Mug Under the Waterfall

Seedy family house, two rooms in basement. Decor peeling, faded, floral and flyblown. If you are too late to secure this gem, we have a spare along the road, rather more derelict. A lightly built member of our staff negotiated the basement stair but our Mr. Halstead went crashing through.

So ran an ad in London's Sunday Times (and the Observer), and in no time at all the house was sold, lock, stock and faded, flyblown decor. By couching his property description in readably deprecating prose, a chipper British real estate agent named Roy Brooks at 46 has become London's most effective real estate salesman.

Bomb Lease. In his weekly ads, Brooks underplays the special virtues of his houses (''Has almost luxury bathroom with removable ladder to secret sunbathing roof garden") and jeers at their shortcomings ("Library all of eight feet square suitable for erudite dwarf"). He also whets sales appeal by describing his clients as "hedonist of 19,'' "redheaded sculptress,'' "girl physiotherapist," "former Harvard lecturer turned tycoon in ladies' underwear.'' Frequently, Brooks offers an acid explanation of the owner's reasons for selling: "One of the big pots in chamber music, leader of a famous quartet, taking up suburban residence with former girl viola pupil, sacrifices exciting newly built mews residence."

Clients rarely complain about the ads. Says Brooks: "Most of them are in the Establishment. People who have arrived don't care what you say." Nor does anyone seem to mind the frequency with which Brooks, a public school boy who turned socialist in the Depression, uses his ads to plug for left-wing causes. Seeking a house for Pacifist Philosopher Bertrand Russell. Brooks recently pontificated: "Another old client. Earl Russell, seeks house anywhere London; scruffy area around St. Pancras would do. Short lease, about five years. Presumably within that time sanity--or the bomb--will have prevailed."

The "In" Thing. Brooks, who joined his father's real estate firm at 18. wrote his first soft-sell ads in 1950. Almost immediately the company's business tripled, and today E. H. Brooks & Son turns away clients. "There have been so many lies about housing that if you simply tell the truth you get a disproportionate response." says Brooks. He takes $60,000 a year out of the firm in commissions, professes not to know how much the company earns because "accountants take everything off my shoulders."

The fact that his ads are now "in"' reading in London leaves Brooks unimpressed. "In some circles.'' he gibes, "it is the 'in' thing to die of a coronary thrombosis at 40." This is a fate Brooks himself is doing his best to avoid. Though competitors grudgingly credit him with singlehanded renovation of the crumbling London neighborhoods of Pimlico and Chelsea by luring back well-to-do buyers. Brooks puts in only a couple of days a week in his London offices, spends the rest of his time enjoying life with his family in an eight-bedroom country house that Britain's

Guardian once described as "Panama City modern." There is, he insists, no need for him to work any harder. "Successful selling," shrugs Ideologist Brooks, "is like holding a tin mug under a waterfall."

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