To expect people to do a bit of research before viewing a house?

[iswhois]

Had three people turn up so far and have turned the house down due to a "showstopper" which they could have easily for seen had they done some research on the location or looking at the floor plans.

I know they are entitled to not buy the house for whatever reason they wish but it just feels like a massive waste of everyone's time.

Maybe I'm just bitter and desperate to move haha

@YesINameChangeEveryDay

A showstopper means an amazing thing. I was so confused reading your op

Does it? In my world , it's used to mean "a massive obstacle that cannot be overcome".

We are trying to sell my mother in laws small two bed house. We had a woman view it who need three bedrooms and it’s obvious from the floor plan that it is two bed with no realistic way of expanding which for the cost would be daft. There are plenty of similar three beds on the market near by which are only 10k-20k more.

I get people need to get a feel for the house but why waste everyone’s time?

And it reminds me of a viewing I had in my own house, turns out I knew her from the gym and we got chatting. She wasn’t moving, she just liked to look round houses at the weekends 😡

I agree that showstopper means amazing for me. Deal breaker is what I would use for how OP is using it (regional variations no doubt)

Does it? In my world , it's used to mean "a massive obstacle that cannot be overcome".

I would say Deal breaker for that

I'm quite disappointed I was expecting an underground well in the kitchen or something.

I will say though that the house we are in, ticked pretty much none of my boxes, we viewed it in desperation.

I absolutely love it.

In the performing arts, a Showstopper is usually a good thing not a bad!

It’s the number that would bring people to their feet applauding so much you would have to stop the show until everyone calms down. Very much a Broadway thing. It’s that moment of “wow!”, awe, breathtaking, climactic sort of a moment.

It’s quite funny to hear that non show people interpret it as a technical hitch!

I think like a PP said, you mean “Deal Breaker”.

I think OP means dealbreaker.

You’re asked by the EA for feedback so you have to say something that doesn’t offend the owner. It may just have been too small, too scruffy, needed too much work etc.

Having said that as posters have observed - people don’t look at the plans thoroughly and when you’re seeing many properties in a week that’s not surprising.

Re the pub - I don’t think you can really tell from Google - it may depend on the lie of the land.

We had one woman sing the praises of our first house (little two up, two down) all the way along. Then go 'oh' when she saw the bathroom. Admittedly it was pink (this was early 80s), which we had no problem with but she remarked 'oh, I didn't realise it was pink'. To which my husband replied that there was a photo of the bathroom plus pink was mentioned in the description. 'Was it? Oh' was all she could say.

I despair sometimes.

According to dictionary can mean both

a song or other performance receiving prolonged applause from the audience.
"he wants every scene to be a showstopper"
2.
an obstacle to further progress.
"the subsidy limits proved to be a showstopper for other senior Democrats who refused to pass the bill with such restrictions"

Admittedly I have viewed properties in the past where I felt something might not work, but hoped I would see a way around it once there in person, so the bathroom off bedroom for example, I might be looking for potential options for moving it.

iswhois we use showstopper in my industry in the way you have. E.g. a licensed restaurant who have lost their licence

@LonginesPrime

ooh I would love a pink bejeweled ceiling.

misses point of thread

There are also people quite often on Location, Locatio, Location who have spreadsheets with oodles of things that are dealbreakers. They dont see anything live and tbh - that is how you decide. Not looking at photos and floor plans on the web. Having said that if I didnt want a downstairs bathroom (I once had a house that did have one and it was old too) I wouldnt be looking at ones that had one unless it was perfect in every other way. People who turn down a 4 bed house because the bathroom was avocardo green (we were only going to be there for 5 years tops).

I also think some people just make up any old reason especially if they are timewastes. Often older people who have too much time on their hands.

Our old EA told us he dreads dealing with older people who have lived in a house say 20 years plus who tell him what the value of their house is and wont listen to reason. It is often dated and that is of course their choice but it will be reflected in the value of the house overall if the kitchen and bathroom are 30 plus years old.

Selling houses is my idea of hell. Just completed yesterday and I still feel traumatised. You have all my sympathy.

When we had our old house on the market one viewer said it was too far from London. According to the EA she had been looking to relocate and had approached them and set up a whole weekend’s viewings because she didn't realise how far 50miles from London actually was.

Luckily we had 3 offers that weekend so sold anyway but she was a total time waster.

I do my research, I look at floor plans and look on maps etc. However none of that is any kind of substitute for seeing a place in person and getting a feel for it, especially if you’re the sort who struggles to visualise a space just based from seeing the square metre-age on a floorplan. I will always go and see properties where I’m not quite sure the property is a no before discounting them because why would I discount what could end up actually being just the right thing if only I’d been willing to actually go and look at it?

YABU

Showstopper doesnt mean what you think it does.

A showstopper is something awesome; so good it beats everything else.

You're looking for deal breaker.

I think someone in your office started using show stopped because they forgot the word deal breaker and the rest if you have just gone with it.

With square footage, you might still go and see the house because it can make such a difference how the rooms are divided up.

Buying a house is both wishlist and emotional though. Obviously people want to give houses that dont meet their wishlist a chance
Because you always have to compromise.

It would be more accurate to say "i dont like the walk from the car parking space to the front door, i could live with that if the house was amazing otherwise but it's not".

If you find everything amazing, you can be willing to compromise on the location or the small garden or the downstairs bathroom etc.

I agree & you often don't know until you see. Plus people if asked to give a reason will go for the most obvious one eg bathroom downstairs rather than saying I could have lived with the downstairs bathroom but I hate the kitchen, the feel of the house, the neighbours messy garden etc.

Par for the course when I worked for an EA. Around 50% only look at the pictures , don't drive around to see which area is their cup of tea, have a 20 item 'must have' tick list which they will only compromise on after they've seen every house in their price range & realised it's not out there. I could go on 😁. If my boss wasn't in,I'd ask what they were looking for photocopy a map &circle the areas applicable . Cut out so much timewasting. My boss thought that was a bad idea for some sodding reason.

Although I suppose in politics it is sometimes used to describe an obstacle. It's just not common!

I agree a bit with @JoJoSM2

People may have often got to compromise and so they’ll come to look at the house because it may tick all the other boxes but one particular thing may be insurmountable deal breaker

Sorry - showstopper actually means fine thing very positive that it stops the show (briefly) with long applause. So a showstopper in a house would be something say, like an amazing kitchen that people stop to admire. So just wrong terminology in the op.

House I live in currently I originally discounted because it’s near(ish) council flats and I knew (as I already lived in the town) that there’s a lot of antisocial behaviour on the road around the corner from the house and as it’s on the route to the station, there’s sometimes trouble on the road.

We bought the house because after looking all around, we had to find something if risk losing our buyer. So that sticking point became something I later compromised on. People can come look and see if there’s enough positives to outweigh that one negative.

We’re having this now. House is for sale now. We have had one person say the road jets the house down. Another that the bedrooms were too small (floor plan is correct and there’s photos of the bedroom).

Meh, we viewed lots of houses that had an “issue” but we knew if we loved it enough we could compromise. Sometimes we did, sometimes we didn’t.
I think asking people why they didn’t buy the house is useless. It just wasn’t the right one for them. When you go clothes shopping you don’t get asked to justify every item that you don’t take to.

Yes, you cant say, the decor was just so shit, and ill never get that smell of curry out of the house.
Or those lions heads on the gateposts are going to be expensive to remove.
Or i would pay to have the pebbledash removed ifi thought the inside had potential but it is as bad inside as it is outside.

I dont spend weekends viewing houses im not going to buy, honestly!
But when i do sell my house i wont buy the first thing i see!

Op every single person who views and doesn’t wish to buy it will have a reason. Generally they think of something and say it, because they need to find a reason. And not just nah I don’t like it.

The man might have looked at the floor plans and just not realised what he was looking at. The woman might have accepted the proximity to the pub if she’d loved the house enough.

It doesn’t matter. They are all just telling you they don’t want to buy it.

Sometimes it’s the estate agent’s fault.

We viewed a house where from the photos it was obvious the back garden wasn’t fenced off at all and was concrete. I said to the estate agent face to face that we could always get it dug up and fenced off as we had a 2yo.

Turned up and it turned out that the garage next door owned an outbuilding at the back of the back garden and had access and you weren’t allowed to fence it off. The seller was cross with the estate agent. Said it was the third person they’d mislead over this.....but estate agents just want viewings to make their stats look ok and then hope they won’t get sellers moaning they haven’t had enough viewings.