Viewed houses today

njkmr

I've viewed properties where you have to wipe your feet on the way out....!

RHemmings

I saw one property that was filthy and just terrible. I was shown around by the owner. Much worse was that the extension looked a complete amateur job and I had no confidence in it. It's still for sale after the price has gone down down down and they still say that they will consider offers. 

The request for feedback I received required me to say what I felt the property is worth. I refused, as I couldn't think of a price that would make me buy that house. 

ThisIsWeird

Jami74 said:

My partner viewed houses today.
One house, the one we hoping would the one, was so filthy and smelly (animal faeces on the floors) that he left quickly and didn't bother to take pictures or measurements. I knew it would need cleaning and decorating based on the pictures, but apparently it was a lot worse in real life with damage to the floors and walls.
I'm trying to get my head round why anyone would put a house up for sale and then show it (with a weeks notice) in that state. It is even a premium listing with one agent. 
Before we view any more houses, what sort of red flags should we be picking up from the adverts? 

I personally wouldn't be worried about red flags, Jami, as they might prevent you from viewing what is the 'right' house for you. And this house could have been the 'one', just as you both felt it would be before you viewed.
But, of course, if a complete top-to-toe redecoration of a property before moving in isn't on your list of 'acceptables', that's a different matter.
A property like this to me just shouts 'bargain' - an opportunity. And it will - easily, with some graft - be made perfect. If it really struggles to sell, you'll potentially make such a discount that you can pay others to clear the place out, and scrub it clean. Then you take over for the nice bits...
And just imagine how welcome you'll be in the 'hood! :-)

markin

With real 'dead body' pet smell, just budget for replacing all the floor boards, skirting and replacing ground floor ceilings, as well the kitchen, Anything that may have soaked in the pee and smell.

Bigphil1474

We've been lucky, just seen the one sh*t tip so far. It had huge 'potential' but the entire house and very extensive garden needed completely redoing, and the pet smells were so over the top. Having half a dozen kittens freely roaming around a living room full of junk didn't help either. Funnily enough they were the only house we've viewed that said 'No offers'. We're still looking, but another similar house on the same road in near perfect condition with a fantastic same size garden (around 0.25 acres) is up for just £10k less. Hopefully, I'll only be moving the once more in this life. 

FreeBear

markin said:

With real 'dead body' pet smell, just budget for replacing all the floor boards, skirting and replacing ground floor ceilings, as well the kitchen, Anything that may have soaked in the pee and smell.

Possibly replace plaster to a height of ~1m in all affected rooms too. All in, that is going to be an expensive undertaking. But if you are basically gutting the place, it wouldn't hurt to do a rewire, update the heating system, and insulate the internal walls & floors.

AlexMac

I love your pet5h17 tales. Makes me feel I was relatively lucky with my one real wreck of an auction buy. Didn’t check the loft til after completion as I knew it needed a new roof. 

So I had to mask up and clear the six bin bags full of dead pigeons and guano I discovered up there! At least the loft space was so well ventilated by the holes in the roof which the wildlife used as access ways that it didn’t smell!

MeteredOut

sheramber said:

We viewed a house that was so dirty my children said 'I am not coming to live here'.

Have they kept their promise since you bought?

NameUnavailable

If a property is dirty or smelly when you view it, that's probably a great opportunity to get a bargain!

When you get the keys you can go in and rip out smelly carpets and repaint dirty walls.

Bailey1980

cymruchris said:

It could be a probate property after someone has passed away where the family don't live locally, and they've just paid someone to clear out the contents. The estate agents should have informed them of the state and asked them if they wanted it cleaned up, but they might have said 'sell it like it is' - to which they will possibly receive less offers, or even no offers. One advantage where a house is in poor condition but easily remedied that someone just wants rid of - is that you might get a better price agreed as a result. Or they could be living in cloud cuckooland and expect top dollar in its current state.

This has happened to us, due to losing my parents we have had to move back into the old family home in order to care for my sister who was living with them and has a lot of care needs so we cleared everything out and gave the keys to the estate agent. Because of caring responsibilities, dealing with funerals/probate we haven't been back to the house since leaving it and as far as we were aware it was in a very good condition - we've had no reason to think otherwise. 

We've had a lot of viewings but no offers and the only feedback which has been passed onto us is it needs too much work but when we've questioned the estate agent they haven't been specific about what work -until last week when I called up in a bit of a state. They said there was a very strong pet smell amongst a few other things but none of that had been fed back to us previously so we haven't been able to a) check b) try to rectify it. 

So I managed to find a time to go back to the house this week and was shocked by the amount of dirt and dust present, the double glazing in one of the windows has gone and a number of other things, so it's no wonder we haven't had any offers (though I couldn't detect a pet smell but put some plug in air freshners in and sprayed some odour neutralising spray just in case I'm not sensitive to it).

HOWEVER, the estate agent has never told us about nor fed back to us that there are all these issues so we were completely unaware. Had we known, we would have arranged a thorough professional deep clean of the house as well as replacing the window and doing some of the other minor tweaks. 

I cannot even begin to express how annoyed an angry we are.