To ask for your worst experiences viewing houses?

[DSHathawayGivesMeFannyGallops]

Please cheer me up! I had the viewing from hell last night; the place was filthy and you could tell the Estate Agent was mortified. Due to other issues, I declined to put in an offer and have other viewings lined up, but I've started to exhaust my area for now and I'm feeling a little jaded.

Please tell me I'm not alone in backing away in horror and tell me all about the worst viewings you've had!

Oh- and I'm not a journo. The Daily Mail can piss off and write their own shitty copy.

Viewing a room where a lady was advertising for a lodger, I asked about the multiple framed couple photos of her and a man around the house - in the living room, dining room, even in the bedroom she was advertising. No photos of anyone else.

"He was my partner, but he's not with me now" she said sadly.
"I'm so sorry, he passed away?".
"Oh no, he married a different lady living in this street. They come to dinner sometimes" - to a house filled with framed pictures of him and his ex?!

Hubby and I went to view a house. The house stank of wet dog and the dog had ripped the downstairs of the house apart. Holes in the doors, kitchen cupboards destroyed, flooring ripped up and chewed in all the rooms downstairs.

I have 4 dogs, I'm well aware of the chewing they go through at puppy stage or if they're anxious but I've never seen a dog cause that much damage.

Many years ago when prices were shooting through the roof - offered on a house, offer accepted and did the survey. Then discovered the owner had already exchanged contracts before the survey was even arranged but hadn't told us. Lost the last of our savings, total bastards!

While I was at uni my flatmate and I were looking for a new place to rent. We saw this godawful place with mould all down the walls and so much crap everywhere you could hardly move. The agent, presumably trying to be positive because he also looked shocked at the state of it, said "oh yes well it's a nice quiet building, no noisy neighbours or anything". He'd barely finished the sentence when there was an almighty crash against one of the walls and we could hear the two people next door SCREAMING at each other, things like "you f*king bitch, you absolute whore, fk you, you c*t, I hate you", it went on and on. The two of us plus the agent stood in silence for a few minutes before beating a hasty retreat. Surprisingly we did not apply for that one

Photos can be so deceptive. Went up see what looked like a lovely house by the River Thames. It was dressed immaculately so we had high hopes....

As soon as we walked in to the outbuilding which was being used as an Airbnb I knew this wasn't going to be the one. Dirty.... We go inside the house, dirty. From the plates on the table, the windowsills, floors or any flat surface it was disgusting. The house needed a deep clean. The smell would never go, musty & cigarettes . Yuk
We did make it upstairs, god knows why we bothered. Carpets all soiled.

Don't give up hope. We looked at a lot of houses. The next viewing after the one above is the house we are in now

I agree that photos can be so deceptive. I recently viewed a house which was, I estimate, half the size that it had looked on right move. The proportions on the real house were completely different and the rooms were tiny and cramped. The stairs were incredibly steep because of the tiny area they had to fit into. I was really annoyed because my time had been wasted by the misrepresentation online.

I wish houses were advertised with the clear square footage, not the number of "bedrooms". It would save so much time.

The mention of swirly artex reminded me... I went to see a flat (this was in the 80's). Good size on paper, so looked like it could be suitable. Every single wall had, what I can only describe as, plaster effects. It looked like a christmas cake when you try to make a rough snow scene out of royal icing. There were deep peaks and troughs which were terrible dust catchers, and therefore were looking very grubby. If you had tried to clean it (or even brushed against it) you would have cut yourself with all the sharp bits sticking out. As I was looking round, all I could think was how much it would cost to put right - money I didn't have.

Whilst at uni my friends and I were looking for a house for second year. We came across one that was advertised through the uni quite cheaply so we decided to and given that the uni endorsed this property it had to be to some standard.

We got there and the dining room was stuck in the 50's, the kitchen had carpet with food stuck to it. The living room was situated upstairs and had cages upon cages of guinea pigs, stains on the floor along with pellets of poo. The floorboards on the upstairs landing were sinking and the carpet was coming up, my friend nearly tripped over. During the visit the landlord turned up to collect his rent which was cash in hand.

Safe to say we didn't offer on that one.

Some of these are horrendous! Mine are not that bad comparatively, just odd!
When we first moved to the CI, we rented what we thought was a lovely big house. The EA failed to mention that a section of the house was actually a self contained flat complete with occupant downstairs. There was literally a thin wall and a normal door with a lock separating us from this tenant! We moved after a year because I had 4 children and had to keep telling them to keep the noise down!
When looking for a second place we viewed a lovely farm house only the driveway to get up to the patch of land it was on was so steep it could only be accessed by a 4x4 (which luckily we had). Once up there we were informed that the owners were currently building a second house in which to live, opposite the farm house so effectively the owner could peer out the window at the tenants any time they liked so you wouldn’t be able to relax! There was also an old car half sunk into the grass outside! We declined that one! 😂
Another had an actual bore hole well in the front garden which was the houses source of water supply!

We viewed a house where the owner had a 'bouncy' alsation. That put me off for a start as I had visions of dog turds in the garden infesting our little boys with that taxiplas-whatnot eye disease.

Then she mentioned her DH was an undertaker so I imagined the dog burying the odd spare femur in the garden, plus my having nightmares in the undertaker's bedroom.

Bouncy alsation then bounced at my five-year-old and knocked him over.

Viewing terminated, no offer made.

Once went to a house viewing and there was a turd floating in the toilet :/

Friends lost out on a lovely period house in need of ‘upgrading’ at auction but the highest bidder couldn’t pay so it went back to auction. Unfortunately in the meantime ‘architectural salvagers’ had broken into the house and stolen fireplaces, stairs, wood panelling, slates from the roof, floorboards, door handles, light fittings... caused hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage.

We viewed one in the village we eventually bought in: every carpet squelched, the 3 bedrooms were in a chain with the bathroom at the far end, and there was no actual right of way to the front door. The agent told us that the neighbour would charge a nominal sum to have wayleave granted. The eventual purchaser wound up paying £10,000!

@goodmoaning1980 I’d have rather seen that on viewing instead of seeing it after purchase plus on toilet seat which is what I was confronted with when we moved into this house !
Plus a load of other horrors including black mouldy fridge and piss covered carpet.

I went to one which was a really lovely house on the face of it, in a great rural setting. Unfortunately it became obvious very quickly that the couple who owned it were swingers. They had also ripped out the kitchen and replaced it with a horrendous black kitchen.. in fact much of the house had a black theme.

The vibes the house gave off were not good. They had two dogs who seemed quite menacing too, they followed us around barking relentlessly and looking daggers.

The living room had a TV literally the size of one wall, and the owner was sitting watching it on a beautiful sunny day.

The house sat on the market for a long time until we stopped checking It's probably still for sale...

I remember one flat we viewed back in the early 90's. It was in a nice modern block and we were expecting little to be done. the bathroom suite was pink - fair enough but they had stuck chocolate brown cork tiles on the walls, floor and ceiling. Never before or since seen anything like it! There was also a huge pineapple shaped homemade bar in the living room. The owners were showing us round and we both kept saying 'this is nice' making sure we had no eye contact with each other.

Also remember viewing a lovely flat where a middle aged gentleman was showing us around. Took us into the living room and found a sulky young male lounging in his briefs drinking milk. He nodded to us and then kept tutting every time the older one said anything. I was waiting for him to say excuse my moody son but he said nothing and we had the feeling we'd just interrupted either a row or something else! Still drive past the flat today and laugh.

We viewed a house whilst I was in the early stages of pregnancy with our second child. I suffered from dreadful nausea but rarely was actually sick. The point being, that we went to view this particular house and it was so foul smelling ((on a hot July day) that I felt overwhelmingly ill. Think pet food, indoor rabbit run and unwashed greasy pans in the sink. I had to run and throw up violently in their downstairs (carpeted ) toilet but missed the target quite spectacularly.
I felt dreadful but the house was a shit tip and they should not have shown in in such a disgusting state.

We did not put in an offer

@Suze74 - I've seen quite a few boxy wee flats where the pics were taken at very flattering angles!

@steppemum it's not just about the dirt. It's about neglect, amongst other things for the place I looked at in the OP. It would have taken me a lot of extra money to right things that basic upkeep would have kept simple. Money I don't have. The vendor is also missing out- the EA told me that she had to put it on for a lot less than she wanted, she'd had to drop the price subsequently and the only offer was 20k under the reduced asking price.

When my partner was looking to buy his first home we viewed loads of 1-3 bedrooms as long as they were on budget. Some are quite memorable!

1. The one and only 'open day' we attended - a detached house "in need of renovation" - looked OK from the outside, a period property in the middle of a small field - walking towards it we spied a [small] notice on the fence that informed the public a whacking big factory was about to be built in the field, right near the house. We figured as we were there we might as well have a quick look. Estate agent opened the door and said "up to you if you want to take your shoes off" - I removed mine, partner did not - crap, big mistake, as she opened the door wider and we stepped in my socks literally stuck to the carpet. Loads of other people were milling about which made the house feel a lot smaller and nowhere did the information sheet mention the about-to-be-built factory; I asked the estate agent about it loudly enough for other viewers to hear - some left immediately (reducing claustrophobic feel to the house somewhat). Anyway, I knew there was no way I wanted to live next door to a noisy factory and was having trouble walking that day anyway so my partner took a quick peek upstairs (and said it was at least as minging as downstairs), and at the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom beyond the kitchen. Just before I headed for the door to leave he came back through the kitchen obviously fighting the urge to laugh and said "you have to see this". I struggled to the bathroom and have never seen anything like it before or since - everything was in a swirly marbled=effect pattern of several different shades of purple/mauve/lilac, even the over-sized bath, the walls, carpet, ceiling - like a bad acid trip in a mishap at the marble factory that had exploded next to a paint factory - horrendous, but funny! I threw my now manky socks in their bin as I left and went home barefoot and had a bath straight away as I felt grubby.

2: Not minging but mad....a 4-bed which we thought a bit odd but thought we might get spare rooms and a lot more space for the same money so worth a look. Door answered by lovely woman who looked like a white witch in a full length white sparkly evening gown (middle of the day). The house was rammed full of taxidermy animals and birds, surrounded by an array of wind chimes, dream catchers, lots of weird, wonderful and colourful 'things'. The garden was similarly adorned but minus the taxidermy, and you couldn't tell how big it was as you had to fight your way through bushes and dangly stuff to get anywhere. That said, it was a tiny house and most of the 1-2 beds we'd viewed were bigger in total area.

He didn't put offer in for either of those two. The one he did eventually buy was well under budget as it needed so much work doing: crappy kitchen had to be completely done from scratch; bathroom also needed suite replacing and other stuff including the plumbing sorted out; some lovely (meant sarcastically) [fake] wood veneer sheets had to be unstuck from the living room walls and holographic/mirror-effect/bright yellow wallpaper (to be fair the estate agent did tell us to bring sunglasses for viewing) stripped from bedrooms - looked much better with new kitchen and bathroom, re-plastering, re-painting, re-papering etc. Still living there (used to have great neighbours, now s**t neighbours we'd love to be able to get away from).

"I can never understand why people say - Oh its a mess, don;t buy it. The messy stuff just gets thrown away."

I'd agree with this, @steppemum - to a certain extent. But if a house is seriously dirty, that suggests to me that the people living there haven't looked after it at all - no cleaning and tidying implies no proper maintenance either, and once you (or the professional cleaning company) have shovelled out all the surface messy stuff, you might find all sorts of expensive-to-fix problems lurking underneath - problems that a surveyor might not have been able to see, due to all the mess.

Agree with SDGT. Light that never worked properly. Tap that fell apart every third use. Radiators that didn't get hot. Toilet that never flushed without the aid of a jug of water. Damp patch that just got a roller of paint over it for photos...

@Ginlinessisnexttogodliness you threw up all over someone else's bathroom whilst viewing a house but didn't clean it up? That's beyond rank dirty house or not

you threw up all over someone else's bathroom whilst viewing a house but didn't clean it up? That's beyond rank dirty house or not

Where did she say she didn't clean it up?

We were looking in a city we didn't know after DH was offered a job at the university there. The prices were a bit higher than our existing house and on only one salary, it was going to be a stretch. So we were happy to see a new-build semi for sale on the outskirts of the city, with a fairly reasonable price tag. We went along. Nothing much wrong with the house - bland, a bit small. Standard new build. Looked out of the window and there was a massive -enormous- HUGE ruddy landfill site right across the road. Heaps of rubbish, whirling seagulls, smell, presumably a healthy rat population, the lot. Closer to the house than my current car is parked on my own driveway.
We walked. What with that house, the one with the lurid tartan carpet throughout and the one where the back garden was entirely given over to ornamental fish ponds, he never did take that job.