What are your worst or weirdest experiences from a vendor hosting the viewings?

Snookie12cat

Following on from another thread I thought this could make a fun read. What are your stories?

I went to a viewing once by the vendor and he was bad at it! He walked around pointing out all the problems and ow expensive they would be to fix, telling us how busy the road was and going on about how when he moved in he had some of the best times of his life but now his wife left him and his kids have left home so he is all alone and spends most his time at the pub.
Needless to say we were not really imagining good times in the house when viewing LOL! Some people should leave it to an agent.

Desperatehousemove

The house I ended up buying! 

The vendor was a very sweet (we thought) but clearly very poorly old man. Everything was going fine until we got to the second bedroom, cue a massive bookcase full of ermm shall we say 'interesting' books a literature! The covers of these said books did not leave much to the imagination!
I didn't know where to look

googler

From a friend; the owners had recently started or expanded the family, and my friends were greeted at the door by the father, with a baby on one arm, holding a used nappy in the other hand. The aroma wafting around the house, they tell me, was "interesting"...

phoebe1989seb

Years ago, viewing a flat to buy.... the couple selling had obviously not had time to prepare for our arrival as there were knickers (lots, not just the one pair 😮) strewn all over the bedroom floor. No apologies for the mess, either 🙄

pinkteapot

We viewed a house where the vendor
claimed to live there with their adult kids, but it was VERY obviously rented out to students.

Vendor arrived after us (‘kids’ were home but hadn’t answered door). Four piles of post on the side in the kitchen in different surnames. Absolute tip and bit of a smell of weed. One of the bedroom doors was shut and she tried to talk us out of viewing that room. We said we’d like to see it really and she said she’d have to be check with her ‘son’. She went in and there was a whispered conversation then we were allowed a quick peak in. 

It was all soooo weird. That area had loads of student lets - don’t know why she was trying to cover it up. 

JellyphantCastle

I distinctly remember my parents taking me to view a house when I was about 8. The old chap who lived there was a divorcee and had lived alone for a number of years. In the bathroom, I asked him why he had 2 toothbrushes in the pot if he lived on his own. He replied that sometimes the gardener stayed round if the gardening was taking a while! My parents were shooting daggers at me  

Giggidy

This is a sore point for me, we've been looking since November and finally found the 'perfect' house for us. Viewed on my own with the estate agent, called up straight after with an offer which was accepted. Two days later arranged a second viewing for the family to see the house, which was to be with the elderly vendors. We turned up so excited to see our dream home, and the vendor just stood at the glass door glaring at us for a full 10 seconds, and then we had to spend the next two minutes explaining to him who we were, and to convince him we put an offer in and weren't some chancers trying to rob the place with kids in tow. He was convinced he accepted an offer from someone else, but eventually let us view. It was rushed and already spoiled by the frosty reception, and we left hurriedly after being followed around upstairs. Needless to say, the vendor pulled out of the sale a few days later. 

esubbs

I've not had any bad viewings with the vendors to be fair. However, two ahem, notable ones with estate agents. One where she got really annoyed that we were taking longer than just a cursory look in each room, kept trying to usher us out and then wouldn't let us see the (extensive) gardens or outbuildings saying "ok, you've seen enough now" 😱
The other (different EA) where they employ people specifically to do viewings, for the most part they just open the door and let you get on with it. This one though had clearly never been to this particular property before and followed us round pointing things out himself "oo, there's a bit of a funny wiff in here", "I'd get that crack there looked at" " I've no idea what this would have been for" etc. It was a strange one but I actually quite liked him, made a change from some of the arrogant, we're doing you a favour allowing you to view types 🤣

Woolsery

We viewed a plant nursery with a self-build house, but really it was an ex-nursery with a half-finished house. The standard of build on everything was extremely poor.

Undeterred, the owner set about trying to convince us all the dead shrubs in pots were 'dormant' and the greenhouse benches were full of bedding plants which needed to be covered up with layers of fleece to "protect them from the sunshine." We could clearly see  boxes lurking beneath the fleece. If they were supposed to look plant-like, it was a fail.

The house was a chalet bungalow with sloping ceilings upstairs, yet our vendor claimed there was "stacks of room" for another storey when we decided it was probably a little small for us.

Throughout the visit this gentleman kept breaking off mid-sentence and rushing to the door or window, saying things like, "Thought I heard a car. We'll get a real rush on soon!"

Our poor 15 year old daughter simply couldn't stand this cross between Monty Python's Cheese Shop and Dead Parrot sketches  and left on some pretext, like feeling sick. In reality, she'd almost wet herself holding in the laughs. Luckily, therefore, she never heard the vendor declare generously, "I'll chop up the caravan if you like, but there's no way you're having my shed!"

We eventually escaped, picked up our daughter at the gate and headed off to do something constructive with the rest of the day. On our return I drafted a letter to the agent explaining that he and his client were wasting people's time by pretending there was an active business and a completed house for sale, adding that the client seemed delusional and probably shouldn't be leading viewings.

The agent's response?  "You're blacklisted!" He didn't  survive the Crash of 2008-9. The nursery was eventually sold and re-built as a small garden centre. I think it still struggles, but there really are plants there and they're alive !

Gavin83

We’ve had two weird experiences:

1) We viewed a house that had what I can only describe as a lot of racist paraphernalia spread around the house. Found the whole experience quite odd, although the vendor did seem pleasant enough. We gave every house we viewed a nickname, this quickly became known as a racist house.

2) We viewed a house to rent once with a young female EA. She said she believed no one was in but she’d double check. Knocked on the door, no answer. Shouted “Hello” when we entered, no answer. Great. We looked around the ground and first floors and everything looked great. Went up to the second floor and opened the door to find a teenage boys bedroom, complete with a teenage boy enjoying some “alone time”. Turned out he had headphones on so hadn’t heard us. The EA had gone in first so she’d seen far more than I expect she wanted to! To be fair to her she handled it like a professional though.

JuanBallOfWimbledon

Last year we viewed a house we really liked and we were willing (and able) to pay over asking if all was ok on viewing. Well, the owner answered the door and took a full 30 seconds looking the wife and I up and down before even saying hello. It felt like the longest 30 seconds in history. He then introduced his wife who asked which car was ours, then spent the same amount of time quietly assessing it. The whole way round the house they made comments about it being an ‘upscale neighbourhood’ and ‘an area full of professionals’. They had a Merc in the drive, the wife was dripping in jewellery, they had crystals and shiny shi*e literally everywhere and a big Chanel wall sticker above the bed.  We’d not even been in the car 10 minutes when the agent called to say that before he’d even hear an offer from us, they wanted to see proof of funds. We’d viewed a few others with them and never had that before, I can only assume our attire and beat up old Citroen made them assume we were far too poor to buy their 3 bed semi. It sold pretty quickly, but came back on the market shortly after the SDLT holiday ended. It’s still up now. 

Another time we viewed a house and the woman was showing us round the bedrooms, one of which had a sleeping teenage boy in. She proceeded to literally scream at him to get his ‘lazy !!!! up and have a shower, you smelly little !!!!’. We didn’t know where to put ourselves but she carried on showing us round like nothing had happened.