Weirdest things you've seen when viewing a property 🏡🏷️

[SaraHoliday]

What are the weirdest things you've seen when viewing a property?

Not as wacky as a lot of previous posts, but the house was a complete tip with boxes and bags of stuff everywhere, still had a 1950s style kitchen complete with overhead clothes dryer and a teenager who wouldn't let us view their room. But the garden was absolutely immaculate. We didn't consider buying as the house was too messy and depressing and it was hard to see what the rooms were like. (Plus the garden would soon have gone to pot in our hands....!)

We went to see a house, it was 7 figures, just to give context, looked nice in the pictures, in a nice part of the country, but it was a long shot for us.

it was filthy, utterly filthy, as in actual rubbish all over the floor. Greasy dirty worktops, dirty dishes everywhere, the cat litter box was in the master bedroom and the smell made my eyes water with the amonia. It stung. The towels were grimy, the bed linen grey with dirt and the kids were filthy, clothes all over the bedroom floors.

honestly i couldn’t see past it, the owner was done up to the nines. Full make up, perfect clothes and hair, she said hi to us, walked outside, and said to the agent, working house! As she went to sit in the shit hole of a garden.

we came in and the hall was fine, we walked into the kitchen first off, and my first thought was just shock, it was so so filthy, it was so caked in grease, dirty dishes and pots on every surface, the floor crunchy with crumbs and food, over flowing bins, old food left out rotting.

then we walked into the living room and it got worse, there was just rubbish all over the floor, sweetie wrappers, fizzy drink bottles, crisp bags, old remnants of fruit and food on the carpet, we had to pick our way through it,

all three of us, my husband, the agent and I were all just looking round in horror, then we went upstairs and it got worse again, the dirty grimy bathroom, filthy towels on the floor, shower door and bath with just old mould and dirt, the smell of cat piss in rhe master, rhe beds unmade and clearly dirty, like the sheets had never been washed, you could actually see the grime.

I couldn’t beleive she looked so perfect and lived like that, the agent said she’d been told multiple times. She looked so perfect and lived like an absolute and utter pig.

I’ve never seen anything like it, but it was so incongruous, as she was so glamourous.

Owls, everywhere

Viewing a flat in a Georgian house where there was a very big cupboard above head height accessible only by a ladder. The estate agent told us it was where the previous owner used to sleep then climbed the ladder and opened the door and inside was a sleeping bag, rucksack and alarm clock. The kitchen was only half renovated. The agent told us it was unfinished because the builder had died of a heart attack whilst working there and then vaguely pointed to a spot in the corner by the sink. The shared hallway and staircase had no lightbulb and there were stains on the 1960s wallpaper which looked like someone with greasy hair had been slinked around the walls like a cat. Straight out of Psycho.

The estate agent looked like Lurch and wore blue velvet shoes with his initial embroidered on them.

Funnily enough we bought somewhere around the corner instead and now every time we pass the Psycho house my DH whispers 'The devil told me to skin you alive' in my ear.

Police evidence bags....

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just remembered one from the time I bought my first house.

I liked the location and house, got chatting to the owners (a couple who were about 10 years older than I). They were all positive and eager for us to do a deal as I was a first-time buyer and they had inherited a property.

We got onto the subject of work, the lady of the couple said she worked at 'x' (reasonably large employer in the area). I said that I worked there too. The lady went deathly pale and changed the subject when I asked if she knew someone I knew in that department. I checked the email distribution list at work - definitely not on it.

I didn't make an offer based on that as my gut instinct thought something was off. Why lie?

I later bought a property in the same road and found out they were embroiled in a neighbour dispute over an extension.

Trust your instinct!

On a survey, I encountered taxidermy everywhere, of animals the occupier explained he'd shot. It started with deer antlers, then I saw a stuffed baboon sitting on a tree stump! Extraordinary.

Jesus, that's grim. Just... why?!

A life sized Satan falling from the sky (aka as the kitchen ceiling). It was a double height room but it dominated the room and was such a dark and oppressive figure. I walked straight out again. The owner was an artist, created puppets and was very successful in the film industry so it was in a way understandable. Sort of...

I saw a pair of pants soaking in a half eaten bowl.of Rice Krispies.

The perfect metaphor for melancholy.

Two years' worth of junk mail, piled on the non-handrail side of every step of the stairway, all the way up.

The char marks on the walls of the front room, where a fire had happened; the room was no longer used (which it could have been).

The catshit in the middle of the bed in the bedroom that stank.

The resident sitting on a stool in the small kitchen, watching TV.

Yes, this was all the same house.

Rats. Pet rats. Not just one or two, they had a whole room filled with rat cages and a rat run. The whole house stank of rat pee.
Another where every picture was of the pet guinea pigs ... posing with the house owners. Huge life size one over the fireplace and many many pictures in every room. I mean they were cute but it was excessive.
A hoarders house. We had to weave our way through piles and piles of stuff. There was literally a path to a chair from the kitchen. It was a death trap.

We have a ‘maiden’ in our kitchen (an overhead clothing airer). It’s very practical. We do ensure it’s not ‘occupied’ if we have company. 😆

House we rent now.

Stuff everywhere, all over the floor, all over the beds, every surface. Stuff on floor was a good few feet deep. Not weird hoarder stuff but normal stuff, just far too much of it. No idea how they moved around the house or found anything.They apparently had 3 kids here but the 2 double bedrooms had beds completely covered in stuff. There was no sign of kids stuff anywhere except one pack of nappies.

Weirdly I could tell the house was fine underneath it all.

Yes. No-one wants to see a 'maiden in distress' 🤭

Master bedroom had a glitter ball above the bed and a massive jacuzzi bath on a plinth in front of the fitted wardrobes. Gave our removal men a chuckle anyway !

so far as i am aware you need to get special permission to bury people in private land.

Walkee in to find the world's worst oven being scrubbed by world's hottest cleaner - he was lush 🤪

🤣

We looked at a house that had an all-black bedroom. The bed looked like it had just been vacated before we entered the house, and the room smelled like the (probably teenage) occupant rarely left it.

What on earth!

Not sure if you're including viewing rentals properties/house shares, but the weirdest one I had was when I was needing to move to a different house share and this one property had basically every decent sized room converted to a bedroom, both the 2 upstairs bedrooms having a shared bathroom between them that could be accessed by both bedrooms by 2 doors.... and one of those was occupied by the quite older, live-in male landlord....and the other room which was the available one was a horrible mishmash of 60's-80's really worn, old furniture and decor, like something from a hostel....there was loads of other funny things too (the kitchen and shared fridge was in a right state)....needless to say I RAN from that place as fast as I could. I was desperate to find a new place at the time....but not THAT desperate!

A 'friend' (I use the term loosely) insisted we should view a house across the street from her, when she heard we were looking to move. There were lots of chickens running around the living room! We didn't buy it.