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.

Asbestos

The area I currently live in (and hope to be vacating in the next 18 months!) has a few places where there are kids toys strewn across the front gardens - including trampolines - and the general air of dilapidation (boarded up windows and doors) overall is very striking. Makes me feel quite depressed each time I have to pass through them .. but definitely spurs me on to get out of here (moved to support a vulnerable older family member just about the time of the first Covid lockdown).

What are paddle stairs?

I don’t understand that logic. Surely the kind of person who keeps on top of house maintenance would also keep their garden tidy?

I couldn’t go into a house where someone had pet tarantulas. And I really, really hope that I never get neighbours who keep them. Snakes don’t bother me.

We fell for that once when we were inexperienced first time buyers. When we walked in after completing, all we could smell
was dog piss plus there were fleas. I could have cried 😢 😢 We ended up changing the carpets.

Hyacinth looking out of her window next door.

Mine was the ‘free’ garden shed that had been used for breeding fancy mice. It was mice free but stank. Also the house itself was home to two spaniels and the bottom of every wall was covered in a layer of dirt and dog hairs and also stank. The house was only about 5 years old and should have been lovely but they just couldn’t sell it. I wonder why!

https://www.staircases.org/birch24-spacesaver-staircase.html

They save space but I find them scary.

Nose blind, they get used to the smell.
Same like some with BO or halitosis.

I say that as someone who's been told my breath stank, had no idea 🫣.

Agree, it's possible to have a clean house and a clean garden as much as it's possible to have both grim.

I raise you sitting in the screen-less front garden.

@ShinyAppleDreamingOfTheSea you’d think but having viewed 20-30 houses the last time we moved my anecdata is the houses with immaculate gardens were:
a) owned by older people looking to downsize OR deceased estates
b) incredibly dated and/or in poor condition because the assumption is buyers will want to do a full reno OR they’ve just gone blind to the maintenance needed.
’Hole in the ceiling’ house was a great example, it was a deceased estate so no one was going in regularly but they were paying a gardener to maintain the outside so it looked ‘lived in’.
The house we bought had a stunning garden that was meticulously tended, it also had missing roof tiles, leaky rotten windows, knackered private drainage, questionable electrics and threadbare carpet!

@Ineedanewsofa
Actually that makes sense. When my parents died, their house needed a lot of work doing to it and we sold it cheaper knowing whoever bought it would want to completely renovate, but I paid a gardener to keep the outside looking neat for the sake of the neighbours.

Used to work for an estate agent and everybody always used to hate showing what we called the 'dog houses'. They always stank. I can overlooked most things but not that.

DH and I once viewed a lovely house, but as the EA ushered us into the garden, we realised that the owner was sitting on a bench on the patio, just staring out at the garden. It was 8pm and pitch black. He didn't acknowledge us or the EA, just kept silently staring at the garden. It made for a very uncomfortable viewing. Why not just go for a walk around the block for five minutes, or at least say hello to the people who potentially want to buy your house?

I agree, many of the things mentioned are cosmetic, and it is a matter of how much you want to spend and what that does to the price.
eg when we were looking we saw a lovely house, but it had a conrete garden. We worked out how much it cost to dig it all up, and fatcored that in to the cost and how much we wanted to spend on the house.

You can get a bargain if you are willing to spend the time and money removing floorboards, or digging up a conrete garden.

We looked at one and the estate agent said the price had been reduced by about a fifth because they wanted a quick sell. They had already moved to Ireland. The price was really cheap but we couldn’t even get into the lounge because of all of their packing cases. They were literally floor to ceiling. We both instantly decided that it was a hard no as we couldn’t even be sure the room had walls or anything else come to that. I think you know when you find the one and this definitely wasn’t it. I think the estate agent thought we were mad but independently we both came immediately to the same decision.

There is a house down my road up for sale where the neighbours (the house's neighbours as right at the bottom of the cul de sac) have 2 vans and 2 cars spilling onto the road.

The owners of the house with the cars and vans moved in 3 years ago. There were many similar priced properties that are 3 bed semis for sale at the time but have bigger drives. If you have 2 vans and 2 cars, you look at properties where you can park these on the driveway or on the road which doesn't piss off your neighbours.

I would bypass that property for sale if house hunting.

Why would either of these make you walk out? They're just items that will be moved when you bought the house presumably!

What’s wrong with a Subaru?! My 83 year old father has one- they’d be great neighbours!

Opposite situation but when selling my flat and doing viewings myself, my puppy did a poo on the carpet in front of a prospective buyer... They still put in an offer!

The neighbours we've had who owned them were young, racer boys. The anti-social noise off them was unbearable. I should imagine very different to your elderly father, lol!

I think it would put me off to think that someone had bike oil and muck which could still linger somewhere.

They cannot take that with them.