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

housebuyer143

Emmia said:

More recently we viewed a flat with two front doors, that was like the Marie Celeste... when we arrived with the EA to view there was a plate of hot steaming dinner on the table of a flat that was otherwise empty of the owner / tenant - it also had 3 bedrooms, but bafflingly the occupant clearly slept on a mattress in the conservatory/lean to as none of the other beds had mattresses on them. Aside from that the place was filthy, and although many other aspects of the place were good, I told my husband immediately afterwards that if we bought it it would need to be entirely gutted and fumigated... wierdly we didn't end up buying it.

Completely crying with laughter at this!! 

ElefantEd

trix-a-belle said:

 On viewing the house with the EA I found the under stair cloakroom was completely painted bright red with lots of sex pistols photos on the wall (forever referred to as the shrine ), 1 bedroom had a wall painted ultra violet & another had a hot pink wall.

I'd love to know how you knew it had been painted ultraviolet - do you wear special glasses? Or are you actually a butterfly?

One house I viewed, as an FTB, included a garden. In spite of the EAs glowing references to it, said garden turned out to be a wasteland, just a square of mud with dogpoo everywhere and not a blade of grass to be seen. The inside of the house appeared to have been decorated by Jackson Pollock, with a generally shabby and bashed up patina. We subsequently saw an extremely large and badly behaved dog being led down the side passage....... not a house we considered buying even though it was fairly cheap!

Emmia

I was also reminded of another property last night...

Newly refurbished flat, done to what appeared to be a high spec - however, what I think was supposed to be the "master bedroom" (it was the one with an ensuite) was hardly big enough to swing a cat in once a standard double bed was in there, but the second bedroom was huge, that had acres of space for a king sized bed - but no ensuite...

The other curious thing was the shiny kitchen had a built in fridge, coffee machine, slimline dishwasher... But bafflingly the flat had no washing machine anywhere, and no obvious place to put one, unless you ripped out the dishwasher, and the newly fitted cupboard next to it.

When I asked the agent where a washing machine/or a space for one might be located, she said with a totally straight face, there isn't one, but there is a laundrette at the end of the road... She also said it, in such a way as though it was a totally normal thing too, to schlep to the laundrette with your clothes, when you lived in a high spec flat.

At Uni I used communal facilities - but there you rent a room in halls so it makes sense, but I've never otherwise rented/ lived anywhere without a washing machine.

Who buys a (newly refurbished) property with no space for a washing machine???

nyermen

Emmia said:

I was also reminded of another property last night...

Newly refurbished flat, done to what appeared to be a high spec - however, what I think was supposed to be the "master bedroom" (it was the one with an ensuite) was hardly big enough to swing a cat in once a standard double bed was in there, but the second bedroom was huge, that had acres of space for a king sized bed - but no ensuite...

The other curious thing was the shiny kitchen had a built in fridge, coffee machine, slimline dishwasher... But bafflingly the flat had no washing machine anywhere, and no obvious place to put one, unless you ripped out the dishwasher, and the newly fitted cupboard next to it.

When I asked the agent where a washing machine/or a space for one might be located, she said with a totally straight face, there isn't one, but there is a laundrette at the end of the road... She also said it, in such a way as though it was a totally normal thing too, to schlep to the laundrette with your clothes, when you lived in a high spec flat.

At Uni I used communal facilities - but there you rent a room in halls so it makes sense, but I've never otherwise rented/ lived anywhere without a washing machine.

Who buys a (newly refurbished) property with no space for a washing machine???

Specced for a second home owner who would stay there during the week and go "home" at weekends perhaps.  Take the laundry with them?
But that conflicts with my thoughts on the ensuite situation (old person who wanted the bathroom close so shrunk the bedroom).

All in all, sounds like I was lucky.  I was looking the Farnborough / Surrey Heath area, and the only ones that were even memorable were 1) A house where all the photos had been cut in half (divorcee/split I guess) and one that was on a street that looked oddly familiar, then I remembered that a very very good friend of mine who unexpectedly died 5 years previously, had lived on the same road.

Woolsery

There was also the one in Wales where we had to eat the lunch with the vendors who'd prepared it specially, "Because you've  come a long way." (130 miles) and we were the very first viewers. The meal was home made and just about edible.

This made us feel very bad. On the way round (it was a smallholding) we'd had time alone to discuss and it had scored about 5/10.

I wondered how many more meals the couple prepared as it stayed on the market for ages. I hope the subsequent viewers weren't told as they drew up, "Would you kindly drive about 3' further forward, as our neighbour (the only one for 1/2 a mile) is a bit funny about parking and things like that...." The parking area could have accommodated about 10 vehicles!

Gavin83

Emmia said:

I was also reminded of another property last night...

Newly refurbished flat, done to what appeared to be a high spec - however, what I think was supposed to be the "master bedroom" (it was the one with an ensuite) was hardly big enough to swing a cat in once a standard double bed was in there, but the second bedroom was huge, that had acres of space for a king sized bed - but no ensuite...

The other curious thing was the shiny kitchen had a built in fridge, coffee machine, slimline dishwasher... But bafflingly the flat had no washing machine anywhere, and no obvious place to put one, unless you ripped out the dishwasher, and the newly fitted cupboard next to it.

When I asked the agent where a washing machine/or a space for one might be located, she said with a totally straight face, there isn't one, but there is a laundrette at the end of the road... She also said it, in such a way as though it was a totally normal thing too, to schlep to the laundrette with your clothes, when you lived in a high spec flat.

At Uni I used communal facilities - but there you rent a room in halls so it makes sense, but I've never otherwise rented/ lived anywhere without a washing machine.

Who buys a (newly refurbished) property with no space for a washing machine???

This reminds me actually. We viewed a house that had been newly refurbished, admittedly fairly cheaply and it looked like a rental property. However there wasn’t space in the kitchen for a fridge freezer. I asked the EA where it was meant to go and you could see his expression change from “That’s a stupid question” to panic as he realised there actually wasn’t anywhere. He then blurred out “In the cupboard” at which point we opened it and it was about 30cm deep, filled with shelves and not that high either. We felt sorry for him at this point and didn’t push any further.

We also viewed a house that was advertised as having parking. It was a Victorian semi with essentially no front garden and clearly no on street parking. I asked about the parking. She told me that she generally parked illegally further down the road but that it was OK as she’d never been caught! Alternatively we could nicely ask the house opposite if we could park there.

We didn’t buy either house.

Tahlullah.H

Woolsery said:

  "Would you kindly drive about 3' further forward, as our neighbour (the only one for 1/2 a mile) is a bit funny about parking and things like that...." The parking area could have accommodated about 10 vehicles!

This is a very real thing in Wales, although I am generalising.  Probably everywhere, but very noticeable in Wales.  My neighbours are exactly the same.

Slinky

Rumana03 said:

We went to view a flat recently and the flat itself was amazing. The vendor showed us around. Towards the end I noticed the loft access on the ceiling but it seemed to be closed with many small metal panels and screwed down. This seemed so bizarre to me so I asked why they had done that...the vendor said that their mum was afraid.

My elderly mother in law is convinced that anytime she mislays something, her next door neighbour has climbed in through the loft hatch and moved it or stolen it. She's been shown pictures of the wall between the two properties, plus there's a bolt been put on the underside of the hatch which would prevent it being opened from above, and would be impossible to close the bolt from above. Her answer to the logic that it's impossible for him to enter, and that nobody has ever seen him enter or leave, is that 'he's very clever'

MattMattMattUK

When I was looking to buy a few years ago I had a couple of odd experiences. 
House 1: Seller was trying to do their own thing after a basic online listing, house was a mess, dirty, not looked after, would have needed a deep clean, at a minimum every room would have needed repainting due to scuffs on the walls and many rooms would have needed replastering and other work. They kept telling me how clean and tidy it was and that they expected a premium because of how well looked after the property was.
House 2: They had a bathroom leak/backup the morning of the visit, the whole house stunk of sewage, it was coming out of the downstairs toilet under the door and into the hall, they didn't think to cancel. They had baked a loaf of bread and left it on the side in the kitchen, as if that might hide the smell...
Flat 1: Show round with the agent was fine, but in the bedroom were multiple sex toys on the bedroom floor, the duvet was soaked and a very pungent odour. 
Flat 2: New flats in a converted building that had been a very large house. Described as spacious, pictures looked great, plans looked great. It was an upside down duplex flat as the upper floor had huge high ceilings and looked out over park land. The bedrooms were downstairs. Upon going downstairs I realised the ceiling height was less than six foot, in the bathroom with the shower tray and the shower fitted to the wall the shower head was level with my nipples. The estate agent claimed that they had not noticed, I pointed out that they must have as the plans for upstairs had the ceiling height on, but downstairs that was omitted. It was listed as £490k, it stayed on the market for nearly three years and finally sold at £280k, I presume they eventually found some vertically challenged people to buy it at a significant discount. 

Slinky

My brother was house hunting and wanted a second opinion so I went along with him. One we looked at seemed OK, but the dodgy visitors arriving next door as we left put us off. Another I came out and said every single room needs decorating. He looked at the particulars which described the house as newly decorated. Pity whoever did it had no talent for wallpapering as it was all peeling away.  Another house the wiring was so old it was the 'knitted' cables, and there had been liberal use of bright yellow paint - reminded me of an episode in Only Fools and Horses where painting had been done using stolen paint supposedly used to paint inside tunnels on the underground.