What deluded and downright weird properties have you viewed...

[GreenBeeSW]

Just for fun, I'm not looking for a analysis on house values... We've looked at lovely properties, project properties and everything in between. We've also viewed a number of "looks great on rightmove" but then you turn up and its so far off the advertising you have to laugh...

My favourites so far...

1. House priced similar to nearby village despite being much closer to busy road but photos looked reasonable and described as "Move in ready, high standard of decor". It was not. And they had some how managed to avoid photographing the 4 MASSIVE inbuilt reptile tanks, one of which formed part of the wall between bathroom and bedroom so both you and your gecko could watch family members take a shower.

1. House on market several months ago, front garden, courtyard back garden and detached but sizable garden plot, garage and workspace. Recently returned to market for the exact same price, listing states "good outdoor space". But front garden has been tarmaced. Garden, garage/workshop turns out has been sold off. Asked EA "So theres not actually a garden now?" Reply "But you dont need it because now you've got parking for three cars!" (Two bed house).

1. Very ordinary house but nice location, listing highlighted "lovely views" and "family ready home". Vendor was a keen amateur builder. Missing walls, doors to nowhere, garden full of "summer house" projects. But best of all was the enterance porch, which was a sort of stilted-lean-too complete with wet room and toilet. So you could sign for a parcel whilst sat on the crapper...

House for sale on an A road, double red no parking/stopping lines on each side of the road, in south London. Being rented out to ten (yes, ten) male estate agents working for the same estate agent firm that showed us around. Mattresses (with sheets and duvets on, so used for sleeping) absolutely everywhere including on the hall floor, someone had just used the toilet before we arrived and the whole place stank, kitchen full of dirty dishes, takeaway containers, cans, everything imaginable, currains and blinds half open etc. It was an absolute state.

I remember going house hunting with my parents - I'd have been about 9 years old. They wanted to move to the country, and we went to look at a place called Doughbank Cottage. It was in a valley, with a stream running through it, surrounded by trees, and was less house and more sponge!

To start with, dad couldn't get the front door to open (we'd got the keys from the agent - the property was empty), and when he managed to unlock the back door, it fell off its hinges. A good start.

Then I remember walking through room after room, all empty, grubby and smelling of damp. Dad was clearly very dubious about the state of the place (with good reason) and told mum, dsis and me to stay downstairs, whilst he took a first look upstairs - which was just as well, because when he stepped off the top step of the staircase, his foot went straight through the floorboards on the landing, which had all the strength and structural integrity of a wet paper bag.

He extracted his foot and came downstairs, and we left and didn't look back!!

My dad was moving out of our family home and looking for a flat. He fell in love with a block and the biggest flat in the block came up for sale.

It was a old woman who was moving into a care home and her son was selling it. It was meant to be three bed but she had knocked through the wall between bedroom one and to and turned the second bedroom into a massive wardrobe and the third bedroom was about 6 foot by 6 foot.

Firstly they demanded he complete in like a month but not move in til the woman got her place at the care home which could be another year, then when he refused they asked for a long exchange period but they could give two weeks notice for him to complete. Either option left my dad homeless as he was selling the house to finance it. oh and to top it all off they wanted my dad to pay all the bills during this interium period.

When he said no they suggested he move in but she stay there as a non paying tenant. Finally they demanded he lodge his deposit with their solicitor. His solicitor said no cos if they default on the mortgage the mortgage company can claim the deposit.

He pulled out and ended up somewhere much nicer.

There’s a property for sale near me on for 1.9m the house itself isn’t weird but they’ve photographed the bathrooms with the toilet seats up. Why????

We were looking for a flat for our adult child and were offered a viewing of a place with an en-suite. Turns out, owners idea of an en-suite was a toilet stuck in a corner of the bedroom. There was no separate enclosure, no sink, no shower just a lone toilet sitting all by it’s self.

@Blueroses99

I went to view a property with an en-suite in the main bedroom. Although I’m not sure if it should be called an en-suite when there were no doors or walls separating it from the bedroom. There was a toilet/basin/shower/free standing bath built into the loft room eaves along one side of the bedroom.

Though reading some of these stories, it doesn’t seem entirely uncommon to have bathroom units in a bedroom!

Was it in SW London? If not, there are two of those.

We viewed a standard London Victorian end terrace on a wide plot.
There was a brick built outbuilding at the end of the garden, full width. "Potential annexe or granny flat"
Fine as long as granny didn't mind using the en suite compost heap instead of a loo.

We bought it.

A house where the recently deceased elderly owner had kept free range budgies. Most of the crap had been scrapped off but there were feathers and bird seed everywhere. And the smell of birds was overpowering. Plus 2 of the 3 bedrooms had padlock hasps on the outside....

Not a house viewing but... My first proper flat share in London was a badly-done Victorian ground floor conversion. It was a three bed flat where the ceiling fell in on my mate's bedroom one night after a heavy rainstorm, my room had no windows, the bathroom carpet was so full of silverfish it sometimes looked as if it was moving and the shower cubicle (with glass door) was in the hallway.

God, we had some good parties though

Way too many.... but we did move 3 times in 4 years and are always drawn to character or quirky properties so saw our share of horrors.

• Victorian terrace that needed ‘cosmetic updating’. It had no bathroom, internal walls half knocked down and a motorbike in the living room

• Beautiful grade 2 listed house in a conservation area with an owner who had lived there for 30 years and had no understanding of what a listed building was, the stuff of Conservation Officer nightmares. His (now adult) children’s childhood bedrooms were still covered in their graffiti and inexplicably had yoghurt lids glued to the ceiling. The fuse box was next to the shower.

• Lovely, quirky cottage which seemed to have two kitchens. Turns out the couple who owned it had separated and divided the house in two to carry on living there. This was weird enough, but the strange girl standing and staring at us through the garden hedge sent us running.

• Gorgeous cottage with an attached and detached barn, with planning permission to extend into the attached barn. After having an offer accepted we discovered that the detached barn was on a separate title deed and we couldn’t raise a mortgage against it, but we were persistent and found a solution. When we went back with the agent and a builder we found the living room under 2 feet of water (the house was vacant). The mortgage company ran a mile, the builder ran a mile and we ran a mile. I think the owners were in negative equity and 11 years later it has been on and off the market but never sold.

We were shown around a very dated house by the vendor who flung open the doors of the master bedroom and said ‘and this is the room my mother died in’ before revealing something akin to a shrine to her - with candles and her nightwear laid out on the bed etc. So weird, but I felt sad for him .

The house we ended up buying was sold by a couple moving into a newly built retirement flat. They had paid a deposit and had to complete by the end of the following month or lose their deposit (according to the agent who did them no favours) - they hadn’t realised that they were responsible for selling their existing house to fund the purchase....... We were in rented (due to a previous purchase falling through), and completed in under five weeks.

Not for sale, but I was looking for a holiday let quite last minute after my DM offered to take my DC away for October half term as I couldn't get any annual leave from work. Obviously lots of properties in a popular seaside town in half term had already been let, but I did find one in the right area, 2 bedrooms, right price range, all good -except the kitchen sink and kitchen units were in the second bedroom! The cooker and fridge were in the open plan living area, but the rest of the kitchen was built in the bedroom, it was the strangest thing. I didn't book it.

So much weirdness:

• The house where all their coats had been piled on to a sofa. Thought it was odd but gave it no more thought until the coat pile started snoring. Apparently the father liked a nap around around that time, so he'd been covered up with coats to hide him

• The one where they liked to hunt things. Antlers, furs, heads - even their guns on the wall. Lost my temper with the EA on that one, especially as they were receiving loads of complaints and people walking out, but still weren't warning viewers

Oh gosh, this thread has reminded me of a horrendous house that we viewed before buying our house about six years a go now. It was listed as a family home, but it was clearly a HMO as every available room had been turned in to a bedroom. Every room was grimy and disgusting. The walls were damaged and paper was peeling off the walls. The carpets were disgusting. What passed as the kitchen was so decrepit and damaged, it hadn't been updated for years. The hob was unusable, it was disgusting. The garden was very overgrown and needed a lot of work, fence panels were barely standing up . I think each bedroom was used more like a bedsit. You would think all of this would be reflected in the price, but you'd be wrong! It was one of the most expensive properties we saw and it needed tens of thousands of pounds spent on it to make it liveable. I don't know how the estate agent managed to bluff their way through the viewing. My husband and I were absolutely baffled by the price.

So to sum up, it was disgusting

When we moved to the area we are in now, we literally told the EAs that we'd see everything with 4 beds in our pricerange over the weekends we were visiting which meant we saw some interesting houses. One was a dormer bungalow advertised as en suite master. This turned out to be that there was a shower in the built in wardrobe, no separation from the bedroom at all

Was that a bungalow near a Central Line station? We saw one that sounds similar. It has a warden as the people living there needed supervision. We felt terrible going into their rooms.

It was priced at least £200K over what it should have cost.

Awful place and the EA was embarrassed.

I went to view quite an old but large house which was over 4 floors. During the viewing the elderly lady who lived there with her adult son dropped into the conversation that she wanted someone to buy it and convert the top floor into a flat for the 2 of them and let them live there. They would t be paying rent but would adjust the purchase price according
I looked at the adult son to see if maybe his Mother was a bit confused and he added “we wouldn’t be any trouble”
As you can imagine I didn’t buy it

Like an above poster, we also experienced disgusting HMOs.
One of them had an open day, we waited outside until our time slot. A large number of people came out, but still around 7 or 8 people left in there. EA said for us to come inside, we said we'll wait until the others had left (thinking we didn't want to rush the remaining people, and we were the last slot of the day).
EA had to come out to say the remaining people lived there, so wouldn't be leaving. You couldn't move for mattresses on the floor and I swear the smell was burned in to my nostrils

@Hoppinggreen That's so weird, I wonder if they ever found anyone to agree to their weird request...