What do you think?
Rate this book
Enid Blyton for Grown-Ups
Five Get On the Property Ladder
Enid Blyton's books are beloved the world over and The Famous Five have been the perennial favourite of her fans. Now, in this new series of Enid Blyton for Grown-Ups, George, Dick, Anne, Julian and Timmy turn their attention to finding a property they can call their very own.Join the Five as they struggle to get their feet (and paws) on the first rung of the property ladder. Luckily cousin Rupert is on hand to help. But not before they've had some very exciting adventures. Who knew that it was all going to be so difficult?
112 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 5, 2017
4 people are currently reading
106 people want to read
About the author
Bruno Vincent
46 books41 followersBruno Vincent was a bookseller and book editor before he was an author. His humour books for grown-ups, co-authored with Jon Butler, were national bestsellers and have been translated into seven languages. The TUMBLEWATER books are his first for children.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
June 16, 2018
Yeah, Houses are Expensive
16 June 2018
Well, exams are now over so I have four weeks to myself and thus I hope to be able to catch up on a lot of reading that I basically haven’t been able to do over the semester. Okay, I have read a few books, but as I have mentioned in the past, my reading time has, all of a sudden, been stolen by the need to do other things, such as get high marks. I could tell you about my realisation that science exams and liberal arts exams are two completely separate beasts (in Liberal Arts, you just dump a bunch of rubbish down onto the paper and as long as you are somewhat close to answering the question, you’ll get a half decent mark – science has a lot more right and wrong connected to it, though I have to admit that maths exams aren’t all that bad since numbers seem to just work themselves out) but I’ll just talk about the book instead.
Vincent certainly seems to have shaken the world of the Famous Five upside down. One would have thought that they would all be grand-parents now, but no, instead they are navigating the harsh world of the millennials, particularly those living in London. Well, things don’t seem to be all that bad since they are living in a flat that Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin own, and it appears that they might be living rent free as well. Unfortunately, the good times do eventually come to an end, because, well, Uncle Quentin has had the unfortunate problem of blowing up his house in one of his science experiments, which means that to get the funds they need to sell their London property, which means that the Famous Five have to find another place to live.
It seems that renting is out of the question, so they get together what meagre savings they have and go and visit the local real-estate agent, only to discover that it happens to be their cousin Rupert. Anyway, despite the fact that none of the five seem to particularly like him, they decide to accept his assistance in attempting to find a place to stay. As it turns out, there really isn’t anything all that great within their price range, though there does happen to be a barge, but I won’t say anything else about that because it is supposed to be a secret.
So, there seems to be all this who-ha about how property is just so damn expensive. The problem is that it has always been really expensive. Sure, owning a house means you don’t have to worry about those bothersome landlords that always seem to turn up the day after a massive party, but then again, when you own your own house and the gas heating breaks down, guess who doesn’t have to pay for it – yep, that bothersome landlord (that is if you don’t have a landlord that basically doesn’t do anything because, well, it is simply too expensive to actually fulfil the obligations that landlords are required to fulfil).
The thing is that people seem to always get upset about the price of property, and when governments attempt to do anything about it, it has the effect of making it even more expensive. For instance, in Australia, the government created a first homebuyers grant, and guess what happened to the price of property? It went up by the same amount as the first homebuyer’s grant. Another thing are all those investment ‘gurus’ that run financial advise seminars and usually conclude with ‘real estate is a rock-solid investment’. Well, I guess there are a lot of people out there that can tell you otherwise. Okay, you do have idiots like me who believe that property is just too expensive and the bubble has to burst sometime and while waiting for that proverbial bubble to burst the price just goes up even more. Sure, it burst in America, but that wasn’t because the price of property was too high, it was just that there was a lot of bad debt in the system, and a lot of that debt was tied to the price of property.
Sure, it would be great to live is a cosmopolitan city like London where everything is happening, but the catch is that so does everybody else, and when everybody wants to live in the same place, well, the basic law of economics comes into play. Sure, while I might not be one to extol the benefits of capitalism, from my experience whenever a government tries to interfere in the private market, it just makes things worse. Now, I’m not talking about social housing here, that is a completely different ball game, I’m talking about government intervention into the housing market. In Australia, they tried to encourage the development of new housing by offering potential landlords massive tax breaks. Well, we can guess what happened there – all the boomers and Xers who were going to those investment seminars all decided to get onto the property ladder and BOOM! Up goes the property prices.
As for social housing, well, it does have its pros and cons. Look, when the government in Australia decided to start selling off its houses and giving rent subsidies to poorer tenants it meant that as the rents went up, the subsidies didn’t and as such these poorer tenants found themselves out on the streets. Social housing means that rents are basically set to the occupant’s income level and does not fluctuate with the market. The thing is that the government is not a business, it forms the role of protecting society. Sure, some of these places aren’t really the best of places to live, but it does give disadvantaged people a roof over their head. Women, for instance, are unfortunately one group that has a great need for social housing, especially those fleeing violent relationships, and there just isn’t enough out there to support them. While the government may not be able to control the ebbs and flows of the market, there are some forms of intervention that does provide a service. One thought though, isn’t it odd that while they shy away from offering subsidies to the disadvantaged, they have no problem with selling assets below market value – apparently one way to get a bargain is to buy something out of one of the government’s fire sales.
16 June 2018
Well, exams are now over so I have four weeks to myself and thus I hope to be able to catch up on a lot of reading that I basically haven’t been able to do over the semester. Okay, I have read a few books, but as I have mentioned in the past, my reading time has, all of a sudden, been stolen by the need to do other things, such as get high marks. I could tell you about my realisation that science exams and liberal arts exams are two completely separate beasts (in Liberal Arts, you just dump a bunch of rubbish down onto the paper and as long as you are somewhat close to answering the question, you’ll get a half decent mark – science has a lot more right and wrong connected to it, though I have to admit that maths exams aren’t all that bad since numbers seem to just work themselves out) but I’ll just talk about the book instead.
Vincent certainly seems to have shaken the world of the Famous Five upside down. One would have thought that they would all be grand-parents now, but no, instead they are navigating the harsh world of the millennials, particularly those living in London. Well, things don’t seem to be all that bad since they are living in a flat that Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin own, and it appears that they might be living rent free as well. Unfortunately, the good times do eventually come to an end, because, well, Uncle Quentin has had the unfortunate problem of blowing up his house in one of his science experiments, which means that to get the funds they need to sell their London property, which means that the Famous Five have to find another place to live.
It seems that renting is out of the question, so they get together what meagre savings they have and go and visit the local real-estate agent, only to discover that it happens to be their cousin Rupert. Anyway, despite the fact that none of the five seem to particularly like him, they decide to accept his assistance in attempting to find a place to stay. As it turns out, there really isn’t anything all that great within their price range, though there does happen to be a barge, but I won’t say anything else about that because it is supposed to be a secret.
So, there seems to be all this who-ha about how property is just so damn expensive. The problem is that it has always been really expensive. Sure, owning a house means you don’t have to worry about those bothersome landlords that always seem to turn up the day after a massive party, but then again, when you own your own house and the gas heating breaks down, guess who doesn’t have to pay for it – yep, that bothersome landlord (that is if you don’t have a landlord that basically doesn’t do anything because, well, it is simply too expensive to actually fulfil the obligations that landlords are required to fulfil).
The thing is that people seem to always get upset about the price of property, and when governments attempt to do anything about it, it has the effect of making it even more expensive. For instance, in Australia, the government created a first homebuyers grant, and guess what happened to the price of property? It went up by the same amount as the first homebuyer’s grant. Another thing are all those investment ‘gurus’ that run financial advise seminars and usually conclude with ‘real estate is a rock-solid investment’. Well, I guess there are a lot of people out there that can tell you otherwise. Okay, you do have idiots like me who believe that property is just too expensive and the bubble has to burst sometime and while waiting for that proverbial bubble to burst the price just goes up even more. Sure, it burst in America, but that wasn’t because the price of property was too high, it was just that there was a lot of bad debt in the system, and a lot of that debt was tied to the price of property.
Sure, it would be great to live is a cosmopolitan city like London where everything is happening, but the catch is that so does everybody else, and when everybody wants to live in the same place, well, the basic law of economics comes into play. Sure, while I might not be one to extol the benefits of capitalism, from my experience whenever a government tries to interfere in the private market, it just makes things worse. Now, I’m not talking about social housing here, that is a completely different ball game, I’m talking about government intervention into the housing market. In Australia, they tried to encourage the development of new housing by offering potential landlords massive tax breaks. Well, we can guess what happened there – all the boomers and Xers who were going to those investment seminars all decided to get onto the property ladder and BOOM! Up goes the property prices.
As for social housing, well, it does have its pros and cons. Look, when the government in Australia decided to start selling off its houses and giving rent subsidies to poorer tenants it meant that as the rents went up, the subsidies didn’t and as such these poorer tenants found themselves out on the streets. Social housing means that rents are basically set to the occupant’s income level and does not fluctuate with the market. The thing is that the government is not a business, it forms the role of protecting society. Sure, some of these places aren’t really the best of places to live, but it does give disadvantaged people a roof over their head. Women, for instance, are unfortunately one group that has a great need for social housing, especially those fleeing violent relationships, and there just isn’t enough out there to support them. While the government may not be able to control the ebbs and flows of the market, there are some forms of intervention that does provide a service. One thought though, isn’t it odd that while they shy away from offering subsidies to the disadvantaged, they have no problem with selling assets below market value – apparently one way to get a bargain is to buy something out of one of the government’s fire sales.
May 22, 2018
These are fun enjoyable reads.
Entertaining stock-fillers, though Id image most readers would have forgotten the jokes by January!
Entertaining stock-fillers, though Id image most readers would have forgotten the jokes by January!
September 27, 2020
The Famous Five attempt to purchase their first home - only to be thwarted by astronomical prices, disgusting vermin-filled health hazards, a hair-raising accident or two, and the interventions of their suave estate agent cousin Rupert. But of course, it all works out all right in the end!
January 12, 2018
This one was hilarious. Read over a lunch break at work.
March 14, 2020
218 - 2020
March 24, 2020
Very funny. Just what was need when housebound during COVID: 19.
July 26, 2018
Funny how they've grown up and still are annoying. Very astute insight on the property market anywhere.
September 11, 2019
Nostalgia reigns supreme in this story about the 5 dealing with adulthood
April 9, 2018
Another quick, amusing read in the Enid Blyton for grown ups series. Amusing in parts, with all the characters you knew (and loved) if you grew up reading Enid Blyton.
January 5, 2018
The funniest by far! The Famous Five’s run in with their cousin Rupert in their attempts to find a new place to live leads to some eventful escapades and misunderstandings from London to Scotland and back! With frequent stops at the motorway services so Dick can catch Pokemon and some particularly toxic farts from Timmy, this proves to be an excellent instalment.
October 21, 2017
Very entertaining - especially given current situation of being in a similar position - I finished reading this in an afternoon. Looking forward to also reading Five Go to Brexit Island which has been sitting on my shelf for a while...
January 7, 2018
Absolutely Brilliant. Even evil Cousin Rupert was slightly improved. Felt a bit of sympathy for Julian - pubs and reading.
Totally got the bit about their Local area! You know you are part of the neighbourhood when you get advised where not to go for random protests!
Totally got the bit about their Local area! You know you are part of the neighbourhood when you get advised where not to go for random protests!
April 24, 2019
It looks like the five have to move out of their flat, and are looking to buy. This was a great story capturing the first-home buyer experience and the property market. I love how cousin Rupert keeps popping up in these stories :).
Read this one AFTER Five lose Dad in the garden centre.
Read this one AFTER Five lose Dad in the garden centre.
October 18, 2021
This is another one of the Famous Five books for grown-ups, and I picked this one up specifically because I’ve just purchased my first property and so I thought it would be a good time to read it. What was interesting was how accurately Vincent nailed the challenges that a lot of people my age are facing. There were five of them, each with savings, and they still couldn’t afford somewhere. It’s depressing but true, and I consider myself lucky.
November 20, 2021
One of the funnier books in this series, as we see the Five try to purchase their first home. Who knew they'd been living rent free in Aunt Fanny's flat for so long? When their estate agent end up being the dubious Cousin Rupert, you know things are going to turn out a little differently than planned.
October 23, 2024
[Quercus] (2017). HB. 1/1. 103 Pages. Purchased from The Hospice of St. Francis Charity Shop (Marshalswick).
Somewhat entertaining.
Once again, no attempt has been made to coordinate illustrations and text…
Somewhat entertaining.
Once again, no attempt has been made to coordinate illustrations and text…
October 23, 2017
this one was better we almost had a mystery but then that was very quickly stopped
November 4, 2017
A quick and amusing read. The part about the house boat was my favourite bit. I'm really enjoying this series. A lot of fun!
December 29, 2017
Probably the best one I have read of these, but still some disappointing parts
January 22, 2018
Fun little book that does capture the style of the originals. Happy to say my recent house-hunting experiences have been much more positive!
October 26, 2019
It was OK. A bit unbelievable and not something I would read again, but there were a few funny parts.
December 12, 2020
Very funny and relevant to me at the time.
September 20, 2021
Not as funny as I expected it to be
February 25, 2023
Modern day famous five shenanigans. Easy and funny read
April 22, 2023
Funny.
July 19, 2023
A great idea, reminiscing with a contemporary update.
Read
March 31, 2025Ridiculous but enjoyed the satire of it all
April 1, 2025
Super little read to fill an hour that cannot help but make your mood lighter and remember the good ol’ days. It’s cheesy literature but good fun.
June 1, 2025
Again with the poor ending, but overall not too bad.
September 2, 2025
good mickey take
Quite a funny and up to date rendering of the difficulties most face in buying a property ! Pretty funny
Quite a funny and up to date rendering of the difficulties most face in buying a property ! Pretty funny
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews