To be hacked off when potential buyers spend less than five minutes viewing my house after I've spent hours cleaning and tidying?

[LyraSilvertongue]

Yes, I know IAprobablyBU as they're under no obligation to stay any longer than they want to but I spent hours cleaning and tidying for a viewing this morning and they came in, glanced around for a couple of minutes and left. They didn't even go out to the garden, which I'd also wasted time tidying.
I'd intended being out for the viewing but they turned up early so the boys and I went out to the garden to give them some space.
The upside is we now have a clean house I suppose.

No matter how clean and gorgeous it looks they must have noted something (size/location) that made it unsuitable i guess.
Better that they made a sharp exit than wasted more of your time by looking round for an hour and pretending to be interested hey?
And now you can enjoy your nice clean house like you said

people make up their minds in the first 20 seconds really so 5 mins is quite a while .. I wouldn't expect someone to be in my house for much longer

At least they showed up! Wait till you've spent hours and they don't even arrive.

Oh I'm sorry, that doesn't help I know. It is a miseable business all round.

Twiglett, actually it was more like 2 minutes than 5. We usually spend at least 15 minutes looking around a house when we're buying.
Janni, we've had two viewings cancelled at the last minute, after hours of cleaning/clutter hiding.

agree with twiglett-when we were house-hunting we usually knew the minute we walked in whether we liked it or not.
Of course we didn't just walk out straight away if we didn't like it, we looked around, but it felt like wasting the owner's time to spend ages looking around. And maybe misleading them a bit too.
Enjoy your clean house!

funnily enough I felt the same, so gave up making it really clean, and just did a quick tidy before the last viewing. And they made an offer.
So it doenst have to be really clean!

I'm with Twiglett.

When I was househunting, there were some places, we showed up to view, and we didn't even go inside.

The outside was that bad.

But expat, my house is lovely.

grr, it's annoying I agree - even if I knew something wasn't right for us (usually on first stepping inside) I'd still do the tour and ask polite questions. I knew our house was right for us as soon as we walked into the hallway because it looked like my old house. The thing that absolutely puts me off is those vile plug in air fresheners - yuck.

well if they stayed for longer and werent interested it just makes you hopeful..you know if you arent interested on the dorstep

I am with Twiglett -you know standing on the doorstep that you are not going to like it but you can't say so -therefore you zoom round and go-there is no point in wasting time-the end result is you are not going to buy it however much time you stand chatting.

LS you are making me feel much better, we are moving out of our rented property in a week and have three viewings this afternoon, I decided this morning that I'm just going to do a tidy and not a total clean up.

Probably not the same as you are trying to sell.

Good luck with geting the house sold in any way!

Annoying isn't it. What hacked me off more was when people said to the estate agents (after viewing) that they weren't interested due to only a downstairs bathroom - which was obviously very clear on the details.

My friend sold his house, which had previously failed to sell when very tidy, when people viewed it during a large and noisy house party/bbq

We've had that too cmot. Feedback from viewers usually mentions the fact that they don't like the bathroom being downstairs. The property details includes a floorplan which clearly shows the layout so i wonder why they bothered coming to see it.
I suspect the estate agents are bringing round unsuitable buyers just so it looks like they're doing something and to stop us going to other agents. We're averaging one viewing a week atm because the market's gone a bit flat.

At least they turned up! We had a 5.45pm Saturday viewing. We kicked friends out for it, ran round like crazy cleaning and tidying. Then spent approx 45 min trying to contain a toddler from destroying the place before deciding it was a no-show, and no means of contacting agency because it was out of hours. On the Monday the "viewer" had the audacity to lie to the agent and say they had been! but yes at least you have a nice clean house for an hour or so!

I told mine in the end that they were to explicitly tell people that there was a downstairs bathroom, and not to bring them round if it was even potentially a problem.

Next time, I'll also say that if people have a leasehold property to sell, we won't accept offers if the lease needs extending and the process hasn't been started, as our buyer this time had that and it took months to sort out.

Each time I go through the process we get a bit wiser to managing the estate agents to make it less painful.

Or it could be that they were a bit dubious about the downstairs bathroom, but thought that they might be able to overlook it if the rest of the house was fabulous - for them. Still a pain though. I do think that people feel they must give some sort of reason to the estate agents, so pluck something non-negotiable out of the air. But really, it should be fair enough to say that they just didn't get the "yes" factor.

I totally sympathise the worst is the no shows or when our flat was on the market we had one barking woman come around and say

• she wanted a garden
• she didn't want to live on the first floor
• she wanted a balcony

then why go see a first floor flat with no garden then?

or the couple who thought they were seeing the whole block, what 7 flats for under 200K in London?

I'd love to be able to not bother tidying for viewings but I can't bear the idea of people looking round my house if it's a mess.
I think I might tell the agents not to bring people round if they don't want a downstairs bathroom. They're wasting everybody's time.

I don't understand threads like this - what is your house normally like? Hours cleaning and tidying?

But, five minutes is enough to notice the hard work you have done, so YABU.

Yes, hours. Our house is not immaculate at all times, mainly due to two very messy boys (5 and 3) and a messy DP. Also, it needs to be in a different state for viewings - clutter hidden, rooms shown off at their best. it would be impossible to keep it that way all the time.

The only way to keep it in a viewable state at all times would be to move out

Message withdrawn

Makes me realise that the system over here may be quite efficient.

A house is advertised as normal, but there are only 2 viewings, one on a Sunday afternoon ,and the other either the Monday or Tuesday evening. Then the bidding starts and is usually finished by the Friday.

You only have to clean your house once, and most houses are sold within a week. Bingo!

Start up your own estate agents using this method, it's a winner.

MrsMills, it was like that round here (SW London) last year when the market was really soaring. Everything sold within a week and all viewings were on an open house basis so all out of the way in a day then people had to submit their best and final offers.
But now the market's gone flat we're back to one viewing a week. We so should have sold last year but benefit of hindsight and all that.