worse house viewing

[charlieinthehaystack]

probably mild to some but worse I saw was the bedroom had all porno posters on the bedroom walls. it was the teen lads room so page 3 type thankfully but I was amazed the mum didn't ask him to take them down or cover them up!
what was the worst thing you found on house viewings?

Hallway with a large parrot cage with no bird but not cleaned out. The lounge had a huge corner fish tank with dead fish and murky water. We however bought the house after our "we don't want to offend the seller with such an extreme low offer" was accepted!

As a young woman buying a flat on my own, my dad came with me to view places as he knew better than I the things to ask about plumbing, boilers etc.

One flat was lovely and belonged to an older couple who were quite prim and proper.

I've never head my lovely dad swear and I certainly would never sweat in front of my parents.

The flat was nice, a bit dated but in good order. They had a Cockatoo as pet birds were quite popular at the time.

We were all stood in the kitchen making the usual small talk about the property when there was a loud, "SHUT UP YOU FUCKING BITCH!"

The Cockatoo spoke!

The funny thing was the couple completely ignored it and carried on as if nothing had happened.

I didn't say anything as I was mortified in front of my lovely dad and he didn't say a word either.

After we left we sat in my dads car and my father drily said, "I do hope the bird isn't part of the fixtures and fittings!' Then we laughed.

Fast forward a few years and I was looking at houses and again the owners were an elderly couple. They were both very short.

We went into the kitchen and it was beautiful with wood cabinets. The man took great pride in telling me he was a carpenter and had designed and made the kitchen himself.

I couldn't put my finger on it but something was amiss. Then the chap said he had made the counter tops four inches lower to be the perfect height for his wife!

I'm tall and it would have driven me crazy so alas I never put an offer in.

Many years ago we were viewing a flat in Edinburgh. As so many of them do, this one had a box room with a platform bed in it. The owner opened the box room door and put the light on. Sitting in the corner of the room, in what had been pitch darkness, was his elderly mother. Both of us momentarily wondered if she was dead, but she wasn’t, thankfully. He put the light off and closed the door once we had looked in.

The flat we did finally buy had seventeen indoor cats living in it. The survey included the line “l am not a cat lover and I struggle to understand why anyone would buy this property.” It was a bargain and actually, under the mess, a beautiful flat.

It wouldn't put me off buying somewhere if I liked the place, but I would feed back the page 3 bedroom to the estate agent.

One of those ride on sex toys … in the living room in front of the telly. I didn’t know where to look.

Boudoir shots of the previous tenant...
Ime house had a teen still asleep in bed - rental viewing..

Once went to view to buy and the owner said the window cleaner came in Tuesdays....amd he meant as in sex not cleaning the windows.. Grim.

Unmade beds, which had clearly seen some use. An appalling stench of urine ( shame because the house was really good in terms of size and structurally), a filthy toilet with the lid up. A large broken window that hadn't even been boarded so that rain had got in
And a dog that looked like it wanted to kill us.
All different properties, obviously!

We'd not been looking for a doer upper but ended up worh one after we fell head over heals for an old Victoria nhouse with water running down the walls, damp rising up them, mushrooms growing out of the floors and a stray cat with a litter of kittens in the kitchen cupboard. The soft furniture was all soaked through

Everything got left behind and sellers went AWOL. We gutted the house, had it fixed and damp proofed chucked nearly everything out amd kept the cat and her by them 8 week old kittens ( seller was in a rush, no chain got got all through in 6 weeks)

Was so sad when we had to sell it 😢

One house had clothes and tpys littered all over the floor.
I don't mena untidy I mean ankle deep, you couldn't enter the kids bedrooms without stepping on something, every room was covered in stuff.

It was a 6 bed house, and a good buy (loads of space,double garage attached to house etc etc), and we went back twice. The second time we braved the floors to try and check the state of the house underneath and realised that the windows were coated in mould, and dirt and had obviously not been opened in years.
The bathroom was filthy.

I just couldn't work out the mindset of the people selling. maybe it was a divorce, or a forced sale. But even just scooping all the crap into one pile would have made it more attractive.

It was structurally sound, and I have no hesitation in buying somewhere which needs work, but in the end we didn't offer as the downstairs layout wasn't great and we couldn't work out how to alter it without spending a lot of money, and as it needed a new kitchen and bathroom as well, we couldn't afford it..

worse one from the other side though, house hunting with toddler in tow.
Calm toddler, well behaved and about 3 years old, had been reliably potty trained for ages.
She was very good. One house we went in was immaculate, beautiful and shown round by owner. They had a huge dolls house in one bedroom and the lady said - Oh let her play with it.
So she played for 2 minutes while I looked at the other berooms. Toddler could hear my voice I was literally a few metres away.
I came back and she had wet herself, onto the carpet. I was mortified.
Made a quick exit, and had to go via Asda to our next viewing and buy dry knickers and leggings.

Two stand out for me.

A house where the estate agent refused to go in with us. It was empty, with a really strange atmosphere, with damp red carpets. One of the bedrooms had a wall covered completely with little compartments about 3 inches big (I'm guessing for some kind of collection). I couldn't wait to get out of there.

The second was a house I viewed by myself. A woman let me in, didn't say a word to me, and motioned me to look around. So I did. In every room there were at least 2 or 3 people - watching TV, playing video games, lying in bed. Not one of them looked at me, let alone spoke. I looked around, then let myself out. It was a decent house but the experience of feeling like a ghost totally put me off. There was a pub nearby that looked rough, I remember it as being called 'The Ringmaster' but when I looked it up a couple of years later there was no pub called that.

I'm sure the pub was renamed etc, not suggesting anything woo but it added to the whole weird experience. I live close to there now but never go in that area.

The house that someone had literally painted the toilet orange to match the walls. DH didn’t notice, it was well camouflaged.

The house owned by a short couple. Had to duck to walk up the stairs. Went in box room above stairs and the floor was strangely bouncey. Turned out the man had created more floor space by taking the bulk head out.

House where as soon as we walked in the front door the combination of wet dog trying to be masked with cheap air freshener made my eyes water. Worst bit was the vendors were there (please always leave if you can!) with one recovering from a hip op in bed - so we didn't feel like we could just turn around and walk out. Garden was lovely and big, but impossible to navigate with the amount of dog poo dotted about. GRIM!

The worst ones I saw were just sad. Where it was obvious that someone with very little money had lived there for decades and hadn’t been able to maintain it properly and had died with it falling to bits around them. Especially if there were loads of fading photos of children and grandchildren, but it didn’t look as though anyone under 80 had set foot in there for years.

On a lighter note, we did see one where a conservatory had been added on to the back, without taking out the previous wall and bay window, so there was a bay window into the conservatory. There’s a reason more people don’t do that.

There was also one that had been creatively renovated by the owner, with features that included bathroom wall panels he proudly told us had originally been the floor of Euston station (I believed him. I recognised them). Also a glass panel in the floor of the hall so that you could see down into the cellar. I’ve seen this done to fantastic effect in medieval buildings, so it allows you to see the fifteenth century stonework. Victorian terraced houses where the cellar is damp and mouldy even though there’s so much ventilation you can see daylight in between the grouting, not so much.

We viewed a 5 bed house where the main bedroom and the 2nd bedroom both had en-suites. We viewed the whole house except for the 2nd bedroom. The woman who owned the house tentatively knocked on the bedroom door, someone from inside shouted at her to "f off and leave me alone". She apologised to the person in the room and then told us that her teen daughter had her period and wasn't up to anyone going in her room. She did open the door about 1 inch and we peeked through! Also, same house the 12 yr old son had started to make a pond in the garden - basically he had just dug a really deep hole in the middle of the lawn 🤷‍♀️

Husband and I went to view a house to rent. The place was a shit tip, obviously a party house. There was a massive handmade sign in the kitchen that said "ketamine this way"

The cabinet kitchen story is actually very sweet! Bless him

In England: kitchen with two large ( very large) lizards and three snakes, one of which was not in its tank. I didn’t know reptiles could make a smell.

In France : loads of weird experiences, houses there tend to be more ‘individual‘, lots of people build their own to their own ( not very competent) plan. Some that stand out : big house where the renovators had given up at the magnitude of the task and just bricked up one of the very large downstairs reception rooms. It wasn’t accessible at all by door , though you could still look in at a very tiny window.
Old house literally under a pylon which was making a very loud humming noise.

Chased off as soon as we got out of the car by angry geese, never got to see inside.

Proud owner who insisted that DH go under the crawl space under the house , because it was a great protection against flooding ( yes, it had a lake, too) DH refused politely.

Bloke who had installed a central heating boiler inside a bread oven which he had then ‘restored’ so you couldn’t get to it to take the front off and service it. That was the house where the bathroom tap came off in my hand when I turned it to test the water pressure.

We did finally find a house we liked and bought, even though it had a foot operated wine press eight foot across and all the storage and fermenting barrels ( empty unfortunately) in an outbuilding.

#1Went to view a grotty first floor flat in a beautiful high ceilinged Victorian house.

Massive dog shit parallel to the entrance steps. Chatting to the estate agent pretending we weren’t directly next to a huge turd. Man approached, enters the gate, treads in the dog shit and marches into the house.

This was the current tenant. He’d walked through the hall, noticed the dog shit and was in the living room scraping his shoe into the carpet to try and remove it 🤢

The garden came with the flat. But the garden steps from the first floor to the ground floor were missing. You opened the door to outside and there was just a sheer drop 😬

#2 Went to an open house. Semi detached, fancy house attached but this one looked more “worn”. The brickwork was crumbling, various bits of ceiling were missing, stairs with no banisters and the outhouse was the only toilet. But worse. There was a large bee nest in the master bedroom. Complete with bee swarm. Estate agent said they couldn’t legally remove it as they were protected… Cue people running from the building followed by bees 🤣

#3 Being sold as a 3 bed house and plans showed a loft conversion. Owner had actually simply boarded the loft and strung up electrics that were plugged into an extension cord that filtered down through the loft hatch. How did you get into this loft space? You climbed the hall wall like a climbing frame. The owner had installed wood ledges and her son used to climb them ape style to get to his bedroom.

#4 & 5 both had the same issue. Lovely looking house online. Both had changed the internal layout and flipped the staircase round. Both had chosen to do this to create an extra bedroom by changing the upstairs landing. However, the move meant you could no longer open the front door and walk into the house 😮 You opened it and couldn’t move forward as you were effectively in the space under the stairs. The second one you couldn’t even open the door fully as the staircase didn’t clear the door opening. The first time I visited a house like this I was pretty shocked. The second time I encountered it I thought “clearly this isn’t as rare as I would expect. Some people think this isn’t a big deal”🤔 Both just used their back door instead 🤷‍♀️

#6 Idyllic country house. Birds singing, air fresh, church bell rang… Like the setting of a Miss Marple. Walked into the house, saw a massive water stain, looked up… no roof over the entire hallway. Just missing and not mentioned in the blurb.

#7 open house detached property. People parking in the public street. Neighbour next door came out, started huffing and puffing about people parking near her house. She vanished, returned with a wheelbarrow full of rockery stones - much bigger than bricks. She then dotted these round the 3 cars that she was most annoyed with whilst everyone watched open mouthed. Don’t know how that panned out as I’d left thinking “imagine living next to someone like that”🤣.

A loose snake and a used a condom. In the same house.

I've only really seen filthy homes including one with ashtrays full to the brim.

I did view one that appeared to be made in part of plastic but I couldn't see well because the electricity was cut off and it was the evening in winter.

But my bf had a right game selling a relatives house when in the survey we found out that the bathroom didn't have foundations.

A beautiful large 4 bed house that was for sale after falling into disrepair. I think the bank repossessed. Something nasty went down there, someone had gone crazy with an axe or something and left everything as it was. A beautiful girls bedroom had gashes all over. What looked like a teen boys room had floor boards pulled up, curtains ripped etc. Even more terrifying the master bedroom was destroyed, everything smashed up and the with the words 'WHORE' repeatedly written in red paint all over the doors and walls. Absolutely horrifying.

might she have been blind? I had a boss whose mum was blind and lived alone and he said she didn't put the lights on unless he went to visit (or any other sighted person, presumably.)