The yellow house

As the skies darkened, the birds retreated to the comfort of their nests, and the streets in the harbour town of St Andrews emptied, the speculation began...
"Yellow...Yellow...are you awake?"
Yellow's curtains fluttered through his broken windows.
"Wha? Humpf," he moaned as he stretched his brittle joists and yawned through his lopsided, rotting front doors that hung by the last thread of their rusty screws.
"Look, there's a sign by your rose bed," said Found, eagerly.
Yellow stretched to peer over the sign that was staked into the thorny mass of parched roses. A fresh crack cut through his dry roughcast. Like fork lightening it chiselled its way from Yellow's buckled guttering to his weed-ridden paving.
"Ahhh...can't...read...it...too...far...away," he strained and slumped back. A puff of asbestos dust expelled from his foundations like warm breath in cold air.
"Oi. Leonard. Wakey, wakey,” bellowed Found. “Look's like Yellow's got a buyer, finally."
"Oh, Found, I do wish you wouldn't address one as though one was one of your roughshod friends," said Leonard haughtily as he swept open his red velour, linen-lined curtains. "I'm a quality residence, for quality residents. It doesn't do to have you roaring as though you're Arsenal football stadium."
"Listen, Prissy Pipes, you're not on The Links you know. You've not quite reached the Million pound price tag yet."
"It's only a matter of time," snuffed Leonard. "Anyway, whom did you say has a buyer?"
"Yellow has," piped Found. "He's got the sign!"
"Where? Oh you mean that tiddly, white thing? Oh that's nothing. I had a billboard when I was sold," said Leonard. "So, what does it say?"
"Err...This Property is the Pits...I think. The letters are a bit small," said Found.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," snorted Leonard. "Never was a truer word said. Ha. The pits. I like it. Marvellous."
Yellow sighed. His bricks walls slumped so far into his foundations he lost four feet in height. "I'm never going to have an owner. Never going to feel the lick of fresh magnolia, the skim of moist plaster, the warmth of deep pile carpets, the..."
"...stench of fresh vomit," piped up Stu as a sudden boom, followed by a tinny rattle and a wail that sounded like a cat being strangled burst through every drafty hole in his crumbling facade. "Think yourself lucky you don't have six twenty-somethings puking down your copper plumbing, stubbing joints out on your linoleum and playing that godforsaken doosh, doosh, doosh music til your windows rattle and your floorboards hum. I tell you. There are far worse things in life than being lonely."
"Yes, like rising interest rates causing a slump in the housing market creating negative equity and turning a buoyant seller's market into a buyer's free-for-all. Oh it doesn't bear thinking about," kvetched Leonard. "No vetting, no getting the highest offer from Merchant Bankers from Surrey. They'd take the first offer they got from people from Manchester or Liverpool or...Dundee."
"I'd be happy with that," said Yellow. "Perfectly happy."
"So would I," concurred Stu.
"Well, dream away the pair of you. But pretty soon Yellow will end up as a branch of 'Burger King' or something equally disagreeable and tawdry."
"He might not be," said Found. "He could be something really cool...like a halfway house for criminals…or a brothel."
"Or an old folks home," speculated Stu. "Though I think I'd be happier with the students. At least they're not incontinent...most of the time."
"What about an amusement arcade? Perhaps that's what he's going to be."
"Oh yes like we need something to attract pimply teenagers who drop their cans of Pepsi on the pavement and stick their gum on the walls. Fabulous way to tempt tourists with money. 'Yes, come to St Andrews. We have seven golf courses, a six hundred year old university, so much history we make the Great Pyramid look like the Millennium Dome, but don't sit down anywhere unless you have a bag of ice and a chisel.'"
"Leonard, if you get anymore cynical you're going to need an exorcism," said Stu.
"I've said my piece," said Leonard. "Personally I reckon Yellow's about to get the wrecking ball."
"What!" wailed Yellow. "Oh it gets worse!"
"On what basis do you make that assumption?" quizzed Stu.
"Well, the sign did say he's the Pits. What more confirmation do you need?"
"Erm, well, I think I made a slight error in my interpretation," said Found cautiously.
Yellow raised his lintels with hope.
"What do you mean?" asked Stu. "You mean he's not the pits!"
"Well, I hardly think that's the case," interjected Leonard. "I mean look at him he's hardly Buckingham Palace or even Crystal Palace for that matter. Broken windows, graffiti on the walls, birds nesting and doing god only knows what in his plasterwork."
"No," corrected Found. "I mean I read the sign wrong. That's not what it says."
"Well, what does it say? Seeing as you're the only one who can read it."
Found began to laugh so heartily his concrete foundations bounced out from their brick surround and the loose earth around him shook as though it was in a giant sieve.
"Oh fantastic. Oh, Yell’ you're going to love this. In your face Leonard, in your face."
"What?" chimed Leonard, Stu and Yellow. "What does it say?"
"It says 'This is the property of the Pitts'," cried Found.
Stu was so stunned he barely noticed the drunken students dangling from his drainpipes and Leonard became so taught with jealousy his roof popped like a champagne cork causing a tidal wave of befuddled flat owners in Barbour jackets and Hunter Wellingtons to spill out into the Parky tiled driveway.
It seemed all but Yellow knew exactly what it meant. His slate roof wrinkled into a frown and he stared at Found through the only intact window in his entire mansion.
"You've been bought by Brad and Angelina!” cheered Found.
Yellow’s architraves curled into smiles. He had no idea who they were or where they were from. All he was happy about was the fact that he was about to be loved, again.