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

JaneandBeth

We met the agent outside the apparently-empty property and he unlocked and let us in. After viewing the kitchen we walked through the hall and found the very well-off and ‘upper-class’ (allegedly) lady owner slumped on a sofa, totally paralytic and hardly able to speak, let alone make sense. The agent and we were embarrassed but she was so far out of it that in the end we just carried on round, creeping past her with (unnecessary) apologies. We ended up buying the house and have been here over 40 years but it was a very unnerving start.

housebuyer143

eddddy said:

Well... this wasn't quite a vendor hosted viewing...

But I was standing in a flowerbed with my face pressed up against a window, looking inside a gloomy empty house that was for sale, when a next door neighbour came out marching towards me...

I thought she was going to tell me off for trespassing, and standing in her neighbour's flower bed, etc, etc.  I hadn't even checked with the estate agent that it was OK for me to go to the property.

But instead, she explained to me that her house was exactly the same size and layout, so did I want to look around her house to get a feel for the layout and room sizes etc.

So I spent half an hour with a hosted viewing the neighbour's house instead.



(I don't think she had a hidden agenda, like wanting me to buy her house.  I think it was more a combination of loneliness, and enjoying pretending to be an estate agent.

Or maybe I'd had a lucky escape and all the other people she'd caught standing in her neighbour's flower bed were tied up in her cellar.)

This isn't so wierd! I knocked a neighbors door when considering buying my current house and they answered and said they had just refurbished it and we had to come in and see every room 🤣 
It looked good and i bought my house.

Shortly after moving in I was talking to the other neighbors and mentioned how i had been shown the other people's house... Their response was that I should definitely see their entire house as it was better 🤷‍♀️ queue the 45 min tour through this immaculate house! 

Nice people, just keen to show off their houses to complete strangers. 

housebuyer143

Not so wierd, but we viewed a house with the agent. The agent was late so we went right in when he arrived. 

Turns out the living room patio doors had been smashed, house broken into and a cat was sitting on the stairs.
The agent was mortified and we left immediately 🤣 decided the area probably wasn't for us.

Woolsery

youth_leader said:

 ...they had a toilet next to their bed.  Just next to the bed. Amazing people actually do this.

Saves emptying ash trays.

HCM2007

I viewed a house of multiple occupation, where the 3 upper floors all had a tiny kitchen....with a shower cubicle in too! There was also a very large lower ground floor, which housed a large open plan kitchen/lounge/bedroom and where a toilet had also been plumbed in against the back wall, with no cubicle round it. The roof was leaking so badly, it was raining almost as much inside as it was out. Oddly enough I didn't buy it!

Grumpy_auld_yin

Viewing flats for my daughter to rent in Glasgow where a high ceiling and a narrow "bathroom" are not uncommon  , we came across a rental where the toilet and shower were fitted in a "room" about 3 feet wide . If you wanted to use said toilet it was on the outside wall so you would step into one side of the shower then out the other side to access . No thanks .

trakky14

We once went round a grade 2 listed house twice and on the 2nd viewing and asked the owner if the council/historic England people were ok to work with as it needed a bit of work like a replacement window etc....he said "oh no, they are terrible, you get nowhere with them". Funnily enough we didn't bother making an offer!

Debbie9009

I had a viewing where the house was empty and electricity was on a payment meter, met the estate agent there, just as it was getting dark, turned out no-one had put any credit on the meter so the viewing was conducted with the failing light, called it a day when I could no longer see anything.

Another viewing the bathroom was tiny and they had installed the shower in a way that you couldn’t open the door fully, you had to squeeze your way round it to get into the bathroom.

Another viewing of a recently fully refurbished to a high standard house, they had turned 2 good sized bedrooms into 3 small bedrooms, squashed the bathroom in between 2 of the bedrooms, so you walked down a corridor to get to it, and it didn’t have any windows.  The best part was the kitchen, the owner was very proud of this, it had a sink and lots of stainless steel tables, the type used in restaurant kitchens, no cupboards at all.

I didn’t buy any of them

newsgroupmonkey_

Grumpy_auld_yin said:

Viewing flats for my daughter to rent in Glasgow where a high ceiling and a narrow "bathroom" are not uncommon  , we came across a rental where the toilet and shower were fitted in a "room" about 3 feet wide . If you wanted to use said toilet it was on the outside wall so you would step into one side of the shower then out the other side to access . No thanks .

Stayed in a lovely Air BnB in Edinburgh where the toilet was so small, you had to sit down before you could close the door fully.

Ramouth

Grumpy_auld_yin said:

Viewing flats for my daughter to rent in Glasgow where a high ceiling and a narrow "bathroom" are not uncommon  , we came across a rental where the toilet and shower were fitted in a "room" about 3 feet wide . If you wanted to use said toilet it was on the outside wall so you would step into one side of the shower then out the other side to access . No thanks .

Lol - funny thing is I just read this and thought this might be a good solution for our tricky en-suite plans!  If the room was done as a wet room and wasn’t the only WC in the house it could work quite well.