What has been your worst viewing experience?

greenmoneysaver_2

Went to view a 2 bed flat to purchase in nice part of London. The photos didn;t look awful. . .

They had cut out

1) zebra stripe painting on the original fireplaces
2) Johnny Cash gold discs everywhre
3) brothel creepers on display on the fireplaces
4) mold
5) "chain" accesories in the bathroom
6) the 50ft of mature shrubs in the 60ft garden

AND
7) the masterpiece of the shop dummies leg in a fish net stocking dangling from another chain form the living room ceiling

Amazingly we had a 2nd viewing. As his pit bull was too vicious he wouldnt let us in. The dog barked like mad. We felt if we offered £50k under and got the neighbours to chip ni £10k each to get rid of him it would have been a good deal for everyone!

DorsetGirl_2

When FIL was looking for another BTL property we went with him to a property that had no roof and was knee deep in rubbish bags and filth. He got it at auction for a good price. It took as 2 days to clear out all the crap and we found a dead dog in the process.

Slinky

I've posted this one before:
Many many years ago I worked very briefly at an estate agents. This particular house was on the edge of a country village. The owner had bought it after he'd been paid an enormous sum of money for his farm by (I was told) the development corporation for a new town. Anyway, the vendor and his Mrs, I was told, liked a drink. They also seemed to be unable to say no to any old tat that came their way. The house filled up I would imagine over a number of years, including I recall, a room with a snooker table complete with an old hot water bottle lying on the top of it amongst other assorted tonnes of junk. I hadn't actually seen this house, the manager at the estate agents dealt with all the viewings on this particular property. We didn't even have any details to hand out, it was impossible to measure and in truth we weren't even sure how many rooms there were - probably in the region of 15. However the brave person who had decided to buy it wanted to show it to his wife, so the manager asked me to go out and accompany them.

The property benefitted from being spread over 3 floors. We entered via the kitchen - the back door was wide open, chickens were wandering in and out of the door, as was the occasional dog. A particularly interesting feature of the kitchen was a noose hanging from the ceiling. We proceeded around the ground floor, including a visit to what had probably been a charming reception room at some point in the past. Now it housed a load of junk, a large bed complete with drunk vendor lying in it watching daytime TV. 'Alright if we look round mate' said the purchaser (I was in shock) and I think the grunt that came from the bed was something resembling a yes. We wandered through more glorious rooms, picking our way through the junk and the dog poo. Eventually we got to the third floor, where everything changed. Newly plastered walls, no junk, it all looked like a different house. I was told there had been a fire and the insurance paid out and sent builders in to sort it out. The suggestion had been that the money was running out so they had tried to extricate themselves from their predicament. Unfortunately setting fire to the top of the house didn't clear the problems further down.

All in all, a most delightful abode. I never got to find out whether the junk was left behind, but the purchaser assumed it probably would be, I left the agents before the sale completed. I just wonder how many skips he had to get rid of it all.

devotee

Seen this lovely house on a very nice road in London. It was the first viewing for both me and this estate agent, we ended up staying there for over half an hour in amazement.
The house belonged to this old woman who was moving to sheltered accommodation. Her husband died some 30 odd years ago and she has never thrown anything since or decorated inside. And she smoked like a chimney so the wall were a delightful brown colour. We saw magazines and newspapers from the 60s, a HUGE radio and tv and a twin tub washing machine. Never seen that before!

The funniest thing was that the garden was lovely and really well kept and the externally the house was well maintained - apparently she had the outside of the house painted every few years, including the windows, but they were never opened, so with years of external paint on them, they were glued shut! So much for fire escape!

emg

I had an hilarious flat viewing a couple of years ago. Firstly, the estate agent had double-booked so two lots of us turned up at the same time. The flat was full of Eastern Europeans, and I mean full. It was a one bed flat and there was hardly space to look around for all the people in there. There were at least 5 people asleep in the tiny front room (in the middle of the day). Everywhere you looked there was a mattress or sleeping bag. The final straw was when the estate agent opened the bathroom door to show it to us and there was a guy sitting on the loo reading a paper. Me and the other couple couldnt get out of there fast enough. The estate agent didnt even ask us what we thought, just said 'I guess you wont be making an offer'. They didnt ask for any feedback!

A week or so later I was viewing another property with the same agents and I mentioned that viewing. Turned out that the landlord who was trying to sell had no idea what was going on. He only had one tenant on the tenancy agreement but that the tenant had sublet to loads of agricultural workers. Guess he kept a closer eye on things after that!

SpiralingDown

Before we married, my husband and I where looking at a few properties. We spent a whole, rainy day with an EA who showed us so many properties but the last few took the biscuit!
The first one had no stairs so we couldn't see upstairs unless we were willing to climb some really wobbily ladders, needless to say we refused. EA said we missed out how good it was up there!
The second one had had no one living in it for well over a year, u could tell by the smell and the fact that the carpets were none existant due to damp and mold. EA said was only cosmetic and easily sorted!
My husband wouldn't let me go into the last one of the day as it was pitch black and had no electricity so they had to look at it by torch light! They came out quite quickly, my husband later told me that although the property was empty at that moment he could see evidence that someone had just left as there was a still lit joint in an ashtray! Had holes in the floors, seemed someone was using the boards to build fires and the evidence was all over the house. The back door didn't lock and the windows on the back of the property weren't fitted properly so the rain was pouring in!
Through the whole day the EA was so positive about every property that I felt like screaming at him. At one point I did ask him if he would spend the money on what he was showing us cause I wouldn't let a dog live in any and did they have any livable houses as the ones he was showing us were rubbish.

Eton_Rifle

We went to look at a particular rental a few months ago. Our agent had already arrived and was talking to the listing agent on the phone - and he was clearly annoyed with her. He said he'd never come across this situation before and the infomation he'd just received from the rather deceptive agent whom he'd rung when something had struck him as odd, would certainly be a deal-breaker!

It definitely was!

The couple who owned the house and had previously lived there with her father, had just moved abroad for two years but the surprise was the father, an elderly Armenian man who spoke no English but body language clearly conveyed his hostility, was permanently staying in the house that was to be rented. There was no plan for him to move out, he was one of the fixtures and fittings.

There was a suite of rooms: a kitchen, sitting room, bedroom and bathroom that you couldn't see from the front of the house and weren't hinted at in the listing. There was no separate external entrance to these rooms, they adjoined a study which had no lock on the internal door.

Had we been mad enough to rent the house, we would actually have been living with this strange man and his two dogs. The only access path from his rooms would have been through our study then into our hall to reach the front door. His access to the garage where one of the spaces was filled by his car, would have been through our family room and then a garage door off the kitchen so he would have been walking through at least three of the our downstairs rooms, plus the hallway, all the time.

We would have had to sleep at night knowing this man was downstairs in our house with access to everything and every time we went out, he could have gone anywhere in the house unseen! It was a family house, who on earth would be happy to have their kids in this set-up?

it was like some sort of bizarre lodger situation in reverse and the listing agent was hiding this fact to get viewers to look at the house, hoping they'd tolerate it because the house was so wonderful.

canderel1

A few years ago I decided to upgrade into something a little bigger. I saw pretty much everything... the "gentleman" tenant in his boxers and !!!!!! mags, the 3 piece bathroom under the stairs.. but by far the most memorable was a 3 bed ex-council house in rural norfolk... which we affectionately call "The Kennels".

When we arrived the property was by far the worst in the road... We were supposed to be being shown around by the owner. Car and caravan was in the drive, so we knocked on the door to the noise of several dogs in the property. No answer. We phoned the EA who got hold of the owner, 20 minutes later the lady arrived - apparently a mix up - it was the "to be ex's" day to do viewings.... great start!
On entering the house we were greeted by 3 dogs, who had evidently spent a lot of time in the house - based on the amount of urine stains and faeces on the carpets... We were shown into the lounge... and to say paper was hanging from the walls would be an understatement. The conservatory - where the ladies mother had convelesed was basically a lean-to, with feature plants growing though the floor, walls and broken windows.... Onto the kitchen... total renovation required and with its special feature of a sliding door into a continental WC... lovely. Upstairs the bathroom had a lovely sink unit... according to the owner... I think it had been the only new item in the house since 1970! The bedrooms, although spacious we manoveurved through very cautiously.... as the dogs had also been allowed upstairs! We were also expecting mice/rats to scamper across the funriture/floor at any point. We did not inspect the built in bedroom storage. Moving into the garden - a little overgrown with grass etc. at 4ft, and a pond that we thankfully saw before experiencing firsthand... we eventually discovered several animal runs at the end of the garden. These were actually in decent condition. Apparently the property had once been a cattery. There was also an enormous "shed" about the size of a double garage and actually rather nice... although furnished..... apparently the teenage son had lived in the shed rather than the house - which after seeing the house was fully understandable.

The piece-de-resistance however was the fact that the lady was running a business from home.... the small "office" to the left of the urine and faecal stained hall carpet contained a large collection of wedding dresses.... for hire... obviously clients did not visit!!

;-D

emmell

A friend of mine went to view a large detached house owned by our retired vicar and his wife. The estate agent said the reverend hadn't been too good but my friend and his wife could still view.
The wife showed them round the house then stood outside of a bedroom door and said "My husbands not very well, but you can go in he wont mind". On opening the door it was clear the reverend was on his death bed, he had oxygen mask and tubes coming out of him.
It really upset my friend and his wife, he didn't buy the house and he read in the local paper the vicar had died the day after the viewing.
ML.

janaltus

I was horrified when I went to view a four storey-house which had both a basement and a top floor condemned by the Council as unfit for human habitation. Strangely, each of the six bedrooms had padlock catches on both the inside and outside of each door! Each room was equipped with a Baby Belling cooker, coin-operated gas and power meters and a dodgy sink. (Only Mr Rigsby was missing!) It transpired that the house was a doss-house/bedsit land for young Italians over here looking for jobs as waiters. For several years after buying and moving in, Italian youths would come knocking at the door, looking for a room to rent.

For many years after they left, I tolerated the old owners coming back, to harvest fruit from the trees they'd planted in the garden.

Some 27 years after moving in I got my OH, who is Italian, to translate some of the graffiti which graced the walls. It wasn't polite!