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.

Dead mouse on the floor - EA was like "oh, that shouldn't be there" and kicked it off to the side.

Tiny flat, 10 bengal cats inside. Wow. not sure that flat will ever stop smelling of cat.

I've seen some disgusting places while house hunting, especially for my first property, but the one I will never forget was a small terrace house in a state of some disrepair that had previously been owned by an old lady who collected porcelain dolls - and very successfully. Every single room in the house, including the mouldy bathroom, was filled with dolls, all with their eyes turned towards the door so you would look into those hundreds of dead eyes as soon as you entered... It would have made a great horror movie set to be fair.

I went to view one with my brother that had what can only be described as a murder door. It had a door in the hall that lead to a what looked like a self built brick shack, it was the only entrance to the shack, no windows in the shack and it had 13! Dead bolts and padlocks on the door from top to bottom. I asked the estate agent what it was 3 times and each time he changed the subject, the third time he just walked away and ignored me! We didn't buy that one.

I viewed a tiny, cramped, dark and gloomy house along with about 20 other people because it was the seller's open day. All I remember was other big loud people yelling to each other and the shuffling of bodies.

I will never ever attend an open day for a house sale again. I want to take my time and consider things without people standing in my way and shoving me along.

We went to view a house where the owner showed us around. She answered the door saying ‘just to warn you about the dog, he doesn’t like strangers’ as she held him (snarling) by the collar. She then followed us from room to room, with the growling dog, which kept breaking free from her and trying to bite our ankles. DH asked if she could put the dog away and she said ‘no, it will make him worse’ . So we walked out.

Another house stank. The owner was taking us from room to room and when we reached the bathroom the toilet was clearly full of turds . The owner didn’t seem to notice and was babbling in about how big and airy the room was.

Last but not least, another house was just mental. There were doors that when you opened them, there was a brick wall behind. It was apparently ‘four bedroomed’ but you had to go through each bedroom to get to the next, and the last two had internal windows looking into each bedroom . The owner also proudly told us two of the bedrooms (the indoor windows ones) were soundproofed! It was like a pervy Alice in Wonderland house.

Viewed a house that was disgustingly dirty. Used sanitary towel in a sink, black loo, greasy kitchen and to top it all a teenage lad in one of the bedrooms watching porn on a laptop.

We would have bought the house as the size and location fitted our needs and a deep clean would have made it liveable but the sellers were so flaky and kept changing their minds about whether they were selling at all we decided to pull out and look elsewhere.

The vendor’s dishwasher was malfunctioning and giving off a really vile smell. She was very apologetic but I was trying not to gag and couldn’t get out quickly enough.

I can’t even believe the EA took us round this one terraced house, it was absolutely filthy. Mattresses on floor and greasy head marks on the wall behind, along with hair attached.

Sadly looked like one of the rooms was a little girls with a really dirty mattress and pink blanket and a once pink now black toy pushchair.

The light switches were thick with grease, the kitchen had beans on the wall and you couldn’t see the bottom of the sink for odd coloured dirt.

It made me feel really sad

Looking for somewhere to rent- was a studio flat so everything except loo in one room... said room was an old shop so had a floor to ceiling window covering the entire wall and the EA had to roll up the external shutter so we could see out- which was directly onto a busy main road. It was like being in a fish tank. But £200/month was kinda tempting!!

Mr husband viewed a house when he was working in the town we were relocating to, he narrowed them down during the week for me to see the good ones at the weekend.

Ground floor was entirely carpeted in that matting stuff that looks like it's woven out of hairy string, maybe sisal or coconut?
He was a bit baffled by this and asked about it.

Whenever the house flooded it was easy to lift up and dry in the garden.

We now live in the town, but up the hill, well clear of the flood-plain.

I'll bet EA have some tales to tell.

Went to visit a rental place.
It was OKish but was very much decorated to the owners taste. Very chintzy, covered in little china ornaments.
It would have been like being a guest in someone elses house.
The owner was obvously very proud of the flat and very touchy about any shortcomings being pointed out.
I asked her very nicely if a little bit of mould in the bathroom could be treated and painted over before we moved in. I even added that i absolutley understood that bathrooms get condensation and its not really not a big deal. She was mortally offended and flat out denied there was mould. Err....I'm standing right here and I Can see it.
Last straw was when she showed me the bedroom and I asked if I could replace the single bed with a double at my own cost.
She sucked her breath in and said "Any WHY would you need a double bed" In reteropspect I should have replied in a loud cheerful voice "Because i'm a grown up and I might wnat to have SEX!"
Sadly, I mumbled something about liking the extra space to stretch out.
She was an elderly Cypriot woman and lived in the flat downstairs from the one she was hoping to rent. It wouldn't have worked out between us.

Absolutely nothing compared to most of these but I was shown around a really cluttered and untidy house by a lovely lady ,her 4 children and a very bouncy Labrador. She was desperate to sell so they could move with her husband’s job. There was nothing wrong with the house that a skip, a kennel and some daycare wouldn’t fix. I hope someone told her as I wasn’t brave enough 😔

20ft of living room wall had been given over to a home constructed Chinchilla enclosure. It filled the room and stank like you wouldn't believe. We bought the house further up the street.

Drove past the local prison last night and as I sat in traffic I realised the house directly opposite the huge wooden gates was for sale. It's an old prison with huge castle walls and the road quite narrow. I did comment to DH that I imagined selling that house was a challenge.

We saw some sights when we were house hunting last year. The worst one was the house that had a pond built into the living room floor!! Koi fish swimming around too. Estate agent called it a “feature” .

Our current house had a dead rat in the kitchen, smelt disgusting and had damp and asbestos downstairs. It looked like it hadn't been touched since the 70s and been at some points used as bedsits. We were given about 200 keys, which we mostly threw away. We bought it, got the council tax suspended for being uninhabitable, negotiated access two weeks before exchange to clean up the top floor, moved in with toddlers and did the place up mostly ourselves (only I have a FT job, so my partner could spend most of his days working on the house). Sometimes it's the only way to move up the housing ladder. Good luck with your search you will find what you are after.

My first flat took me two years to find because my budget was so tiny (the estate agent told me the owner had died on the toilet; so the first thing I did when I moved in was change it).

A bit past the viewing stage but a friend of mine had paid for a survey of a property that she was going to buy. The survey came back with a severe damp problem. She asked another friend to take a look who was a master builder and he went down to the cellar and the floor was wet. He touched the wall and plaster fell off onto the floor and the water took it clean away. It turns out there was an underground stream running through the house. The owners did know because the washing machine was on bricks.

She didn't buy it.

Mine isn't too bad compared to others! Went to view a house and the owners were going to show us around. Woman opened the door, and by the look on her face I thought that she wasn't expecting us: bordering on hostile. She let us in - almost reluctantly - and the first thing that hit us was the smell of BO. She walked in front of us around the house and the smell was wafting over us the whole time. It transpired that they were relocating and needed to sell, but she clearly didn't WANT to sell. She was very off with us, almost sabotaging the viewing. She kept getting emotional and in the end her DH had to drag her out whilst we finished looking around. I could see them in the garden and she was hysterical. We quickly said our thank yous and scarpered. The house was massively overpriced but they weren't prepared to negotiate at all, and it's still not sold over 6 months later.

Oh and current house had tenants who clearly didn't want the owners to sell. We knew the house was by a busy road as we'd done our research, but when we arrived the place was a tip and every single window and door was flung wide to try and emphasise the noise.

Tenant was there and all she said was 'Oh it's so noisy!' etc. We bought it anyway, it's not that noisy.

Estate agent added a house just on that day to our viewings. He was very excited as it had a conservatory, so we’d get an extra room. When we got there, the conservatory consisted of wall about the width of a door having been knocked through and a lean-to constructed from Perspex that ran the length of the kitchen window. It still had the exterior floor and the Victorian drain running out of the kitchen sink into it. There wasn’t even room for a clothes airer in it - plenty of weeds in it though.

Filthy to the extent there was a poo in the toilet and used sanitary towels on the floor in the bathroom. The stench hit you as you opened the door. House was on for offers over 450,000!!

Went to view a 4 bed Victorian terrace family home with the kids.
Estate agent started stuttering when she saw the boys and suggested they stay in the car.
The house had been a drugs den that had not been cleared. Needles and cans and carpets soiled with bodily fluids (and solids)

Great house if we had the right frame of mind £50k would have gutted it and returned it to a lovely home but I couldn’t face it.

Not an actual house viewing, but a CF viewer that my ex's Mum had when she was selling her house. It was only a modest three bedroomed detached, but he was there nearly two hours. He was on his hands and knees in every room going round checking all the skirting boards, all the plug sockets, window frames etc. He wanted to come again about a week later. Ex's Mum couldn't do the viewing, but ex and myself went to let him in. He was there again for nearly an hour and a half. A few days later, the estate agent phoned to say he wanted to come again and would it be okay if he took some of the carpets up to check the floorboards? Ex's Mum declined. I know buying a house is a big investment and you should make sure the house is up to scratch, but there is a limit!

We went to view a house that smelt so strongly of ammonia that it burnt the inside of your nose. The owner showed us around and she was lovely but the house was absolutely filthy. There were dead wasps everywhere, and someone had punched holes in the walls and doors. On the photos it looked lovely, turned out they were 10 years old though and from when it was last sold

The family who lived there didn't know the owner was selling. The sign wasn't up yet as it had literally just come on the market.

The mum, dad, two adult sons and young teen son were in the middle of a birthday party. It was the 13 year olds birthday. The dad threw the cake at the wall. We said we'd come back but then the mum was shouting sarcastically how we were welcome to come in and ruin their day. So the estate agent just started to show us around. The house was a mess and I ended up just saying we had to leave and felt really uncomfortable.

We went back for a viewing the following week and the dad kept us talking on the doorstep for 40 minutes telling us all about the families bad luck and how they'd not moved in the house that long ago and he'd finally got a job and things were finally looking up. I felt so bad.

We actually bought the house but it turns out that they were not very nice people and he had lied about a lot of things! They ended up leaving the house a disgusting mess and left so much stuff there for us to clear. I tried to give some away on Facebook and the woman who lived there accused me of stealing. Two days after we bought it - we hadn't got round to changing the locks- they let themselves back in and took their stuff. And left dog poo in the stairs.