Funny experiences in viewing houses

[potas]

I went to view a house last week in the corner of a recently built estate with not much space out the front. When I got out the house after the viewing I found the neighbour had blocked me in with her car - she didnt need to park there she had a double drive - whereas I had parked in front of the house i was viewing. When asked to move the car she went off on a rant about how people in that house had always parked their car somewhere else before! Feel lucky to have met her then and not after buying the house!

I looked around a flat like that once. The bloke had only a poof and a massive tv. He could hardly drag himself up off the poof to show me around. He slagged off his x the whole way round, saying she had yet to absorb that prices had dropped and that accepting reality had always been a problem for her. wow, bad juju in that flat. the x was in Sweden. good luck to her!

Saw a gorgeous house a couple of months ago, immaculate inside, owner seemed really pleasant. As we went upstairs I noticed she had framed prints of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady on the wall. Made me shudder. I mean really wtaf???

Went to see a flat with an agent. Walked in, lovely kitchen, nice sitting room, got to the bedroom only to hear muffled noises... and someone running into the en suite and slamming the door. Estate agent had phoned first to check whether the owner was in or out but owner was fast asleep and hadn't heard (must have been a heavy night, this was about 2pm).

We didn't buy it.

Fuck pubes .

We saw a house being sold by a bitter ex-husband as well. He clearly didn't want to sell it - it was filthy, the kitchen was piled high with dirty dishes and stinking pizza and curry boxes, the bloke sat in the living room with the TV blasting and barely acknowledged us after a brief diatribe about his wife, and we couldn't even see the second bedroom because the teenage son refused to get out of bed. The estate agent stood on the landing saying 'Well, it's about this big....' I never quite forgave him because the smell of the house was the thing that triggered my morning sickness, which went on to make my life an utter misery for the next four months.

The house we ended up buying had a huge display of about thirty boxed Easter eggs in front of the gorgeous feature fireplace in the front room. In September.

Dh once viewed a flat that was fairly bland and ordinary - until he went into the bathroom, which was carpeted in purple shagpile - which extended up the walls and the side of the bath, and across the ceiling! He didn't buy it.

When I was a child, dsis and I went with our parents to view a house called Doughbank Cottage. The front door wouldn't open at all, and when dad tried to open the back door, it came off in his hands. I have a surreal memory of walking through room after room, each leading from the previous one, all empty and all smelling of damp. Dad, having assessed the structural integrity of the house, refused to let mum, dsis and I go,upstairs - which was a good thing because as soon as he stepped off the top step, his foot went through the damp-riddled floorboards. We didn't buy it.

We once were once shown around a god awful flat by the most optimistic estate agent ever.

The whole flat stank of damp, there was mould on the walls, but ea was sure he could persuade the landlord to contribute towards the cost of paint so we could 'fix' this. He managed to sound convinced that a lick of paint and turning the heating up a bit would solve the serious damp problem.

No gch, only electric, but this was a good thing apparently as it would 'save on the gas bills' .

The shared garden was so beautiful. Unfortunately, as it was the basement flat, we weren't allowed
to use it. This was a good thing, in ea's view, as we had the joy of seeing the garden from the window, without any of the upkeep.

There was also a back door which we weren't allowed to use as it led to the garden but 'would provide a useful fire escape'.

The whole viewing continued like this. Dh and I were pissing ourselves laughing for days afterwards.

We once viewed a basement flat just off Church Street in Stoke Newington. The electricity had been cut off but the estate agent still proceeded to do the whole tour in pitch darkness by attempting to describe each room. We went along with it because we found it so funny.

When we were selling our flat I was short on time before a viewing. Remembering a tip my mother had given me, I hid the dirty washing up in the oven. The viewing was going well u til we reached the kitchen and the man was looking around. He opened the oven door, and there was a long silence as we all stared at the contents. He then shut the door and we carried on as if nothing had happened.

They didn't buy the flat.

We went to view a house, a lovely house in great location for a good price, but the couple who lived there with their grown-up DD, her DH and their GCs were as mad as a box of frogs. The woman followed us round and kept telling us how they probably wouldn't be moving because living all together with their GCs suited them all so well. As well as various stories about her family/friends/vague acquaintances/people from the golf club.

As soon as we got outside and shook them off, the estate agent apologised for wasting our time and then headed back in to "have it out" with the couple regarding why they had put the place on the market if they didn't want to bloody sell!

I once viewed a house with a bedroom with a warning sign on the door saying "Gas Mask Required". The EA kept a straight face throughout, but the room truly stank of sweat and other foul odours, a gas mask would have indeed been useful! It seemed to belong to a teenage boy....!

ILs viewed a house on Monday evening. As they were leaving they heard a squeal from behind them, ran back to the house to find the female EA sprawled on the concrete at the bottom of the steps leading from front door. They called an ambulance as she'd apparently smacked her head fairly hard and couldn't move one arm.

Not exactly 'funny' but certainly makes a memorable viewing for the ILs!

I've been shown round somewhere with sleeping people upstairs - teenaged children of the vendor. I've also been the sleeping person, when the landlord let the flat to us on a weekly lease until we found somewhere else but hadn't told the EA who was trying to sell it, had keysand was based aaround the corner so would drag around anyone who popped into the office...

Ive also met the EA and prospective buyers of my house coming out in a hurry as I came home. They looked a bit green and didn't stop to talk, which made sense when I got in and found that at some point during the day the cats had dragged a live bird in through the cat flap. Then they had spent much time chasing it around the house whilst pulling it to pieces, then walking around the house chucking up.

My friends viewed a tenanted flat and interrupted the tenants having sex.

Went back for a second viewing; same thing.

Either they were very horny or thought it would put off buyers!

eugh, those horny renters have put me off the flat and I haven't even seen it!

I love the pissed up couple and the ride on lawn mower.

Two spring to mind:

The first was a house with an old lady in, who when she showed us around kept talking about how crappy it was and how much she hated living there, but also kept throwing in that her son was making her sell it. That was weird enough but when we got to the landing there was, instead of bannisters, a wrought iron garden fence welded to the landing instead. Weird. We didn't go with that.

The other was a Victorian mid terrace on a nice quiet street where my parents had lived when they were first married. Because my parents had lived in a similar house my dad came with us out of curiosity to see if it was similarly laid out inside. However, when we got in it turned out that the owners had made some alterations since the photographs had been taken... and demolished all of the internal walls downstairs!! The apparent reason was because the old man who lived there was using a wheelchair so his son had made it "wheelchair friendly" but it didn't look safe at all and was just one big square with a kitchen in one corner. We didn't go with that either.

We were viewing a house which backed onto fields, it was an empty house and the ea was showing us around

All the curtains across the back of the house were closed, the ea said so people dog walking etc on the fields didn't realise the house was empty

Opened the back door to see the garden to be greeted by a huge horse, 4 men sat on the patio and a huge traveller site on the field at the back -they had removed 2 fence panels and were using the outside toilet to house a couple of dogs

Nice!

One where there were 10 people crowded around a low table in the smallest room ever; no kitchen; a bathroom with a toilet you'd have fallen off of if someone had opened the door (as there was no clearance); a garden full of junk and a man asleep in a dark bedroom.

Another where the owner had left the overwhelming smell of Lynx permeate the house and left the stereo on full blast by the front door; it was marketed as a family house, but someone had left one babygro on the floor: there were no signs of any other children as all the bedrooms had been emptied and the house felt angry IYSWIM.

Also a bungalow marketed as a family home that had a better office shed in the garden than the house itself. Upstairs had 4 rooms apparently: imagine a roof that sloped down to the floor with four pieces of MDF nailed to the sides. One room contained a tanning bed, the second a very small cot, the third a single futon and the fourth was full of clothes masking a load of damp. The bungalow had been wrecked by bad DIY and was bright purple, lime green or orange unless it was wallpapered in anaglipta (sp).

Oddly enough we didn't buy any of these gems

'And this would be the coffin room, if she wasn't on ice in Russia. I need to swell the house to pay the mafia for her health costs before I can have a funeral.'

We bought it too. Had a lot of debt collection letters for him since then, but apparently his wife just left him...

We viewed a house once which had a sort of zombie doll lying in one of the beds in the 3rd bedroom. Even our older kids were a bit freaked out.

Years ago I wanted to view a house and rang the bell to discover that the owner hadn't told the tenants he was selling.

One house I viewed had a huge mouldy patch in of the bedrooms. EA said "oh yes, it needs a bit of airing"

And there was the viewing where the owner had locked the dogs in the garden, "sorry you cannot go out but you can have a peek" over one of these stable style half doors -- only to be attacked and nearly bitten in the face by a rottweiler.
Happy days. I don't intend to house hunt ever again if I can help it.

We viewed a house that belonged to one of the brothers from right said Fred; some interesting signs and decor!

We also saw one home that had storage in cupboards up the stairs, like under eaves storage. I made some joke about how it would be perfect to shut DD (then 1) in occasionally and the very young clearly childless agent looked at me in great alarm thinking I was serious....

I once looked round a house where all of the doors had been removed for seemingly no reason - even the bathrooms - normalish family 2 DC. They had been replaced by curtains that didn't reach the floor by about a foot.

When we got to the kitchen the owner pulled back a curtain to what should have been the larder to reveal .... about 12 doors all leaned up neatly. "Here are the doors" she said "should you want to put them back in" .....as we backed out slowly.