How many houses did you view?

Davesnave

Ithaca wrote: »

I think with sites such as rightmove and zoopla it's easier to "view" many more properties these days... a combination of photos, floorplans, google streetview and bing's birdseye view means you can get a pretty good idea of a house without leaving the sofa, and that means you can be a bit more discriminating when it comes to physical viewings.

There were loads of places that we looked at online and knew weren't right which 20yrs ago we might have gone to view in person.

This is bang-on. People starting to look now have little idea how hard it was, even a decade ago, to get appropriate info together about houses at a distance. I'm talking 25 - 150 miles in my case, as there was likely to be nothing suitable locally.

Of course EAs and vendors will bend the truth and stage property, but these days mis-viewings due to something basic, like poor aspect, should be much reduced.

[Deleted User]

Ithaca wrote: »

I think with sites such as rightmove and zoopla it's easier to "view" many more properties these days... a combination of photos, floorplans, google streetview and bing's birdseye view means you can get a pretty good idea of a house without leaving the sofa, and that means you can be a bit more discriminating when it comes to physical viewings.

There were loads of places that we looked at online and knew weren't right which 20yrs ago we might have gone to view in person.

Agree with this, however we have noticed that EA's pics on rightmove etc make the rooms look a lot bigger than they actually are! Some of them are blatantly photo shopped too to make the rooms look brighter.

swindiff

Deleted_User wrote: »

Agree with this, however we have noticed that EA's pics on rightmove etc make the rooms look a lot bigger than they actually are! Some of them are blatantly photo shopped too to make the rooms look brighter.

Most of that is down to using a wide angle lens to get as much of the room in the shot as possible.

Ithaca

swindiff wrote: »

Most of that is down to using a wide angle lens to get as much of the room in the shot as possible.

Here's an example - this is the estate agent picture of the patio in the house we bought this summer. All of the patio slabs are the same size and shape, but you can see the ones in the foreground look twice the size of the ones further back which makes the patio look a lot bigger than it actually is.

Here's the same view that I took with my own camera... patio slabs the same size and quite a different sense of scale.

swindiff

Ithaca wrote: »

Here's an example - this is the estate agent picture of the patio in the house we bought this summer. All of the patio slabs are the same size and shape, but you can see the ones in the foreground look twice the size of the ones further back which makes the patio look a lot bigger than it actually is.

Here's the same view that I took with my own camera... patio slabs the same size and quite a different sense of scale.

Nice garden

chelseablue

Ithaca wrote: »

Here's an example - this is the estate agent picture of the patio in the house we bought this summer. All of the patio slabs are the same size and shape, but you can see the ones in the foreground look twice the size of the ones further back which makes the patio look a lot bigger than it actually is.

Here's the same view that I took with my own camera... patio slabs the same size and quite a different sense of scale.

Lovely garden. How do you get your lawn so nice?!

Ithaca

chelseablue wrote: »

Lovely garden. How do you get your lawn so nice?!

The second pic was taken the day we moved in, so I can't claim any credit! Previous owner was a retired chap who was a keen gardener - so at least 30 years of no games of football, or bald patches where the paddling pool was etc...

I suspect once our children have had a full summer on it that lawn won't look nearly so lush.

chelseablue

Ithaca wrote: »

The second pic was taken the day we moved in, so I can't claim any credit! Previous owner was a retired chap who was a keen gardener - so at least 30 years of no games of football, or bald patches where the paddling pool was etc...

I suspect once our children had had a full summer on it that lawn won't look nearly so lush.

We're in the buying process at the moment, moving from a flat to a house with a 85 ft back garden :eek: think we're going to need a lot of help with it!


Although with a young son I don't think we want to spend too much money on it

TBagpuss

I think I probably viewed about 20 before buying my curent house. However, part of that was down to a seller who messed me about and then pulled out, so I had to start again.

In that 2nd round I probably only looked at about 5 as at that point I had a much more definite idea of exactly what I wanted.

In the first instance, some of the viewing were about getting a much clearer idea of what I could realistically expect in my price range.

Of the 5 or so in the second round of viewings, 2 were proprties I would not have looked at had the agents listings been better, or the photographs less misleading.

I did, however, look at a *lot* more on Rightmove etc. which I didn't then ned to look at in person.

Nike79

I was viewing since 2007 as far as I recall, but was amateur viewer at that time as i didn't have enough deposit, i continued to view after property crash in 2008 and i think by 2013 i lost a number of houses i viewed.

In my case the part of the problem was that i was viewing at so called up and coming areas where they had open days and 50 offers on the table by the end of the day and my offers was always rejected then i switched to a new area where i viewed only 2-3 houses and bought one 2 years ago.