Million-dollar price tag - no big deal

True, there was one big bedroom and two smaller ones, warm wooden interiors and some pastel paintwork, but the beauty was pocked with unpolished age and disrepair.

A couple - we will call them Bob and Jane - popped by on their way home and had a voyeuristic nosy around, for fun, and because they, like most other New Zealanders, are obsessed with property.

They poked around the corners and wandered up the stairs which creaked, and then - suddenly - a cry from below.

"Watch the stairwell," came the agent's urgent call: "I'm not sure how solid it is."

"Oh," commented Jane as she returned to safe floor level and noted the grime around the pokey toilet. "So you'd be expecting around three-quarters of a million for this then?"

"Well," remarked the real estate agent, who would later send Bob and Jane an unsolicited Christmas card, "actually, I'm hoping it'll go for more than that."

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