If buying a house, what would make you want to walk straight back out?

[JMSA]

I mean it lighthearted-ish, as we probably wouldn’t be quite so rude! But what is an absolute dealbreaker for you?
For me it would be the presence of a Saniflo/macerator toilet. Evil things.

I did walk out when I heard a neighbour on what I assume was a very shouty aggressive phone call - could only hear him, followed by music being put on painfully loud

Like a lot of others bad smells , ones you can't determine the source of. I always look at the roof missing tiles or slates. Cracks in walls the pyrite and mica scandals has made me hyper aware of them

😂 why? You could convert it into a nice little study

Do most estate agent show people round nowadays. They do with ours

cooking smells, recently one house had a strong smell that had permeated the downstairs

also a dodgy gas pipe under the French doors was off putting

Yes, estate agents do show people round. It's still a good idea to do some indepedent research.

Smelling of smoke / damp / pets.

Anywhere there are tenants in situ unless they assured me they were buying or willingly moving somewhere else. I would not want to make someone homeless just to profit some LL. You would never know what they might do out of pure spite (prawns under the baseboard).

Big scary dogs next door

Definitely neighbours. It’s good to sass out the area in case they might be some messy hoarders, that can affect the value of your property (and your inner peace). Your house can even be a ruin if you’re planning to renovate for example, but you can’t make messy nextdoor’s pretty. We have an example further down on our street, where young family lives attached to and older man whose house is pretty much derelict, hardly uses heating, broken windows, etc. it’s now even effecting their house due to shared walls and roof. And they can’t afford to move, and the value of their property is affected even if they wanted to sell. It’s frustrating for them😣

Dog wee and hair everywhere and smell of wet dog. 🤢

Smells of dog or cigarettes. Scruffy neighbours.

Dirty pants on the bedroom floor. The owner was showing us around and he tried to kick them under the bed.

When looking with a dd, we didn’t even get as far as the front door, having seen the neighbours playing very loud music and drinking beer in the front garden. Phoned the EA and said we wouldn’t bother with this one, thanks.

The neighbours, first, and the way they keep their gardens and parking.

The proximity to a main road - not for noise, but pollution.

Visible signs of mould.

Visited a house with a swimming pool a few years ago. The agent made a big thing of it. The drowned rat bobbing along the bottom was not a selling point 😅

Moved to the countryside decades ago - would never have close neighbours again. Our first house was enough.

No separate toilet, cigarette smells and unattended garden as well as noisy neighbours would really put me off.

Bamboo in the garden. Utter pain in the arse.

I’d never buy a house with dodgy neighbours or of the previous owner had a dog. We rented a place where the previous inhabitant had a dog and the hairs took months of daily hoovering to shift but even then it was hard to do Pilates on the carpet as it just stank!

We once looked at a very lower half of a villa type flat. The upstairs neighbour leaned out of the window when we arrived to unleash a torrent of verbal abuse (drunk, 3pm). We didn’t even ring the bell.

I once turned down a ground floor flat because only a single line of chain-link fence separated the small-ish garden from a large school playground

Noise!

Even the slightest hint of damp - having rented a few flats with it when I was younger I've now got a nose like a bloodhound for it.

A colleague went to see a house a few years ago and the lady that owned it was boiling kippers for her dog. Bleurgh.

Boiled cabbage.

What's the likelihood of that happening thoughvwhen you're just viewing a house and are there for a very short period of time?