HERE’S an unfashionable thought: property is not always an asset. Sometimes it is a pain in the neck. Such property is not where you live, or plan to live; it is distant, you may suddenly have inherited it, or stopped needing a pied-à-terre. Perhaps you were a buy-to-let landlord and lost heart, or you might just need to move fast, without fuss. So you want to turn bricks into money, stop paying the council tax and never again correspond with its utility companies. You do not demand a profit – you just want out.

But then, neither do you want to deal with a succession of those irritating, flaky, capricious, disingenuous pests called buyers. Nor with the smirking cadre of lunatic optimists called estate agents. You just want a quick solution and as few conversations as possible. After a while, if the property sticks on the market, you contemplate a “loss” with a smile. Just take it! Out, out, out!

I was in that bind. About three years ago, with our real home in distant Suffolk, we got tired of Holiday Inn Expresses and friends’ sofabeds and bought inner London’s cheapest “studio”, on the amusingly unfashionable Old Kent Road. It lay above an even less fashionable Algerian internet café, where morosely polite Muslim men tapped out messages to God knows where.

We liked it. The kebab shop next door was excellent, and had we suddenly wished to wire money to Nigeria we could have done so from the launderette. It was just a handy place to hang London clothes and spend nights on a wallbed, with kitchenette and proper bathroom and the 453 bus stop outside making it a safe, well-lit homecoming. It was surprisingly quiet despite the buses, and usefully lendable to offspring. But things moved on, and I put it on the market.

Related Internet Links

• Property guides

A guide to househunting on the web

Househunting goes high-tech: technology is transforming the way we search for our next home. Our buyers test-drive top property websites

• A step-by-step guide to selling your home

• Gumtree founder, Simon Crookall, puts his £1.5m home for sale online

Background

• Why can’t we sell our home?

• ‘I didn’t want a profit; I just wanted out’

• How to sell your home in a hurry

Background

• Overseas property: where, how and what to buy

• How to get onto the property ladder

• Guide to buying above a shop

Background

• How to sell your home

• Buying a property at auction

• Home improvement

• Eco homes

• Step-by-step guide to buying your first property

Forget the London property hype. You should know that the “studio” or bedsit market is always fragile, even in a boom, simply because people who are struggling alone to buy something around the £100,000 mark are prone to mishaps. Our first buyer couldn’t borrow a £5,000 deposit; the second suddenly inherited enough for a real flat; the third was a buy-to-letter with, it seems, delusions about getting a 100-per-cent-plus mortgage. That one wasted weeks dithering. Interest rates jerked upwards; each rise frightened an offer away. One fool, justifying a withdrawal, claimed it was “unmortgageable” because of the café and the “fire hazard” of being near a kebab shop. When I rang the relevant lender they denied any problem. Flaky, capricious, wobbly – to hell with private buyers!

I remembered reading about property-buying companies: a few of them are sharks, but at the good end just gritty businessmen who buy low and fast and take a punt on future profits. I envisaged an unsmiling Sir Alan Sugar type grunting a figure and shrugging: “Take it or leave it.” After the wittering, indecisive procession of offers it was an attractive thought. I found UK Property Bank (UKPB), based in Sunderland; a swift exchange of e-mails with people called Jim and Matt elicited their terms. They do a valuation – you can name your own valuer – and within seven days make an offer of 15 to 17 per cent less, pledging not to drop out. If you turn them down, they lose money on the valuation, but as Matt cheerily e-mailed when I hesitated, tempted by another real buyer: “Don’t you worry about me, it’s a business risk. I’m just off to the Maldives.”

As usual, my final private “buyer” had a fit of the vapours and looked like delaying. I jumped, took the UKPB 85 per cent offer, happy to forsake a few thousand quid of largely imaginary property-bounce for the sake of peace. As it turned out, a series of lease glitches and an elusive freeholder held things up for weeks, but not once did Matt and Jim back out. Their lawyer got a bit slow over the final weekend, but as the UKPB tycoons merrily said: “We’re doing about £2 million a week and the lawyer sometimes gets behind.”

Huh. Well, they’re welcome. The flat is sold. If the market stays good, they could make ten thousand for little effort. If interest roars up and prices sag, they might make nothing at all. But they’re in business, risk is what they do. If they end up with a procession of dithering timewasters making offers, they have the rest of their £2 million a week to cheer them up. As for me, I’ve put the cash in the faithful offset-mortgage and am free from the guilt of owning an empty but habitable flatlet in a city short of homes. And I never, ever, need communicate with Southwark council again. UK Property Bank, www.ukpb.co.uk

Times recommends

• Fall in house sales hits builders, estate agents and mortgage brokers
• Why the property credit crunch favours cash buyers
• The blood-curdling history of Quarrelwood House