You have to chuckle at viewer feedback!

seradane

I am trying to think what sort of feedback I gave when we were looking last year... tbh it was probably something similar. As wesleyad said, every house you look at has some sort of compromise, so you go in thinking, hmm, does the rest of the house make up for that compromise? And if it doesn't, then your honest feedback is that the compromise item did put you off. And if it was something fixable, it wouldn't be a dealbreaker, would it? So in some ways you're less likely to get feedback that's actually actionable... and then even if you did, as some of the others have said, you get such differing opinions about what people want that it'd almost be counterproductive to spend money changing something. 

So in most cases feedback going to the seller is pointless.

Where I think feedback does help, is for the agents themselves.. e.g. if they get a viewer that goes, 'oh it doesn't have enough bedrooms', well maybe they've got another one on their books that has that. Or even if not, if they get a lot of viewers that are looking for the same thing, they can advise future sellers that 'Oh yes, there's lots of demand for 3 beds, if your 2 bed was extended there'd be many more buyers'... or if they get a potential seller that has what buyers are after they'll know to snap it up as it'll fly off the books... etc etc

Bad_Accountant

GDB2222 said:

Why leave feedback at all?

Because the ruddy estate agent keeps calling until you answer and puts you on the spot! and the only reason is 'we just didn't get the right feeling from it'. I try to give genuine feedback but I'm sure I sometimes spout pointless rubbish. Eg, I know those trees were in the photos of the listing, but I didn't realise they were so close to the house or blocked the light so much. Which isn't something the buyer can act on!

I think many of the complaints about things being too big/small  is often because the photos are very uh, favourable, and the angles or lenses make things look different sizes. It's hard to envisage room sizes like "12ft by 8ft" unless you're used to thinking about room sizes.

phoebe1989seb

Another one here who had the "too many trees" comment about our third of an acre rural garden that was mainly large lawns with cottage garden beds, small orchard area with half a dozen  small fruit trees and two (!) admittedly fairly large trees elsewhere in the garden.

At the same house, one set of potential buyers complained that the ground floor rooms were too dark. It was a cottage in which all the ground floor rooms had at least one, and in some cases three, windows. Yes, some were relatively small (about 1m x 1m) but one was double height! Another viewer of the same property thought the ground floor was bright and airy whilst the two upper floors were dark, lol!

When selling our large family home back in 2007, one woman's feedback was that the property was spread over too many floors so she wouldn't feel happy about her small kids at night. This was a 3500 sq ft house with six beds spread across several floors/mezzanines which was perfectly apparent from the floorplan. There was only one area with just the one bedroom.

In 2017 one couple who had viewed our then home said it wasn't for them because they didn't like the antique white hallway (which we'd painted that colour to neutralise the space) so they wouldn't be putting in an offer 

 Just recalled another - we used to own an old Tudor house. When we sold that we had quite a few 'potential buyers' who were obviously just nosey. One couple we showed round ourselves. Throughout the viewing they kept saying it was like being on a film set and that it felt spooky. Their feedback was that they feared it was haunted so wouldn't be buying!

Racky_Roo

I am always surprised that EA's don't seem to pass on useful feedback like "the house is filthy and is putting me off as I think I'm going to need to rip everything out and start again" but they're happy to pass on things which the seller can't change like "garden too big"

lady1964

PJBRFC said:

We had an open plan downstairs in our old house. First viewer we had said they don't like open plan downstairs. Not like there was a floor-plan or photos on the adverts. 

We had the same comment from a viewer when we sold our last house!

AdrianC

Racky_Roo said:

I am always surprised that EA's don't seem to pass on useful feedback like "the house is filthy and is putting me off as I think I'm going to need to rip everything out and start again" but they're happy to pass on things which the seller can't change like "garden too big"

Perhaps the viewers aren't passing that on to the EA...?

atarisrocks

We had feedback the stairs was too narrow which they are around 3 feet wide but we were then informed that a viewer was a overly large woman and had to climb the stairs sideways which made the feedback make more sense

orangecrush

Our best one, was "we don't want to live in Leeds".  So you're viewing houses in Leeds why?? 

We also had "we need 4 bedrooms" (why view a 3 bed house?) and "we don't want a terraced garden" when the terraced garden is obvious in several pictures and mentioned multiple times in the description!

People are funny. 

theoretica

I remember when I first viewed properties the very first handful weren't really how I had envisaged them from the listing. Then I got better at reading the listings and fewer surprises - maybe many buyers aren't reading the listing in much detail or haven't learnt how to translate it into likely reality.  I am sure there will be some areas with few enough houses on the market that people are viewing all 3 beds in a certain school catchment, for instance.

AdrianC

I don't remember very much of the feedback we had from selling our old place... but I most certainly DO remember that one of the viewers stole a rubber duck from the side of the bath.