Strangest reason buyers didn't make an offer

[Namechange1086]

Nowt so queer as folk. 2 buyers, 1 didn't offer because the garage was too small for their beer can collection. Who collects beer cans 😅. The other didn't like the wall colour or that the lounge was at the back of the house. The walls were a neutral off white and the lounge was clearly shown on the floor plan as being at the back. Was very relieved when we eventually sold.

One house we had had a wall at the end of the garden and a service road beyond that. A viewer said they wouldn’t buy it because it didn’t have another garden beyond the garden.

We also, in another property, had several people who clearly had been persuaded into viewing it and it wasn’t what they wanted, which was clear from the outset. Waste of everyone’s time.

Currently, our house described as immaculate by everyone, has been castigated as in poor repair, badly decorated, a poor garden and a repaired leak on a ceiling. It’s ten years old with a landscaped garden and professionally decorated. Then they made an offer.

I’ve bought and sold more than thirty properties, here and in France. I resolved/ realised very early that there is little or no point in ‘feedback ‘, unless it is something clearly remédiable like dirt or participating dogs ( geese once, but that’s another story).

Once I have made it clean and tidy, and put out all the relevant documentation for a potential buyer to inspect ( saves a lot of time further down the line) that’s my offer. I don’t care if you want a bigger kitchen, or you don’t like the road, or the colour of the bathroom. That’s what I am selling, if you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

Similarly, the reason I bought the house or flat was because it felt right to me. I might have asked for clarification about a boundary, or whether something was included, but basically I made the offer because I could see myself living there. If an agent or an owner pressed me, I suppose I might make up a reason just to get away, but usually I just say ‘ it’s not quite right for me, thanks’.

@SheilaFentiman

What trees do you have that provide such brilliant screening pls?

I remember being pressurised by estate agents too.
There's no point in viewing if something's a non-negotiable.

Someone withdrew their offer on my house and they said I wasn’t ready to move and needed to think about my choices. It made me feel so angry. My husband had left me and I needed to to sell my house as I was poor so it also hurt my feelings too.
that was 20 years ago and I still feel bitter and hope she has explosive diarrhoea when she’s wearing white trousers on a long bus journey.

That may be so but until you've been and seen it you don't necessarily know if that's a dealbreaker.

You want to see how busy the road is, how much it impacts when you are inside or in the garden, and mostly whether the house is enough to compromise on the main road

Although it could just be an easy excuse to give the agent when they ask for feedback. We saw several where the only feedback we could give is 'it didn't feel right for us' which is ridiculous so we just picked something

I'm SSTC and currently viewing as a very motivated buyer but have so far found nothing that ticks all my boxes. Consequently I'm viewing, as otherwise have mentioned upthead, to see if I could compromise.

So far I've not been able to so my feedback has been along the lines of: lovely property if it is, or if not mention the houseful of crazy wallpaper or animal smells; and its not for.

Having endured the stress and time wasting of hours spent getting my own house viewer ready, I don't view anything unless I've at least had a drive past and checked out the area.

We don’t give random feedback but both of us have strong opinions on what we want and there isn’t full overlap, so we are viewing properties that one or the other proposes with major compromises as we can’t afford what we want. This means we do end up viewing something with no garage when we want a garage in the hope enough of the other boxes are ticked. When I say ‘not for us, thanks” I mean ‘houses are too expensive now or I don’t earn enough’. Probably both.

My friend had someone interested in her house but they were into feng shui and the toilet in the main bathroom was facing the wrong way. The couple decided against it because of the loo!

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/136626314#/?channel=RES_BUY

This. There's nothing in the description, just the floorplan. It's detached, and the mystery room is at the back of the property facing the garden. As far as I can tell there is no outside stair.

It's been on the market for fecking ages and they have recently dropped the price slightly as a concession that the mystery room might put people off.

We rejected the most beautiful house (after a second viewing) because it had been smoked in for about 50 years and we realised it would have needed some serious work to get the smell and stains out of every surface. We were gutted because it was otherwise perfect.

Every house we look at is a compromise and it’s only when you look round can you work out if you like it enough to live with that compromise.

some need extending and it’s only when you look you can see the work involved or if drains are in awkward places etc

one had much lower ceilings that you could tell from pics

one the neighbours house was a concern with dog cages in garden.

I always go thinking ‘this is the one’ but not found it yet

@thecatsthecats It looks like the house is attached to the cream house next door? I would guess that 2 properties were knocked through and made into 1 at some point then split so some of the rooms in the cream house extend into the white house.

I had a viewer who loved my house, we verbally discussed and offer then my cat walked in. The viewer immediately said she could live where there had once been a cat. I was worried she was badly allergic so offered antihistamine. She replied with “I’m not allergic I just don’t like cats, could never live where I knew one had been” 🤷‍♀️

@BobandRobertaSmith , That's what I thought too. The white house isn't detached.The mystery room is part of the attached cream house.
There might be freehold issues.
Grange-over-Sands seems nice.

No, it is detached, if you go on street view (you have to find it on Church road. Not where it's marked on the map) you can see the gap between them.

I used to hate house hunting with my partner.
"Can't possibly live here. Look at the horse brasses on the wall. Looks like a pub"

Took some persuasion to get him to overlook his (stupid) viewpoint and it looked nothing like a pub when we moved in and decorated (which didn't include horse brasses)

Our buyer was a policeman and "knew" the area..

So why did he come and view....(apart from subsequently approaching my partner on the Qt with a fuckwit of an unofficial "offer").

It looks like the “rear garden” is actually at the side in relation to the road/front door, @thecatsthecats. It’s on a corner plot so the house is only half the width on one side (the roof is like this by the garden ^ but only / on the other side IYSWIM 😂). There appears to be a drive belonging to the cream house on the land behind The Forge. Maybe there is some kind of 2 storey building/garage or staircase on the drive? Perhaps they are classifying it as detached as there isn’t a house attached, a bit like “link detached” houses. EA’s can be a bit creative in their descriptions 😂

Are you local? Can you and your sniffer dogs investigate for us? 😂

We’d agreed an offer but then they wanted me as seller to get planning permission for them to reconfigure and extend to their specifications while taking the property off the market for the three months this would take. So I told them the deal was off.

This. I went to view a house and it turned out the only access was via a sloping footpath with straps in. I have a slight mobility problem. The estate agent snapped ‘wasn’t that obvious from the description?’ Well I actually checked and no it wasn’t, in fact the photos had been cleverly taken to ensure you could see the steps.

Weirdest was a woman who apparently realised at the viewing that someone on our street had a restraining order against her and she wasn’t allowed to live that close to them.

Most annoying a would be the one who booked to view 4 times and didn’t turn up once (and never let us know she wasn’t coming). On one occasion the estate agent phoned to find out where she was, and she said it was such a nice day she’d just decided to go to the seaside instead. The estate agents eventually blacklisted her.

We had a three bed maisonette in East London, not docklands which was obvious from the price as well as the area. The reason they decided not to buy they couldn't for a grand piano in the lounge

We sold our four bedroom house earlier in the year. One couple didn’t make an offer because they needed five bedrooms. We still don’t know why they came for a viewing 🤷‍♀️

Our last house was a new build and one buyer put offer in and then withdrew the offer because it didn't have enough character!🤔