Funny experiences while looking around houses?

ladymagpie

I've been reading a thread from the point of view of sellers regarding children running riot around homes, but I thought it would be interesting to here a few funny stories from the other side of people going to view houses.

One house we went to look at we were welcomed by a woman wearing a fairly formal dress and make-up. She was baking bread in the oven, there were candles and fresh flowers in every room, there was also "mood lighting" (dim lights), music playing in the background and a little mini indoor water feature turned on. It was if she had read every single guide to selling a house and used them all. She never left us alone to look around ourselves, never stopped talking, and in every room said things like "Just imagine what you could do... we did this because we felt with the south-facing garden.... of course this room has so much potential too..." As me and my OH are fairly shy we couldn't wait to leave, which is a shame as she was genuinely lovely and so was the house but she was just so overwhelming.

Another house we went to see was an ex-council house, which is fine, however we had to go through the side gate as the vendor's husband had left with the only key. After battling through some tall plants and fighting off an over-excited dog, we made it to the house. The vendor walked around saying "well that windows broken so I can't show you how they all open" and "can't go through the patio door that's broken" and "I don't think we had planning permission for the loft conversion" all while walking around holding a cigarette and wearing her pjs. There was an estate agent present and he looked embarrassed too. Couldn't wait to get out of the house!

DaftyDuck

A vendor who, for security reasons, showed us the way to lock up downstairs on going to bed each evening. This involved a circuitous and clever route through an old house, so all downstairs doors could be locked from the "safe" side in turn, finally arriving at the foot of the stairs. There must have been over ten internal (and 3 external) doors to lock.

We bought it anyway.

The house was in a tiny village in North Yorkshire. I think, from the local crime levels, they thought burglary was a sexual act, and robbery was what tyres were. The neighbour went on a two-week holiday, and left the back door unlocked for us to feed the cats/water the plants.


Edit: oh, another house {which we didn't buy}, we (EA, wife & me) were greeted to newspaper being placed on all the carpets for us to walk on. Every EVERY surface had glass figurines on it. Curtains all had pelmets and tie backs .... even the shower curtains had frou-frou pelmets, then double-draped side curtains. The E.A. sat down on a sofa after showing us around so we could look round ourself, and the owner whipped her cushion away with a "that's not a sitting-cushion"... shortly before departure, EA whispered "Hyacinth Bucket" in my ear, knowing full-well I'm prone to complete mental breakdown and red-faced hysteria when I try not to laugh. I had to do the "thank you... lovely house...let the EA know" while trying not to soil myself or choke on spittle.

MallyGirl

I once went to a booked viewing, got there and the man of the house was in the bath. We had to tour the rest of the house until he had finished

TeamLowe

I made one of the biggest social faux pas you can do once when viewing a house...'oh what a cute baby boy you have'...soon as the words left my mouth i knew i shouldn't have guessed at gender, she was a girl!
In my defence, she was 4 months old so not easy to tell by look and she was dressed in blue!
This was right at the start so felt really awkward looking round the house, luckily it was only a 2 bed terrace so wasn't there too long!

NervousHomeowner

When my partner and I were looking for our first house to rent together, we looked at some really horrible houses but one in particular was really bad.

It was a 4 bed terrace down a really dodgy road but the rent was so cheap that we couldn't afford not to look. We hadn't seen any pictures but the EA had assured us over the phone that it was 'recently refurbished' so we thought it might end up being a bit of a diamond in the rough. Anyway, as it turned out, the house had been 'recently refurbished'.. but had obviously been done by the LL himself, who seemed to know very little about DIY There was a fireplace in the living room which the LL had obviously tried to block up but had decided to use ugly 1980s tiles to do so.To make matters worse, the tiles were literally falling off the fire place as the EA was showing us around :rotfl: Then, when we were upstairs, my boyfriend lent up against a wall and managed to put half his hand through it! Apparently the entire upstairs was damp & rotting but the LL had decided not to deal with it & to just wallpaper over it instead :eek:

Needless to say, we left quite quickly and decided to rent somewhere else...

Another time I was looking for my first house away from home so my budget was pretty low & I was relegated to looking at some really dodgy houses. One of the first houses I saw had no internal doors and mouldy carpets in the bedroom & bathroom. However, the next house I looked at was much better.. Apparently they had had a very difficult tennant before me (A family of 3 in a one bedroom bedsit!) and the house had to be fumigated twice for fleas before I could even look at it! I ended up taking it (It was cheap! I was young and naive!) and the whole time I lived there it had this awful smell that never went away. Oh, and it grew mould that winter, the lock broke on the front door and the letting agency didn't get around to fixing it for six months.

ladymagpie

TeamLowe wrote: »

I made one of the biggest social faux pas you can do once when viewing a house...'oh what a cute baby boy you have'...soon as the words left my mouth i knew i shouldn't have guessed at gender, she was a girl!
In my defence, she was 4 months old so not easy to tell by look and she was dressed in blue!
This was right at the start so felt really awkward looking round the house, luckily it was only a 2 bed terrace so wasn't there too long!

Now you mention it I did make a faux pas, it was our 2nd ever house viewing at the overly-excited-to-sell woman I mentioned in the OP (we began to refer to the house as the "crazy lady house") and she mentioned that they had accepted an offer but it fell through as the buyer was rejected for a mortgage. I, thinking it was perfectly ok to do so, asked what the offer was that they accepted! Raised eyebrows from the vendor and my OH. She did, however, give me a "between these two figures" answer so it did work out quite beneficial for us. But then she was nosey and asked which provider our mortgage was with before I even asked that question!

DKLS

I have been on viewings where:

A teenager is still in bed yet was still shown around the room

Full blown domestic with wife throwing mugs at the hubbies head

Told to explore the "beautiful garden" I declined as I couldnt walk anywhere without standing in a dog egg.

Had my trouser leg abused by a hormonal Rottweiler

The house that was fitted with its own sex room, whether the very prim owner announced she hosted monthly swinging parties and would we like to join them!

and a house that was so filthy you wiped your feet on the way out, yet in the dining room was the biggest collection of cleaning products I have even seen this side of Costco.

ndf9876

Walked round a house with tenants (on their notice period) present at the time, we mistook them for the owners. Stopped to have a chat to tell them how lovely their home was (read : butter them up so they remembered us as "that lovely polite couple") only to have them slag the place off universally - telling us no storage space, garden expensive and time-consuming to maintain, things like that.

Found out later they had been knocked back for reasons unknown when they pitched in to buy the property themselves!!

motherofstudents

I visited a house which looked quite nice on the rightmove photos but the EA had obviously been very selective with his camera. As we went in there was a horrible smell to start with which I couldn't place. Three of the front windows were cracked. The vendor apologised for them being dirty but they couldn't clean them or the glass would fall out. On venturing upstairs the smell got stronger and I realised it was hay....with a little extra something. On the landing a small boy was on all fours. 'Oh dear, the hamsters have got out again' was the vendors comment. We went into one of the bedrooms which was like walking into a pet shop with various tanks, cages etc. It wouldn't have been so bad if there wasn't a bed in the middle of it all. Covered in paw marks......

We didn't buy it.

ilikewatch

About 5 years ago i took my elderly mother out to view a couple of houses with me, the first one was fine, but when we were invited into the second property by the "lady" of the house we discovered her partner and 3 of his friends smoking crack in the lounge... I bought the first house.

DRP

another horrendous smell story...

EA told us that the vendors were on holiday for 3 weeks (he probably shouldn't have told us that - a bit of a security issue?) and as soon as the 3 of us entered the property we were hit by the awful smell. We started looking around the place and the EA opened a few windows, but it was only after we'd looked around the place and got back downstairs to the kitchen/diner that my wife noticed how murky their large fishtank was looking ... basically a lot of dead and rotting fish stinking up the whole place - not great to come back from holiday to..