Two viewings today

poppysarah

Went on two viewings. Both accompanied with same EA.

First one he'd booked another couple to look too - so five of us walking round quite a small old-ladyish house. Small but ok - not my choice of decor but all fairly good condition. Neighbour has LARGE confiers about 7ft away from back of house. Will cause shade if not other problems too.
"large garden" hahahahah ... haha. No, not a large garden at all.

Second viewing - just us. Fairly new to market. Think we're first to look at it as big pile of post.
Place is a mess. Seriously in need of rewiring... old style fuse box is nothing compared to sockets ripped off the wall. No gas meter... Strange old boiler in kitchen.
Artex painting purple in small bedroom. Big bedroom - tons of give in the floor and it used to be two rooms so has a strange curtain over one bit and a boarded up door.
I'm seriously impressed at whoever took the photos for the place as they hid all the nasty bits. They're keen to sell (not lived there for ages, think it's been rented out) and are open to offers. From the look of the roof that needs replacing - very saggy - and with all the internal work thats needed (New stairs wouldn't go amiss either) - then it's a definate no.

I didn't like doing a shared viewing - felt quite strange - I can see why they do it - maximise the EA time - but would rather view alone.
But can not believe the second one - in a very poor state of repair and probably needs taking back to brick - yet the write up was "minor cosmetic"
ha!

What's your worst viewing experience?

socrates

I turned the tables on the LA's once - I had a flat to rent out - brandly newly refurbished - I invited 3 LA's all to turn up at the same time.

You can imagine their complete dismay!

I found it rather amusing!

QTPie

poppysarah wrote: »

What's your worst viewing experience?

Ooooh, good thread!

Mine was when we were looking for our first house/flat (looking 1996).

Once flat that we looked at had tenants in at the time (it must be hard to sell a tenanted property!). We arrived to meet the EA and, like you, there was another couple there to view at the same time (yes, that is right, 5 people looking around a two bedroom flat at the same time). Anyway, the tenants (man woman and child) were also there! So we now have 8 people in a two bedroom flat. Well these tenants were the VERY MESSY - piles of things ALL over the floor (you could barely step into the smallish lounge). Added to that, when we got there (and for the first 5 minutes) the female tenant was having a shower in the only bathroom! So we had to wait for her to get out of the shower, then when she did it was like a complete STEAM ROOM!

I don't think that the flat was what we were looking for anyway, BUT that viewings was NEVER going to work! :rolleyes:

I actually felt sorry for the EA - he must have known he was onto a looser that morning...

Good luck with your viewings - hope that you find somewhere great

QT

Sparkkee

I viewed a rental property that was described as "ready to move into".
There was mould in every single one of the walls and all of the woodwork was rotten.

There was a smell of "dead stuff" in the bedrooms (think that the previous tennant might have died in there and no-one noticed for a few months?) and the mushrooms in the small bedroom carpet still give me nightmares.

The kitchen was the best example of why professional tradesmen are worth their money. It was a lean-to nailed (yes, nailed!) to the back wall of the house. It started raining and the gaps where the lean-to didn't meet the exterior wall of the house let in water, right down onto the work surfaces and into the wall sockets. We had to paddle back to the "dining room".

Even the EA was embarrased.

Oh, and they wanted £500pcm.

Wickedkitten

Sparkkee wrote: »

I viewed a rental property that was described as "ready to move into".
There was mould in every single one of the walls and all of the woodwork was rotten.

There was a smell of "dead stuff" in the bedrooms (think that the previous tennant might have died in there and no-one noticed for a few months?) and the mushrooms in the small bedroom carpet still give me nightmares.

The kitchen was the best example of why professional tradesmen are worth their money. It was a lean-to nailed (yes, nailed!) to the back wall of the house. It started raining and the gaps where the lean-to didn't meet the exterior wall of the house let in water, right down onto the work surfaces and into the wall sockets. We had to paddle back to the "dining room".

Even the EA was embarrased.

Oh, and they wanted £500pcm.

Urrrrrgh that sounds like the basement flat we went to view in Scarborough back in 2004. I don't think the estate agents had been there for some time themselves because the walls were absolutely black with mould.

I'd love to think they wouldn't have taken us there to begin with if they knew about the state of the place beforehand, but you can never quite tell.

sooz

the household that contained a family with atleast 4 boys. everywhere in the house there were piles of stinking socks & dirty pants. We had to walk over these laundry piles in the front hall, the stairs, the landings, the bathrooms. The bedrooms were just larger piles of dirty clothes & unmade beds. All the curtains were all closed. There was a duvet on the sofa, possibly with one boy underneath it, we declined to check, & the whole place stank of curry & curry aftermath

the next viewing of a little old lady's house which was filled with mothballs smelt wonderful after that!

Sparkkee

sooz wrote: »

the household that contained a family with atleast 4 boys. everywhere in the house there were piles of stinking socks & dirty pants. We had to walk over these laundry piles in the front hall, the stairs, the landings, the bathrooms. The bedrooms were just larger piles of dirty clothes & unmade beds. All the curtains were all closed. There was a duvet on the sofa, possibly with one boy underneath it, we declined to check, & the whole place stank of curry & curry aftermath

Haha! I've already decided that if I have to sell, I'm going to tidy up and then send the kids to Grandma's for the duration to avoid just this!

WillowCat

Sparkkee wrote: »

Haha! I've already decided that if I have to sell, I'm going to tidy up and then send the kids to Grandma's for the duration to avoid just this!

How long are you not going to see your kids for?

Gingernutmeg

One of the best/worst/weirdest viewings we ever had was for a rental property. We’d arranged a time to view with the agency and duly turned up, only to find that the house was on the worst street of the worst estate in town. However, the house was big for a two bedroom property (suspiciously big, in fact …) so we ignored the England flags, dog poo, broken glass and scary looking blokes and decided to have a look. The agency had stacked up viewings like dominoes so we waited our turn, and then we were let in to find that the viewing was going to be conducted by the agent and the current owner who (and I’m being very fair here) had some fairly hefty mental health issues.

The first thing was that we all had to take our shoes off at the door – fair enough, we thought, some people are protective of their floors. Unfortunately, the floors were disgusting. Really, really nasty – sticky, dirty, hairy … Still, we went ahead into the living room which was where the weirdness really began. The owner of the house clearly had some kind of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. At the doorway to each room, she changed her shoes and touched the doorframe a number of times before she went into the room. We weren't allowed in until she'd done that. She also suggested to us that, should we rent the house, she’d prefer us not to use the doorhandles. We went into the living room which wasn’t bad, but then the landlady told us that if we took the house, we’d have to leave all of the furniture and pictures EXACTLY how they were. The pictures were all photos of her, done in that nasty ‘soft !!!!!!’ style – think feather boas and cheap lingerie. We smiled and moved on.

Then we went into the kitchen. It was a small room, made smaller by the fact that for some reason the landlady had put the fridge in the doorway and you had to limbo round it. It was also the most disgustingly filthy kitchen I’ve ever seen. Where tiles had fallen off the wall, the landlady had cut pictures out of magazines and pasted them over the holes – pictures of kittens, and puppies, and various film stars. Innovative, but weird.

Then we went upstairs. Again, it was disgustingly dirty - even dirtier than downstairs. The ‘furnished’ bedrooms turned out to each have a filthy divan in them, and that was it. Partly because I didn’t want to walk on the floors, and partly because the viewing was taking forever with the shoe changing/door touching for each room, we looked at the beds from afar but they all had a veritable rainbow of stains on them – red, brown, yellow … Nice.

It was then we noticed that the house was in fact a three-bed house, so of course we asked to look in what would be the largest bedroom. Oh no, said the landlady, I’m keeping that for myself. It turned out that she was going to use the bedroom as storage, and occasionally she would want to come and stay there, to save the expense of a hotel room when she came back to the town. We didn’t bother looking at the bathroom and decided there and then that the property really wasn’t for us.

[FONT=&quot]Because the viewing had taken so long, we were still upstairs when the next lot of ‘victims’ arrived. This caused the landlady to flip out completely, since she had people with shoes on in her house, she had to change her shoes and touch the doors to get down to them and they were trying to get into the living room without letting her in there first. We made a hasty exit but unfortunately the agent didn’t seem to notice that there was no way in hell that we’d take the house, since she rang us the next day for ‘feedback’. OH gave her some and we never heard from them again [/FONT] This, by the way, was for an £800pcm property that was being let through a very large chain agency. Scary.

edit: I just remembered something else. When we were looking round the property, the landlady insisted that if we took the house, we had to be out every weekday from 9-5. We really got the feeling that something dodgy was going on in that locked room ...

hethmar

I remember decades ago when we were about to get married we did some viewings. There was a rather pretty terraced house in Greenwich and we were quite keen as it was in our budget and good location.

Elderly chap showed us round downstairs, very dark, curtains virtually closed but all very doable, we turned to go upstairs and he said, Oh no, an old lady lives up there! pmsl - no one had mentioned it came with an in situ lodger upstairs.

Nenen

sooz wrote: »

the household that contained a family with atleast 4 boys. everywhere in the house there were piles of stinking socks & dirty pants. We had to walk over these laundry piles in the front hall, the stairs, the landings, the bathrooms. The bedrooms were just larger piles of dirty clothes & unmade beds. All the curtains were all closed. There was a duvet on the sofa, possibly with one boy underneath it, we declined to check, & the whole place stank of curry & curry aftermath

the next viewing of a little old lady's house which was filled with mothballs smelt wonderful after that!

You've given me a wonderful idea for a new career Sooz! With the help of my sons I could easily recreate the scene you outlined above... I then take a backhander from EAs desperate to sell slightly dodgy properties, to call in on mine first thus making anything they take the prospecive buyers to next, look (and smell ) wonderful in comparison! I could make my fortune out of a messy house yet!