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?

Feeling v innocent but what is a ride on sex toy?

I’ve seen a house where an entire floor had been given over to cats - about 20 of them- who had pissed everywhere to the extent that being there made my eyes water and made me cough because of the overwhelming ammonia. Best bit was the fact that the EA was also suffering but simultaneously trying to pretend that everything was completely normal and desirable.

Also a house with a bluebottle infestation.

As a seller, I used to get myself and the kids out of the house and let the EA do the viewings. DS once popped back in quickly (before the people arrived) to go to the loo. After the viewing we went back inside and I realised that DS had left a superhumanly enormous floater in the loo, which must have been a surprise in an otherwise pristine house. They did come back for a second viewing 😂

Not my story but my best friend is a photographer for an estate agent. He went to photograph one home and in the master bedroom, there was a camera and lighting set up around the bed. He said it was definitely a permanent construction. Upon closer inspection, there were also some sort of restraints tied to the bed posts. The homeowner accompanied him from room to room whilst he took the shots and didn't flinch in the master. She actually stepped around the tripod to open the curtains for more light 🤣 I couldn't wait to see the listing but he'd managed to exclude the camera and lighting rig up like a pro. The viewers would have been in for a treat though. 🤣

@Sparrowball The entire place was gutted back to brick anyway so looked far far worse before it got better. It was a beaut of a house though I still miss it

A mannequin dressed in full nazi uniform

Went to view a huge flat in a period property conversion, very reasonably priced. Empty and a bit dated but huge rooms and a lot of potential, except the bathroom which was dark, very dated avocado suite and an internal room so no window. For some reason it gave me the creeps. Turned out a local vicar was murdered and his body was dismembered in the bath only a year or two before it went on the market.

Another one I was viewing which was for sale but the current tenants were still living there and stayed as the estate agent showed me and my mum round. There was a door in the kitchen that wasn't explained eg that's a larder etc. Mum said "oh is this a cupboard?" And simultaneously opened it. To find the tenants husband hiding in there with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He looked blank, my mum looked blank... then he tapped on the door frame and said he was checking for woodworm. Mum closed the cupboard and we desperately tried not to look at each other otherwise we would have dissolved into fits of giggles.

Remembered looking round a repossessed property with DH & it made us feel really sad. The previous owners had taken everything down to the lightbulbs & there were children’s toys left in the garden.

Small ish 3 bed terraced with 2 adults and 3 teenagers living in it, so full to the brim with possessions, we literally tripped over shoes in each room.
Every room painted (badly) a bright colour including a purple bathroom which was only accessible via a bedroom.They bred gerbils, so any space left was full of gerbil cages/equipment and it smelled rodenty
A house that belonged to a biker who did re enactment, filthy and full of random bits of bikes, armour and swords.
filthy mattress with no sheets in main bedroom with massive purple dildo lying on it.
Each room was worse than the last and me and the estate agent got the giggles.
Turned out Gerbil House lady worked in my daughters nursery, and asked me if I’d liked the house during drop off (I was polite and told her I thought it wouldn’t be big enough)

We went to view a traditional terraced house. The EA didn't have a key for the back door so we had to peer at the courtyard type garden out of the kitchen windows. We thought it strange that someone had thrown rice all up the walls. Until the 'rice' moved and we realised it was thousands of maggots. We didn't buy it!

I’m really agog at some of these. The worst one for me was viewing a dog with dog shit all over the back garden. Nothing in comparison to these though!

This site is always good for a laugh:
terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/

House viewing where the vendor showed us round. She hurriedly placed reed diffusers around as we walked through. This was a failed attempt to mask the smell of recently smoked cannabis.
In the second bedroom I commented on some glittery plastic wall panels behind the bed. She replied that they needed something easy to wipe clean as their child had a problem with "smearing".
Went out to the garden where we could clearly see her partner stood in a shed smoking a joint.

A house, where the owner had piled ip
So much stuff in the third bedroom, we just had to believe her it was there. We couldn't open the door.

It was advertised as having a basement gym, sauna and office. The basement was an airless, windowless cellar, accessed by a "staircase" that was little more than a steep wooden ladder through a door in the kitchen. Definitely not building regs! But genuinely, there was a wooden sauna, a room of gym equipment, weights, bench etc. and a room set up as an office. Goodness know how they got there. It was cold (despite being 20 degrees outside), damp, musty etc. there was a river in the tiny garden. The seller said she'd never known it flood. I raised my eyebrows silently (I work for the environment agency). It flooded the next winter.

Really can't compete with some of the entries in this thread! The worst we saw was a completely unmortgageable house (not explained on the listing, or we wouldn't have driven 1.5 hours or taken the day off work to get there), with no access to the property except by the grace of an unknown farmer. There was no road to the house. It was a footpath. We hotfooted it out of there as soon as we could reasonably extricate ourselves.

Rats, and I don’t mean the pet variety!
It was an awful house, clothes all over the floor, beds not made, toilet brown and not flushed 🤮, but the worst was the sound of the ‘eeking’ rats literally running around us!

I viewed a stunning cottage but it was a wet day and the vendors had just got back from a walk with three very wet golden retrievers.

I love dogs but the house ABSOLUTELY stunk of them and it put me off completely.

The estate agent phoned afterwards for feedback. I told him the truth and suggested they pass this onto the vendors to help them in future. He didn't seem keen to do so!

We also viewed one where the bottom half of the kitchen door was missing and part of the bottom of the back outside door was missing because their dog had gnawed his way through it!

A first-floor Tyneside flat I ended up buying over 20 years ago. On viewings it was cluttered but wasn't the worst; the decor was 70's era and not what you'd expect from a young couple of teachers (orange/gold crushed velvet curtains, worn brown carpets, and had clearly not been decorated for some time even though they'd been there about 5 years) but the bones of it were great and the area was sought after and it was a bargain. Only when I moved in and it was completely empty did we discover how utterly filthy it was, and a rug had been hiding an enormous stain on the lounge carpet that was sticky. The piece de resistance was the wooden toilet seat that had clear large teeth marks all over it (dog we assumed) but the previous owners didn't own a dog and must have used that seat for the entire time they were there. It was the first thing to go.

Can anyone explain the toilet on the stairs?

when we moved into our house there was a toilet in the porch... with a thin caravan type door blocking it in the corner. you could reach the letterbox from the seat so very handy if the postie delivered a newspaper while it was in use.

there was also a bath and sink in the corner of one large bedroom, with no privacy screening, just plonked in. and what used to be a tiny bathroom had been turned into a stupidly small bedroom. no idea at all what was going through the previous owners mind.

we did see all this when viewing the house but it was such an amazing place we took it anyway. i can't even talk about the scary basement (with yet another odd toilet placement)

@hangry Please tell me the porch loo isn't still there!

I can see how someone might just be able to put up something round the toilet on the stairs, but why continue the tiles up the stairs? Especially as the tile finishes neatly at the first step.

I'm overthinking this, aren't I?😂

One of the first houses we viewed we were shown around by the landlord. Nearly all the house was 'decorated' with the brown panelling sheets that were delivered riguer in the 70's

One bedroom was a freezing cold damp (you could smell it) converted shed/outhouse

It was filthy and cluttered, but the worse bit.....cat shit everywhere

House was a beautifully decorated new build that had been lived in less than a year. It had clearly been meant to be someone's "forever home" but all furniture and traces of previous owners gone, brand new carpet (ie never been stepped on) in the lounge which clashed with the wallpaper, the house had a really really weird/eerie/sad feel about it which I wasn't expecting from a newish build. The front door opened into the lounge, stairs to go up were in the lounge (where the new carpet was). Opened the under the stairs cupboard to find -

a) completely different carpet (dark grey in the lounge, pale cream in the cupboard).

b) Which was COVERED in a huge pool and multiple spatters of old blood. Corresponding stain on wall inside of cupboard including what I assume had been a head wound against the main wall. I'm talking LOADS of blood.

Our theory was someone had been badly beaten/stabbed and locked in cupboard, and either received medical attention in the lounge or was dragged through it, making a carpet change necessary.

I asked about the vendor and she said she didn't know anything about who had lived there before as the house wasn't being sold by the previous owner but through some sort of company.

Needless to say we didn't put in an offer. The EA phoned to ask for feedback and we said "the huge bloodstains in the under stairs cupboard were offputting" and she just sighed and said thanks. She'd originally stood in front of the cupboard and said that it was just a bog standard cupboard no need to look! I'd
explained storage was an issue and wanted to see how far back it went and she'd huffed and puffed and refused to put the light on until I insisted.

We did a google search to see if there had been a murder on that street (it was a tiny cul-de-sac of 5 houses) and there was no report but there were multiple reports of domestic violence in that cul-de-sac which had suddenly ended about 5 months earlier. Very sad. Someone had obviously had a terrible experience in that lovely house.

I went on a second viewing with an electrician I didn’t know to get some quotes. The house was a mess and a total renovation.
The owner had died, which I did know. What I didn’t know was her family were due to be there when we arrived and while we we’re walking around discussing ripping this house to shreds they’re all in other rooms literally crying and reminiscing over the deceased, while trying to avoid us…

We once looked at a house where a motorbike had been dismantled in the lounge! There were bits everywhere! We didn’t buy it but not for this reason!