What are your biggest property turn offs when viewing a house?

Mojisola

Greeniron wrote: »

Yes.. Not as a deal breaker, but it would be a negative, as it shows there's nowhere suitable to hang anything, and usually only room on the oven for a tea towel.

Of course we all have different standards and for some people it might be acceptable not to wash your hands before preparing food, or to dry them on your clothes..I just don't know .

It's a massive leap to think that people who hang a towel on the oven handle are dirty folk who prepare food without washing their hands! If I've had the oven on, I'll put a towel over the handle to use the residue heat to dry it off.

Anyway, if there really isn't anywhere else to hang a towel, there are plenty of ways to solve that problem without needing a complete kitchen makeover or being put off a house.

seven-day-weekend

Nowhere suitable to hang anything? Whatever next! Ever heard of towel rails or hooks? You can always put one up even if there is not one there!

As for people preparing food without washing their hands, so what, they won't be preparing food in your house, will they?

I hope the person who said that people putting teatowels on the oven handle would put them off buying a house is joking.

Jagraf

I love some of these comments about hygiene. I had a friend who was so careful with cleaning her house (no filthy rotten towel on her aga lol yet she had one of those lovely old English sheep dogs (like the paint advert) who had poo hanging from the fur of its posterior constantly! I have a tea towel on my oven door, in fact my oven is a bit of a state at the moment, but there isn't any poo anywhere

I tend to look at area first and then try to find a house it it that I can afford. So its usually smaller than I could do with. I also prefer to walk round on my own, or with the estate agent (happy for the owner to be in, just not in every room with me as I can't concentrate).

TBagpuss

Greeniron wrote: »

Yes.. Not as a deal breaker, but it would be a negative, as it shows there's nowhere suitable to hang anything, and usually only room on the oven for a tea towel. Of course we all have different standards and for some people it might be acceptable not to wash your hands before preparing food, or to dry them on your clothes..I just don't know .

This seems a bizarre conclusion to draw. I have plenty of space to hang things in my kitchen (even though I have not yet got around to adding a roller towel on the back of the door!) but I often hang tea towels or the hand towel on the oven because (if I've been using the oven) it means they dry faster and are lovely and warm next time I dry my hands.

It can also be handy to have a tea towel there in case you need to hove something from the stove or oven fast, and don't have time to find the oven gloves..

I did try to remember to remove them when I was selling ,y house, as I knew from this forum that some people don't like the look, but

TBagpuss

Back to the original question:
Biggest turn offs (which would probably mean I would chose not to view the house at all) are:
-No off-road parking (legacy of living in houses with none, for 15 years!)
-terraced houses (again, due to having lived in them for 15 years!)
- no garden, or 'courtyard garden'
- location on a main road or next to a railway
- location with a high risk of flooding

Things which are the biggest turn-offs when viewing

-smell : stale smoke is the worst, and would be a deal-breaker for me, as it is not something I could live with even for a short period (it makes me ill, as well as being very unpleasant) and I know it can be very difficult to get rid of completely. Smell of dogs is also pretty bad. I viewed one house where the stick of old/wet dog hit you in the face as soon as you walked in. It was all the more concerning as the owners apparently had not owned a dog for over a year and only had occasion visitors with dogs, so the smell was pretty ingrained. The owners didn't seem aware of it at all. There were a lot of other issues with that particular house, but even if the rest had been perfect I would have thought twice about buying it knowing that I'd need to replace all the carpets and get everything deep cleaned and redecorated before I could move in!

- lots of dirt / litter in the street or in neighbouring gardens
- shared access or parking (I looked at one otherwise lovely house where the neighbours had a right of access through the back garden - had I known in advance I would not have viewed, as privacy is very important to me.)
- the house being very recently 'upgraded' (mostly because I am not a fan of a lot of things which seem to be popular at the moment, and because I would feel uncomfortable ripping out lots of nearly new stuff as it seems such a waste. I looked at one house where he agent was practically drooling over the new kitchen and bathroom, both of which were clearly good quality and both of which were, in my eyes, both hideous and impractical!)

Davesnave

Greeniron wrote: »

Yes.. Not as a deal breaker, but it would be a negative, as it shows there's nowhere suitable to hang anything, and usually only room on the oven for a tea towel. Of course we all have different standards and for some people it might be acceptable not to wash your hands before preparing food, or to dry them on your clothes..I just don't know .

Farmhouse kitchens anyone?

There, the Aga, Stanley or Rayburn have the towel rail built-in, though admittedly, they're rarely seen in use in their advertising.

Still, not a problem, compared with hens on the table or ferrets escaping behind the deep freeze.

Lazy Sheilas? Let's not go there, eh?

Soleil_lune

dirty_magic wrote: »

I can't believe some of these! An oven is replaceable, as if it would put you off! Don't know what's wrong with a towel over it either. Mine are the big things you can't change. North facing garden, tiny kitchen with no scope to extend, stairs into the living room and front door straight into the living room. Also houses with no garage as we need one for a bike.

I preferred being showed round by vendors. We were showed round by the agent in the house we've bought, but I would have liked to ask the vendors questions that the agent just wouldn't know the answer to!

I think, (I could be wrong,) but I THINK people are joking. :rotfl:

Obviously someone missed the irony and the humour.

Edited to say: I have looked back at some of the posts, and although 4 or 5 people are kidding about, a couple of people DO seem serious: that a towel over the over handle would put them off buying the house a bit!

Good grief.

noodle_doodle

Stuff that isn't as bad as you think:

Main Road. I live on a main road and it's fine. Get some decent glazing at the front and you don't notice the traffic and I can get a bus 100 yards up the road within 2 minutes. Foot traffic is probably worse, with mouth-breathers walking past and gawping as I eat my tea, but a strategically placed bush solved that. Plus it's that busy you don't get any lingerers unless they really love the sound of traffic.

Downstairs bathroom: Wife had a total hatred of this for some reason. I dunno, it's a pain at night, but less of a pain in the day. Swings and roundabouts.

Storage space: Buy a shed, they're like £600. Why pay £20,000 extra for a house with two more cupboards?



What would put me off:

Lack of amenities: Not just out in the sticks, but there's areas of edinburgh where you need a car to get to the nearest shop. Yes, I'm looking at you, the steils.

Structural wobblies: cracks, sagging roof etc, !!!!!!!! to it

Neighbours and general locale: We aimed for buying the shittest house on the best street we could afford. We are the scum round here :-D


What I want and gotted:

Biggish back garden
Transport (buses, main road, sorted)
Supermarkets - I've got one I treat like a corner shop
Access to countryside: half mile walk, over the edinburgh bypass, up into the pentlands

TBeckett100

Here is my short list

1) Artex walls - what were you thinking?

2) Dirty bathrooms - i dont want to see your hairy bits over where you hope I will want to scrub mine.

3) Clutter - there is no excuse for it. You are trying to sell me your house, not your tat

4) 150,000 thousand pictures of your family on the wall. I don't want to see what your family look like. No doubt I will receive 149,000 christmas cards because you forgot to tell them you've moved

5) Coffee and breadmaking - you and I both know it's staging

6) Overpowering plug ins. Your home shouldnt smell like a new car

7) You and your children. I don't want to have to make friends with your snot ridden child who is crayoning that wall I want to buy, nor do I want a lego brick buried in my foot. I don't want you showing me your own home because I will have to pretend to find your husband's shocking DIY "quaint"

8) Old people showing you around - it's hard to smile at the 1970's time machine that appears to have crashed through your living room, up the stairs and rested alongside your avocado bathroom

9) Estate Agents with hair gel and cheap suits. The fact that parking is half a mile away and therefore is "good exercise" will not sell me this house.

10) Fisheye camera shots - I know the room is small, no need to make it look bigger. Nobody buys a family home blind

11) Living next door to white van man - he may be pleasant and may fix your boiler, but come 5am, that diesel van will be running in the driveway and come winter, running for about 20 minutes to de ice it.

12) copper piping running along the wall - lazyness

13) Fresh thick paded texture wallpaper - nothing says our plasterwork is shocking by using thick, 1980s wallpaper

14) Woodchip wallpaper - if you havent bothered to attend to your decor for 20 years, I take it you haven't attended to any other job

15) Chav flags hanging around your neighbourhood - I want to live in Belgravia not Beirut.

cloo

Number one turn-off must be not being able to see one of the rooms because someone is asleep in there. I'm not offering on your house if I can't see all of it.

Happened to us twice - if you want to sell your house, try to find ways to avoid anyone being asleep there in the daytime. (Not talking so much about babies/small kids, as one can usually peek in without disturbing them - more adults)