The agent

Mark Greig, MD of Paramount Investments

We've all seen the depressing sight of boarded-up pubs in locations throughout the country.

Mainly in city centres, they blight the landscape and reinforce the growing sense of economic gloom.

And with predictions that 7,000 pubs will close in the next two years, it is likely to become an increasingly common sight.

But not all of these pubs need to end up like this. Many are perfectly viable properties that are being kept closed by a combination of inflexibility on behalf of the vendors and lack of preparedness by would-be buyers.

The first thing we check when someone says they want to buy a pub is whether they have the means to do so.

We won't try to agree a deal with a client unless we are satisfied that finance is in place, as an unqualified offer can be misleading to the owner. Having said that, we can help buyers with finance. This approach helps us to move to exchange and completion as soon as possible.

A willingness to accept buyers from any walk of life also helps. A pub may no longer be viable as a pub, but it might be viable as a hairdresser's shop, a newsagent's or as social housing.

Selling a pub to another type of businessperson is surely better for any given community than having premises shut, but there is a reluctance on the part of many vendors to sell pubs outside the trade.

With the current demand for social housing, however, do we really want to keep healthworkers and firefighters off the property ladder when there are buildings with the shutters up which they could be living in quite happily?

And do we really want to prevent the local economy from growing by keeping buildings closed when they could be opening as new businesses, relevant to their community?

We need to adopt a broader economic outlook if we are to work together to reduce the numbers of boarded-up pubs.