What has been your worst viewing experience?

split_second

oh loads, one day i couldnt view a house because work wouldnt let me have the saturday off, my parents went to view it and told me one of the rooms had been obviously a cannabis farm lol, no windows and the sort of light and heat source arrangement that made its history very obvious, it was a repossession lol

a few years back a potential buyer was put off my parents house as all the neighbours stood out on the steet and started at him as he got back in his car as they didnt like the look of him as a potential new neighbour, from what we can guess one had seen, put two and two together and phoned the others :eek:

before i got together with my fiance, she looked at what we both believed was a flat with an inclusive rent near where i went to high school, turns out it was a granny flat and the guy had all sorts of weird rules, including moving your car at about 5am every morning :eek:

oh and then there were the repossesions i looked at, including various signs those that were evicted didnt want to leave, there is a great story attached to my house that the guy came back from a caravan holiday to try and get the shower out the bathroom, he got sent on his way lol

Mind_the_Gap

Worst - viewing a rental property - a bedsit, really - in which everything, including the walls, ceiling, kitchen surface and shower tray had been painted (badly) with bilious, dark turquoise gloss paint (except for the walls behind the furniture, which was still bright yellow where they'd painted round it...)

Daftest - the house we viewed on a tired little estate whose only 'interesting' point was listed as 'feature matwell'...

Best - showing and selling our first home in the record time of 45 mins from when the agent put the board up...I went out to get some paint to freshen up the kitchen - only to come home and find it was sold.

Most bizarre - my parents viewed an old empty house when I was a child and took us four kids along (must have been mad). There was a food lift in this house - my brother attempted to demonstrate how it worked by putting my shoe in it - the shoe disappeared without trace. The estate agent was most unsympathetic.

split_second

viewing houses when you are a child with your parents is always fun, i remember being 7 or 8, and the 4 of us (me, mum, dad, older sister) went to see a renovation house, an old woman lived in it and as i remember the stuff was all boxed up, one had either a dolls head on its own or a doll with no head, cant remember which, but it creeped me out but didnt want to tell anyone (my sister was about 13 by then and would have given me hell)

i remember a massive sigh of relief my mum and dad didnt buy the 'creepy' house

gemmalouanna

We went to view one property - walked into the master bedroom and the curtains were closed so I said to the lady would she mind opening them so we could get a feel for the room with the bay window. She said no problem but you will have to excuse the ironing pile. She opened the curtains to reveal a sofa placed in the bay window piled with ironing clothes which reached the ceiling and covered the width of the large bay window

I know ironing in a pain to keep on top of but surely she could have bagged it up and put it in the car or shed or something!

sazza42

A friend and I were looking to rent a two bedroom flat many years ago & our budget was right at the bottom of the scale for the area we were looking in. We'd seen quite a few very small, skanky flats. So we got really excited when we saw an advert for a flat with an en-suite bathroom.

When we went to view the, the second bedroom didn't have an en-suite, it just had a very dirty toilet in the corner of the bedroom..... Horrible. The agent didn't seem to see that there was anything wrong with this!

carrieuk

I have too many to mention really;

We pulled up to one house, met a group of kids outside who told us to f*** off as we'd parked in a car parking space where they were using the car park as a football pitch. I moved my car and they proceded to kick footballs at the others. We then met the estate agent outside the front door and what should have been a warning sign he said ' I've not actually seen this house, it's been on the market a year but not many people make appointments for this one.' We went in, the kitchen ceiling was covered in a thick black mould... the bathroom (or something else) had obviously leaked and they had just left it. The bath was covered in Scum and it looked as though it hadnt been cleaned for 20 odd years. Consequently we left that house.

Another one we turned up too, the next door neighbours still had their Christmas decorations up (it was June) very odd.... The woman in the house itself said she'd had a migraine and was going to lay down... not in one of the bedrooms but in the lounge so could we not disturb her and just look around ourselves. I'm also not against cats, but she had in the region of 50 cats... they were everywhere and the house stunk of cat wee. One of the bedrooms was very 70's and looked to be that of a young girl and we found out the reason why, this was where her 18 year old daughter died and she kept it as a shrine to her. She'd died 20 odd years ago. She'd kept her daughters ashes on the mantlepiece and showed us them!!! To me, that was a little bit too much info and we did not buy the house.

The final one, the bloke had just upped and left and left everything as it was when he left... Everything was covered in cobwebs, there was cat and dog food all over the kitchen floor. Dirty mouldy plates in the sink. The kitchen smelled awful as i think he'd left everything in his fridge. The estate agent just laughed and said (quite nervously) that he thought the owner would take all his stuff before it was sold.... really? I would kind of expect that?
The bedroom was the worst... there were sex toys, condoms and various pieces of lingeree all over the bed. We had our three year old with us and my OH had to take him out. The bathroom was disgusting, the bloke who'd left had been to the toilet before he left (and I'm not talking for a wee) and had not flushed... We bought the same layout house, 1 road up for £10k less and it was a nicer area!... and clean!

penguingirl

We had quite a few awful viewings as FTB...

My OH went for a second viewing of the house we eventually bought and the soon-to-be-ex wife burst into tears while showing him around upstairs (she turned out to be a nightmare who wouldn't exchange for 3 months for no real reason and then got super offended when we withdrew our offer and she promptly exchanged within 24 hours!)

We went for a viewing of another house (in the ambiguous period of house 1) at 6pm on a Tuesday and the also soon-to-be-ex-wife answered the door completely drunk and reeking of booze. We got the whole life story of how he had cheated on her, where he had ripped out a cupboard from the bedroom and how she would definitely be open to offers 10k under asking. We actually had an offer accepted on the house but withdrew it very quickly when house 1 fell back into place. The house never sold and was withdrawn from the market quite soon afterwards so I have no idea what happened.

The first house we viewed was on a boiling hot bank holiday (a rarity I know) and the owner had no windows open and had been there for 30 years and I would hate to guess how many cigarettes she had smoked in her time! The house reeked, yet she kept going on about how she would include the carpets and curtains... it was so disgustingly hot and smelly I told the EA when he called that it was worth more without them...

We viewed another house that was being rented and the tennants had no idea there was a viewing, but invited us in anyway. They had massively oversized furniture, 3 small children running everywhere and so much mess! There was just stuff everywhere and they kept telling us about how they'd returned from NZ and houses here were so small (anything would be too small for their 60in TV). We couldn't get in the smallest bedroom because it was being used as a dumping room and the other 2 rooms were almost as bad. They also had peculiar sleeping arrangements of 2 double beds- so I am assuming the 3 kids slept in one? The tennants pointed out all the damp that the house had and described how overpriced and awful it was, before briefly mentioning that they were hoping to sign another 12 month lease! I assume they got there own way as we certaintly didn't offer on it and the house was taken off the market a couple of weeks later.

I am dreading ever having to move and do viewings again...

penguingirl

carrieuk wrote: »

Another one we turned up too, the next door neighbours still had their Christmas decorations up (it was June) very odd....

Our neighbours actually do this... they leave their outside 'icicles' up and have been known to switch them on. It was like that when we bought the house (summer 09) and they were also there last summer. Unfortunately they became damaged this winter and stopped working so came down and I am hoping they don't ever go up again!!

carrieuk

This wasn't icicles... I could probably deal with that. It was full santas with 2 reindeer on the porch roof and a massive reindeer in the front garden!

redpower

A cheap flat in a 1930s building in a salubrious suburb of London. The communal grass was uncut, there were smashed window in the communal areas and the graffiti on doors. I have never been rude to an EA before but he got both barrels.