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Original poster

How "house viewing ready" is your house?

175 replies

Millana · 24/01/2023 16:13

At this precise moment, if you were/are going to have people coming to look at your house, how "ready" is your house?

I'm not planning on selling but mine is a disgrace. 😔

It's been slowly dawning on me that if we were to sell, we'd have to put a lot of work into it so why are we living with the mess and clutter and half decorated rooms etc? Why would we put all that effort in for other people but not us?

Now I need to put that into action and change it.

OP posts:
ElsieMc · 25/01/2023 09:34

No matter how hard you work to make your house viewing ready, some peoples expectations are so high you can never meet them. I would say ours was a good average,not show house with a crematorium kitchen with nothing in it type of house but decent enough painted oak etc. We were eaten alive by viewers, particularly the older ones. I am sixty and believe me these viewers were a decade older than us. Everything was wrong from the trees (yes shock horror in the countryside), the heating system (oil again rural) and no. 1 complaint - room configuration. We live in a former vicarage and they were not built like newbuilds. If you want a newbuild, buy one.

Just have a clean and tidy house fgs. You need to actually view a house to get a feel. The most beautiful house ever can feel wrong. Last week I collected something from a house which was very old fashioned and my gs who went with me commented how nice it was, a good feel and atmosphere and thats from a 16 year old. I digress op, but this is our experience.

Lcb123 · 25/01/2023 09:35

Pretty much always, we have minimal stuff and like it tidy. Both WFH so find a nice environment helps with that!

Toddlingturtle · 25/01/2023 09:47

Mine is fine. I keep it neat and tidy as a matter of course anyway. Can't bear mess and clutter.

Karen398 · 25/01/2023 09:53

Not at all! I've only lived here less than 2 years but it was ex council and the last owners were elderly , not had money to do much yet

FlakyCroissant · 25/01/2023 09:54

I'm planning on selling and our house is not in a state I'd want viewers to see

The outside areas need a good spruce up

There's loads of clutter we've moved to the cellar that needs to go to the tip

There's a blind that needs to go back on a window, a curtain hook that needs re attaching, a water stain that needs painting and an area of damp from the tumble dryer that needs something to sort it out

It's all just so much effort. I don't mind DIY in the summer but in winter it means doing it at weekends and tbh I've got other things I'd rather do!

Toddlerteaplease · 25/01/2023 10:03

My parents is 100% ready. It's immaculate. However they are still spending money on it. It's being valued next month. A few years ago they decided they were staying put. And spent a lot of money on it. New kitchen etc. they've now decided they are moving. 🙄

FindingMeno · 25/01/2023 10:23

Hope no one thinks I was being snidey with my post about working full time, dc's, cleaners etc.
Just trying to make myself feel better 😂

BarrelOfOtters · 25/01/2023 10:27

I was thinking this the other day. There's a few little jobs that we'd do before we put the house on the market so why not do them now?

Tidy up the graveyard of gardening stuff in front of the garage by the drive.

Get the marks off the wall where we moved the sofa
Tidy up the study which is a bit of a dumping ground.
Do a cull of the house plants and tidy up the ones I'm keeping.
Put some pictures up on the walls - we've been procrastinating about that for a year now since building finished.
Sort out the damp patch in the bathroom wall before it gets worse.

I'm not worried if anyone drops in unexpectedly - it's fairly clutter free and not unclean.

AtomicRitual · 25/01/2023 10:28

Crikey, no. If anyone came to our house they'd think one of two things (or both):

  • there's only 2 people living in this 4 bed house, how on earth do they have so much shit?!
  • there's only 2 people living in this 4 bed house, the storage must be shit to look like this!

Thank heavens we have no plans to sell as I think we'd have to have about 3 skips to tidy everything up to a point of being manageable/presentable!

Leftbutcameback · 25/01/2023 11:26

Based on some of the houses we viewed mine is immaculate in comparison! I didn’t expect a house I'm viewing to be 100% clean and tidy, but hoovering the filthy stairs would have been a good start. And then there was the one with the under stairs cupboard with the terrifying dolls.

ChiefWiggumsBoy · 25/01/2023 13:37

So long as you don't mind breakfast detritus still about, all beds unmade and plenty of clothing across the floors of the children's rooms at least, and general lived-in living rooms.....then it's still not viewing ready Grin

MintJulia · 25/01/2023 13:46

It isn't at all, but then I don't want to live in a show house.

This is a comfortable working household. It would take 6 months to get it up to scratch for sale, but since I have no intention of selling in the next two years, it doesn't matter.

HMW1906 · 25/01/2023 14:05

When we sold our house last year we took about a month getting it ready before putting it on the market. Lots of decluttering (which basically meant moving things to the loft out of sight), temporarily sent loads of DS toys to the in-laws out of the way until we sold (obviously left him with plenty to play with but a lot less), finished up those little jobs that we’d been avoiding but a potential buyer would be put off by.

only been in this house about 7 months and already full of clutter and mess and would need another month to get it sale ready if we wanted to sell 🙈

megletthesecond · 25/01/2023 14:09

It's not even guest ready.
I've got a day off to catch up and have only just washed up Saturdays pizza baking trays. I've got to email the roofer about a possible leak next.

CremeEggThief · 25/01/2023 14:09

Mine is immaculately tidy, reasonably clean, but some rooms are desperately in need of decorating. The yard is passable, but will need a good tidy once the weather gets warmer.

InvincibleInvisibility · 25/01/2023 14:12

@HMW1906 no criticism but it's cluttered cos you didn't declutter - you just shuffled your stuff to somewhere else. That's fine if that's what you want, I decluttered massively because I wanted less "inventory" (aka stuff) to manage.

@FindingMeno I did my huge declutter whilst working FT, with DH already overseas, and juggling 2 DCs in Primary school...it was bloody hard work and I didn't have much downtime, but an overseas move really focuses your mind! It also meant that when it came to packing (again, by myself with ZERO help) there was less to pack.

Anyone interested in simplifying their lives should check out the minimal mom and Joshua Becker on youtube. Really helped my - to motivate me and to chsnge my mindset. I buy so much less now and we're all happier.

HMW1906 · 25/01/2023 14:17

Oh I’m more than happy living in my cluttered house, much prefer it to living in a minimalist environment with no character. Each to their own 🤷‍♀️

IMissThe80s · 25/01/2023 14:30

This reply has been deleted

This has been deleted by MNHQ for breaking our Talk Guidelines.

marmaladepop · 25/01/2023 14:34

About 6 months as I'm a single parent, or maybe 6 days with the help of another person/handyman. I once viewed a house where the occupant was sat at his kitchen table, shamelessly 'reading' a perfectly positioned broadsheet whilst the bread he had staged in his oven baked. Felt so patronised it put me off his house completely.

somuchtolearnabout · 25/01/2023 14:47

My house isnt a show home, we have 2 small DC and no toy room so the toys are pretty much all over the open plan area. That being said, they all have a home and when they’re tidied away you’d almost never know they were there.

I was having this discussion with my friends the other day and I was saying about how I’m annoyed at myself because I wish I could be one of these people who cares less about the state of the house. I could never leave the house, even to go to softplay, if there were dirty dishes on the side, or toys strewn around the place. I have to tidy everything away before we go out - WHY?!!!! Who gives a f*ck, nobody is going to see it except me, a 3yo and a 1yo. And let me tell you, they don’t care. So why do I? I can’t help it. It gives me immense anxiety to walk back into a messy dirty house. So the only option is to tidy it before we go. It does mean the house is normally pretty presentable, but it comes at a cost. My sanity.

Caspianberg · 25/01/2023 17:43

@somuchtolearnabout - I can’t leave mess for later either. I think with babies and toddlers, you learn that there’s never a more convenient time ‘later’, as that ‘later’ might never come. So just do everything as I go along. After spending the day outside child wrangling, the last thing I want to do is arrive home to more mess or chores straight away.

avocadotofu · 25/01/2023 17:48

That's a really good perspective OP. Ours is pretty good today but only because it's our cleaners day. It's the only time we manage to be a bit tidier.

meatyryvita · 25/01/2023 17:52

We're moving our bathroom and so it's a building site, with dust and crap that we've had to move out of the new bathroom (it was an office/spare bedroom before) everywhere. We don't even have anywhere to hang our coats and so they are on a sofa. So I'd say we're about 3 weeks away from being viewing ready at this point!!

WalkAwaySugarbear · 25/01/2023 17:56

It's pretty tidy but would need a few hours good clean. However, we're mid renovation so it looks a mess, flooring missing, no architraves or skirting boards.

mamabear715 · 25/01/2023 17:56

I can't bear having anything wrong with the house, so no leaks, no blown windows, nothing at all. The decoration is fine. I do declutter.. but it's a small house.. I love my books & stuff.. I have inherited furniture & there's nowhere for it to go other than the sitting room, so it's packed.. minimalist it's not.
However - it's a palace compared to the kids' rooms. I can't bear to go in there myself, never mind take viewers in.. I'm talking about 30 or so drinks cans, pop bottles, clothes etc.. inches of dust..