,” she smiled, “would you like some tea while you sell me your latest products?”
Lia Patel smiled back and accepted her offer.
An hour passed in minutes as Jane sat back and enjoyed the company. Lia was the first person she had spoken to in days.
“So, by way of a recap,” Lia continued, “Andersons are prepared to lend up to six times the salary of the purchaser, or the combined salaries of a couple, up to 125% of the purchase price. How does that sound to you?”
Jane had listened closely. “Look around you Miss Patel - this is Station Road, not Pall Mall. The people who come in here can barely afford a mortgage of twice their salaries. With a mortgage the size that you are suggesting, they’re bound to default on you, and sooner rather than later.”
“I’m glad you see that, and normally you would be right, however, at Andersons, we are able to take a long view of the steady growth in the property market. If a client falls on hard times we can always recover the value of the outstanding loan from the improved value of the property.”
The principle was sound enough. By chance she had recently sold again that very first house with the garden. She recalled that it had sold in 1983 for £23,000 and this year for £185,000. Lia’s logic seemed all right from the bank’s point of view but she wondered how that couple would have ever found the cash to meet the repayments today.
“OK, I understand all of that but why are you telling me this now. The first quarter of the year is always a bit slow; I’ve got no one on the books right now to send round to Andersons and, anyway, I’m not sure that the buyers would thank me when the repayments start.”
“Andersons would thank you.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Andersons would be pleased to sign an agency agreement with Acherson & Co appointing you personally as an authorising agent, for which a suitable commission would be due.”
“What on earth does that mean?”
“Quite simply, if you get a purchaser who needs a mortgage, you get them to complete the mortgage application form, here in your office, and we, that is Andersons, authorise you to authorise the loan, on the spot - within our agreed pre-set limits. Then when the sale is completed and the purchaser is signed up to our loan, we pay you a commission; say 1.5% of the loan amount.”
Jane did really not need to think again, but years of working with Bill taught her not to rush at decisions and she did not do so now.
Lia misread her silence and chipped in, “Of course, we could go to 2% on loans over £300,000.”
Once again Jane heard Bill’s voice of caution in her mind. “It sounds OK to me. Leave the papers with me and I’ll think about it over the next few days. Can I come back to you on Monday?”
Lia slid the sales pitch back into her briefcase, confident that her morning had not been wasted. On Monday she would have another fish on her line, another little fish creating debtor assets for head office to parcel up to sell to the market. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Lia liked fish in barrels.
Jane, on the other hand, was not so sure.
As the door closed behind her, Jane sat staring at the figures Lia had left on her notepad. The logic was so simple. Pretty much every prospective buyer that walked through her door had their eyes on something grander than the houses they could genuinely afford. It was natural after all. With the backing from Andersons Bank, she could offer her clients a way to buy that more expensive property, arrange the mortgage and bank a tidy commission for herself without leaving her office chair.
By comparison with her fellow school friends, Jean was already a wealthy lady. Most of her school year were married with kids, grandkids some of them, plus extended credit-card accounts, while she owned a modestly successful business and had money in the bank. She had never been obsessed with money and Bill had taught her well, she had learned to be satisfied with her lot rather than be over-ambitious, striving for an impossible dream. Somewhere deep inside she knew she should not change that now. But then, maybe . . . . . Jane leafed through the diary on her desk and phoned a number.
“Hello, this is Jane from Acherson & Co, Estate Agents. Are you still looking for a four-bedroom property in Harrow? . . . . . . Good, I think I might be able to help you.”
§§§§§
Three months later, Jane received a letter from Andersons Bank enclosing a statement of commission due on their self-authorising mortgage agreement.
‘SAMA Account No. 87943242576. Amount credited £32,045.’
Almost without leaving her chair, with just a few simple phone calls, she had sold seven houses during the month following Lia’s visit and twenty more since then. She looked again at the bank statement, she could expect a similar letter next month and again the month after assuming her pipe-line sales completed according to plan. Moreover, the name on the bank’s letter was Jane Ellis, not Acherson & Co. In less than six months there would be over £100,000 in her personal account plus Acherson & Co. would still receive the standard agency fees on each sale.
In Jane’s mind this was all due to Bill and his philosophy in life, “If you do your best for your clients, they will come back, over and over again.”
This was exactly what she was doing, ‘the best for her clients’ - wasn’t she?

§§§§§

Two years, four months and three weeks later, Jane sifted the monthly letter from the mail. The bright golden yellow Andersons Bank logo had a familiar glow as she slit the envelope to extract her monthly statement. She smiled at the total printed in bold type at the foot of the column. Lia had persuaded her to place these commission payments into an Andersons, off-shore account, in the Channel Islands. The total sum deposited, plus the compound interest showed, in bold, £1,001,758.
Jane spread the letter out on her desk and moved her desk lamp a fraction so as to shine the light on the letter. She lifted her hand to her face and kissed the tip of her index finger to transfer her kiss to the magic number.
The next letter in the pile bore the familiar forest-green logo of the ‘Three Trees’ Estate Agents, Head Office, Queen’s Gate, Slough. Jane had seen their sales boards many times but, as far as she could recall, neither she nor Bill had ever dealt with them.

Dear Miss Ellis,
Three Trees Estate Agents are planning to expand the range of home purchase services offered at each of our branches and also to extend our coverage of the Slough & Maidenhead area, to include Harrow.
We would be pleased to discuss with you our acquisition of Acherson & Co. as part of this expansion plan.
As a guide for your information, we estimate the value of Acherson & Co in the current market, to be in the order of £1,500,000, to include all sales in progress at the date of acquisition.
If this proposal is of interest to you please contact Mr. Roy Jones at our Slough office, see details below, to arrange a suitably convenient time for him to visit your office to explain our future strategy.
Yours sincerely,

Arthur Evans
MD Three Trees plc.

Jane placed the two letters side by side under the light of her desk lamp. Her mind whirled at the thought; if she chose, she could be worth comfortably in excess of £2.5 million, enough to buy a place in the sun and never work again.
She reached for the phone and began to