Tell me your stories about totally deluded house vendors

[Ludicrousoverpricing]

So, been looking at houses for maybe 6ish months now and I just cant get over how completely and utterly deluded some people are about what they think their houses are worth??

So share with me your stories about deluded house vendors or otherwise horror stories regarding moving house? Need something to entertain myself with during this lockdown...

My own experience recently

House 1: nice house and location but horrible on the inside. Needed completely gutting and renovating as hadn't had so much as a lick of paint in 20+ years. Vendor seemed to think that it only needed 'minor modernisation' eg re tiling a bathroom or changing kitchen cupboard doors was required and that said minor modernisation would mean the property would be worth several £10,000s more after the work was done. In reality even with a total new kitchen, bathrooms, flooring etc it wouldn't be worth anywhere near that. It probably would only JUST be worth their actual asking price AFTER it has had extensive work done on it.
You can buy a new build house of the same size in a similar area for the same price they are asking for their old dilapidated house. Why the hell would I pay the same for your house that needs extensive renovating when I can get the same house newly built without all the hassle of having to organise renovating it myself!

House 2: Same as house 1, nice area and house, very dated and old bathrooms/carpet etc. House next door sold recently, was a bigger house and impeccable throughout and they seem to believe their house is worth the same if not more... for a smaller house that needs at very minimum the bathrooms and flooring redoing!

House 3: Ditto of house 2 basically. Exact same situation. Believes their tired and in desperate need of some TLC house is worth the same as the bigger house that sold next door that was immaculate inside.

House 4: Just blatantly on the market for £70k more than the semi detached house is worth. Dont even know what the vendor is trying at because they will never get an offer close to what they're marketing it at. You can buy a nice 5 bedroom detached house or 4 bedroom newbuild for the price they are marketing theirs at.

Not sure if it's a coincidence or not that all these vendors are older individuals downsizing...

Freshfaced- hilarious 😆. I so did not expect to read the word vulva before my dinner!!!

This one would fill a book. Detached with six bedrooms and an extra kitchen upstairs, it was perfect for us and our teenager. It was the most prestigious address in town. Arrived to the vendors telling us not to park in the deserted street because the conker trees have branches falling off and would wreck our car. Inside all paint work was bright blue gloss. Kitchen had non matching units and several sorts of odd, not matching tiles. Went through the conservatory to look at the garden to find that it was partly built over a pond and you had to jump across the water. The rest of the house was a nightmare. Topped off by the vendors telling us that they had a big house because they fostered. Then said they were banned for child abuse so didn’t need such a big house. We fled at this point. A friend did buy it and completely renovated it and made it into a beautiful home. I almost regret not buying it now!

Viewed a house the silly Billy’s didn’t get planning permission. They had added a side extension garage, then an extension was added to double the kitchen.
They had been caught out by the council and had to knock them down....which sadly damaged the main house. The whole place was like a derelict building and they handed it back to the bank. Shame as it would have been amazing.

I went to view a house on behalf of my mother in law a few years ago. She was unwell at the time but a house came on the market that ticked all the boxes so we wanted to get in quick to stand a chance.

I turned up a few minutes early, at the same time as a young couple who were also there to view the house. Ok, no big deal.

We wandered up the drive and knocked on the door, only to be greeted by a rather confused looking woman who had no idea the house was on the market.

Just as we were about to leave after a rather confusing conversation, a man ran down the drive and told us he'd be showing us around. The woman that lived there was renting. We politely took a tour of the house whilst scratching our heads.

The man left the second he finished showing us around, leaving us to politely say goodbye to the woman who lived there. As we were on our way out, we noticed balloons and flowers reading sorry your leaving. Turns out she had literally just got home from her last day of work after being made redundant.

Goes without saying that no offers were being made!!

We viewed a house 12 years ago belonging to a woman who had lived there a long time and brought up quite a few children there. Quite run down and a hippy vibe going on with murals, bare brick walls etc. During the first viewing when we were in the (overgrown) garden with lots of pots all over the place she said to my wife and I that she would be leaving most of the pots. Then she pointed to one of them and said "but not that one, I buried the placenta form my last birth in that one". We bought the house but didn't argue about that pot.

BIL viewed house in SW London asking price 1mil which is quite good for a 4 bed. EA pictures looked impressive went to visit bathroom had a leak , dog had scratched oak flooring, flat roof was clearly a problem signs of being patched and had leaked into the kitchen below, side of extension had not been rendered etc etc. EA gushing about how wonderful the house was and how keen to the sellers were as they had to move due to work. When he pointed out that a house 6 houses away which he had viewed but missed out on had sold for 850k and was in better nick EA bowed head and apologised explained his job was to try and sell and vendors were deluded

My previous house I bought as a doer-upper. Suspended polystyrene ceilings, floor rotted out in utility room etc. Bathroom looked pretty good but I didn't like having a carpet in there as very hygienic I think. Went to pull it up only to discover the beige and grey carpet wasn't actually a carpet....It was compacted human (yes, including pubic!) and pet hair. Totally time-consuming and had to be scraped off the link with an old fork. Disgusting!

Vomit inducing not time consuming!

Saw a terraced house in the mid noughties which had recently been renovated. Those of you familiar with home renovation shows of the era will know that the two main colours of choice were magnolia and white. Fine.
Every. Bloody. Room. Was magnolia and white and seemingly from the same two tins. Woodwork? White gloss. Metalwork? White gloss. Wallpaper? White gloss. Not the best renovation of I'm honest.
DH, bless him, thought it was great until I asked him where the washing machine was in the kitchen.
Yes, a renovated kitchen marketed at families had no washing machine.
Needless to say, no offer was made from us

My husband died last year and my daughter thought it would be nice to find a property with an annexe so I could live next to them but be independent. We went to look at one house, but the annexe turned out to be the garage. The living room had space for a TV and a chair , the bedroom might have just fitted a single bed and chest of drawers, the bathroom was a toilet and shower, no sink, and it didn't have a kitchen or any heating. Can you imagine all that in a tiny single garage? The owner thought it was amazing.

When we were looking to buy we viewed quite a few totally overpriced houses for the state they were in. The agent even looked embarrassed when taking us around this particular house. The owner was a bit strange and when we arrived there was a little old lady sitting on the porch. She was very sweet. Then around 7 other family members came out who were clearly in the middle of cooking lunch. The house was damp and paint was peeling of the walls. There was clutter and wall ornaments as far as the eye could see collecting ample dust. The real kicker was the basement which made the 4th bedroom component we had specified, well...it was absolutely chocca block with stuff. It looked like an entire market load of spices along with piles of suitcases. The owner said when the rest of his family comes over they sleep down in the basement (he had put up some faux walls himself by the looks of it and chucked a couple of fold our beds in this space! Apparently as many as 20 extra family members slept down there when they came over! The real kicker was that he decided as we were leaving to up the price by another 10K! Me, DH and the estate agent all had a good laugh about that and no they didn’t get an offer!

An older detached house in a completely overgrown garden (think hedges 3m wide). Was owned by someone who fancies themselves as a diy expert. Had started lots of jobs, finished none and trashed the house in the process. Wires hanging out of walls. Oil tanks leaking. Heating ripped out. The bit that really sticks in my mind is the half built extension. Upstairs room but had forgotten it needed support. Floor was literally propped up with a telegraph pole. And an upstairs external door that opened into space.
While we were still in shock, a developer bought it as a building plot.

I viewed a house last year with my husband and my mum. We were (on hold at the moment) looking for a house with an annex/potential to convert with minimal disruption to two living accommodations but 1 set of bills/council tax etc.
House we were going to view sounded perfect. 2 and a half acres with river boundary, great position. Photos showed this grand driveway and fabulous looking house.
Anyhow we arrive (drive was no where near as big as the photo showed) house looks promising. We go in and straight away I spot the bodges , just bits not completely finished the whole house is a bodge it house. We walk through the lounge, another pointless room with a half wall going through it??!! To the annex it has a lounge/kitchen (not too bad) then onwards to the bedroom which was compact....... it had a partition wall which held the en-suite which was smaller than my MFI wardrobe utter useless
We carried on looking round kitchen of main house ok, gardens nice but all pitted up from their ponys, 2 patios which were nice. There was a further annex in the garden. Looked fab until my husband ventured round the back of it and it wasn’t finished all exposed breeze blocks.
The garden then went under a bridge and had a fabulous paddock.
Each room upstairs has these homemade really rubbish half finished mdf cupboards/wardrobes. It turns out the owner is a builder note to self do not hire him for any jobs
But the biggest thing of all is the land surrounding the whole house has planning for building. I knew this beforehand and it wasn’t an issue for us but the house has since been under offer and then back for sale a few times so maybe an issue for others.

Not buying but renting, around 2014 in Berkshire

House 1: looked very nice on the net, lovely spacious living and kitchen apparently. Only true if you were a Hobbit. To open the cooker or fridge, one would have to step out the cubby hope that was the kitchen to do so. I've seen bigger understairs loo spaces.
Also no mention that the lush green garden was actually shared and had no fence or protection for children who could easily run out into traffic. There was a locked room upstairs, we asked what that was "oh that's not part of the rental, it's the room over the garage which isn't for the tenants use." That included the garage even though it was clearly shown on the images online. Price per month? £1250

"House" 2: yes, I use house loosely.
Walked in and immediately nearly fell over the sofa, which took up most of the floor space of the supposedly "spacious through lounge onto the good sized patio garden".
This through lounge included two cabinets, a mini fridge and a cooker as that was all the kitchen amounted to. The "good sized patio garden"? Two patio slabs. That was it. Backed into a very noisy Trainline.
Then we went upstairs, not that we wanted to but agent insisted. Was meant to be a 3 bed.
First, master bedroom had a double bed. It had no room for anything else so the current tenant had hung a washing line for clothes above the end of the bed.
Second bedroom was a cupboard. Literally a cupboard that someone had, and God knows how, rammed a single bed in (which was included apparently, probably as they wouldn't ever get it out, it wasn't flat, it was half bent in the middle, "like an adjustable bed" according to the agent"). You had to jump from the landing into the bedroom and the door didn't shut.
Third bedroom was the landing. The actual landing. You had to climb over the bed to get in the door of the loo, which was advertised as a wet room but was actually a loo with no sink and someone had shoved a shower head in the ceiling with nowhere for the water to drain to. Hence there was damp everywhere.
Price for this glorified cupboard? £1500 per month.

House 3 was a cottage round the corner from where we moved to in the end. Got there and it clearly had been unloved for years. There was a huge over grown tree in the front garden, the house was totally shadowed by it. Went in and it was really in need of paint and bringing out of the 70s. Everything was propped up. It could've been lovely though. Kitchen was small but serviceable but had no real units, just old shelving racks. The garden was a mess. The backdoor was old and rotten. Went upstairs and the old wallpaper was falling off and the carpet was squelchy and shiny. However, we had said to the agent we didn't mind a bit of updating and decorating as the place was great for schools and rent was reasonable. Agent tells us no we must not under any circumstances touch anything, paint anything or change anything at all. It is to stay as is. Even the bolts on the walls holding big old guns. Can't take them down, furniture is staying. Even the agent looked pained by this. The owner doesn't want anything moved at all. We were rather cross as we had driven 15 miles to look and had said we had a whole 3 bed house with furniture in.
Price of this house per month? £1000.

The same day I think the agent felt sorry for us so took us to another, nicer home, for a hundred pounds a month extra that wasn't up for rent yet but was about to be. That's now my house and we've been here ever since

Some people just take the piss.

I once accidentally viewed a brothel. Complete with working lady. We bought a different house on the same street. Brothel is now closed

Lots of vendors are just deluded, but I would rather buy an old build then a new one !! . Alot of the time you are paying just for the postcode especially where we live .. I have a good size 3 bed Victorian house a mile up the road from where I am a 1 bed flat would get sold for what my house is worth .. mad !! But it's postcode ... or just plain stupid !!

Not a deluded vendor but a memorable viewing all the same.

We were viewing a house to rent and waiting outside for the EA.
A woman walked up and asked if we were waiting to view, we said yes and she said the area was perfect for her kids school. Then she just stood there. Ok - we thought, that have booked for her to view at the same time, not ideal but not unheard of.
Turns out the EA didn't know who she was and thought we had invited her along, we thought he had so random woman ended up walking around the house with us!
We got inside and came to a door under the stairs which the EA said was perfect for extra storage. The door was a bit stiff and he had to give it a few sharp tugs to open it.
It flew open to reveal, not a cupboard but a toilet - complete with confused lady with sat on it with her pants around her ankles!
She gasped, we gasped, EA gasped, strange tag-along woman gasped.
EA slowly closed the door and we all completed the viewing pretending NOTHING had happened.
We ended up renting it for 10 years and I often thought of that lady while using the under stairs loo.

@waterjungle That's hilarious!

Do you think that tag along lady was in the market to move and saw the perfect opportunity to view the property and maybe get in ahead of you?

TeetotalKoala
I think that's exactly what happened. She saw us waiting outside a house with an EA board outside a decided to make the most of it.

She said - oh are you viewing, how many bedrooms does it have - at the time I didn't question. When we called to say we would take it the EA said, was that lady a friend of yours?! We said, no we thought she was another booking you made!

As we were going around she kept saying "this room would be perfect for my DS". "DD is going to love this garden". Cheeky sod!

Marking my place so I dont lose this thread. We went to an open day for a house to rent, all of the people walked round the house and up and down the creaky stairs. It was a good size but awful and being rented, it's a bit harder asking for a nice kitchen because that one was horrible. We left very quickly...

One of the posts reminded me... sorry, it's long, but worth the read I hope.
Years ago when I was married, we decided to look for a house with some land as we wanted to keep horses.
A house very nearby sounded ideal - large four bedroom house with a former plant nursery to the rear, somewhere around four acres.
We knew the views would be fabulous as we lived in the area already.
Downstairs was ok. Upstairs was consisted of the requisite number of bedrooms, but all of them had a sloping ceiling (where the roof came over the room) to one or more sides, making that part of the room unusable to stand up in.
The whole of the upstairs was crammed with racks of clothes, as apparently the lady of the house made her living from car boot sales.
This was made sense of when the agent finally admitted that they were in the middle of an unpleasant divorce.
When we went to look at the rear, it became clear how much animosity there must have been.
Although we weren't planning on continuing with the plant nursery, we hoped to use some of the greenhouses and sell on anything we didn't need.
It was very sad - every pane of glass in every greenhouse was smashed, to the point where we had to pick dc up and carry them, due to the amount of glass laying around.
Irrigation systems ripped out and clearly cut with a knife to make them unusable.
Statues around the place (which were actually quite good) all had their heads knocked off.
It was a wreck, and one we walked away from, because it would have taken thousands to put right and the land made safe for animals.
It eventually sold, but for thirty thousand less than it would have been worth, if everything was in good order (a lot of money in those days).

Been looking for roughly the last 6 months, I swear every house apart from one we’ve been to has been a disaster! We are ftb with a decent deposit ready

1. Massively overgrown garden, you could barely walk down the path to it. Walk in, there is half and half wallpaper (think 90s chic) but a different wallpaper on every half and every wall, they had a dog which growled at us every time we moved and they wouldn’t lock him away! Kitchen had been fitted with a very high gloss monstrosity and the tiles and flooring had not! It was filthy! Carpets were threadbare and covered in dog hair. Said we’d like to come back for a second viewing and they then removed it from sale.

1. On the market for about 60k over market price (we know as we had it independently valued) end corner plot but being sold with “potential” building plot. There’s no planning nor any attempt for anyone to put planning in. House was ok but lots of damp and mould, one of them was sleeping in the living room as a mattress was propped up. They are divorcing so clearly want as much as they can get for it so didn’t go for our offer. It’s still on the market a year later and one of them is still likely sleeping in the living room 🤷🏼‍♀️ We are the only people to have put in an offer.

1. Looked like a dream on the photos, nice big rooms, lots of potential, new kitchen. When we got there, the rooms were tiny... 3rd bedroom had a folding door as a standard door wouldn’t close with a bed in there. The other rooms were only slightly bigger, enough for a double and that’s it. The “nice” kitchen has been fitted in a room with inch deep painted artex on the walls. The utility was dripping with water and black with mould.

It blows my mind how much money want for fairly horrendous homes. I’m sure when the market was more quickly moving then better properties were about.

Now thanking our lucky stars we didn’t buy a pit of a house on the edge of a recession!

A very cute but small mid terrace cottage in a pretty area; lots of walks by the canal and river (spoiler alert) and a garden.
It could have done with a bit of modernising but nothing major - couldn’t understand how it was in our price range as first time buyers. This was obviously before the days where every house was advertised on the internet - my oh just happened to drive by and booked a viewing. Everything was fine and dandy, we actually really liked it until the estate agent offered to show us the cellar: it was WAIST DEEP in water as there are flooding problems along by the river. On top of this, there was a RAT sat on the bottom step, just waiting to swim off to safety.
The estate agent sheepishly stammered “ It’ll easily pump out, but we’ll knock you 1k off if you’re bothered.” not envy
Safe to say we scrambled out there as fast as we could - even the 1k discount didn’t quite sway us!

A couple of years ago we saw a house online where the rooms looked decent sizes and the only thing that looked like it needed doing was repainting all the horribly bright walls from red, blue, yellow to white.

Arrived there and it stunk of dog, then when we went through to the kitchen it opened up to a whole other part of the house that wasnt shown online... because it had building work going on that was only about 20% completed! There was exposed brickwork, a metal girder sticking out of the ceiling and chipped plaster everywhere. It was awful.

Afterwards the estate agent asked my thoughts and I told her I wouldn't buy it if it was up for £50k never mind £175k.

For me it had to be the house we viewed in 2007 that was right at the top fof our budget.
First off it was a mixture of recently done up rooms with rooms that hadn't seen any renovation for decades.
The 'low maintenance garden' was completely paved over - not a pot plant or anything green in sight.
The person selling was a women with loads of kids who was apparently planning to buy a bigger house but it looked more like that the husband had fucked off, leaving her with all the kids and the EA was putting words in her mouth.
The kitchen was literally an ancient museaum piece cooker and a sink. The bathroom was some strange stone effect corner bath type thing like a grotto but the bedrooms looked like there were at least 3 people sleeping in there - there was a person asleep in the one we looked in - and no curtains, just sheets tacked in the windows.

We just eyeballed the costs and thought 'NOPE' - it still got snapped up within days though!