Viewing houses- surely everyone does this?

[Sophieagain1984]

We're house hunting. Whenever I view a house, I always knock on the door of the next door neighbour, pretending I've got the wrong house- I like to know what the neighbour is like and sometimes they even give you useful info.

DH says no one else does this and it's weird. WDYT?

Never done it or experienced this. However, if a potential neighbour was to do this, I'd prefere they said "thinking of buying next door. What's the neighbourhood like?" Compared to weird trying to make conversation type thing.

Now beginning to wonder if this happened to me last week... Two separate occasions I had people turn up saying they were looking for next door's address (which is up for sale) and did they have the right place. I thought it was odd because next door is a bungalow, completely different brick colour to ours, there are absolutely zero similarities and next door is clearly signposted and I think it actually has a different postcode to us (there's a bit of a gap between us). Both times I wandered in thinking they must be idiots to have mistaken our house for next door

Never done this, but if a neighbour is outside for some reason I do introduce myself as a potential neighbour and have a little chat.
Frankly if someone knocked on my door with that mistaken house story (rather than being honest), it would be a quick correction and that's it. I can't stand cold callers and would assume that what you are. And as all you'd do is see me (and not my teenage kids or four animals), I'm not sure how much you'd gain.

Where I live on the edge of suburbia houses are not on the market for long and demand is high so people have to make a quick decision to offer. So it is the norm to view the house, and if you like it scout for a neighbour in their garden or knock on the door next door and ask what the road/village is like, what the broadband speed is like, what the local shops/pubs/school/commute/facilities are like etc - it's a popular village but if you're not local you wouldn't really know what it is like.

I would suggest that is normal.

However pretending you've come to view the wrong property is just plain weird. I'd put you off trying to buy. Likewise asking the ins and outs of every property and person in the neighbourhood is also just plain weird - and I would also put off a potential buyer.

No.

I would take a look at the general state of their house and garden ( without being overly nosy)...are there trampolines, aviaries, bits of motorbike, brambles etc but no more than that.

If someone did it to me and then moved in I would probably avoid them.

I’d love having sheep as neighbours. Much better than electric guitars at all hours and listening to loud family arguments.

Speaking to the neighbours is a good idea - though you might hold off this vetting until you put an offer in/are serious about buying. But no harm in being honest - you will still be able to tell if they're obviously horrid, and they will answer questions properly.

Why don't you just be honest? Knock, say you're viewing next door and want to know what the areas like. I wouldn't mind if someone did that to me but if they pretended they'd got the wrong house it would be totally obvious and id think there were batshit.

If you did that to me I'd think you were weird and I'd make every attempt to put you off buying.

What are you looking for, op? Race? Regional accents? Neck tattoos? Wearing pyjamas in the afternoon?

Really odd.. and if you’d done that to me then moved in that first impression would stick 😂

I don't understand how this even works. If you knocked on my door it would go:

you: Hi, I've come to look round this house that's for sale.
Me: Oh you have the wrong house, it's actually the one next door. Bye!

Presumably you then do something to carry the conversation on, but how, when I am about to shut the door?

We've never done it.

When two doors down viewed, they bumped into our immediate neighbour and told me they nearly didn't buy because they thought he was noisy. He told me he wasn't happy about them moving in as they swore a lot. Three years down the line, the two men are there every morning having a chat over the fence and putting the world to rights - just goes to show first impressions don't always count.

Never did that and we viewed about 30 properties before buying our house! I did peek into their gardens to make sure there was no rubbish/kid shit everywhere, I wanted relatively quiet and peaceful neighbours. One has a motorbike now and one has grandkids round sometimes, but other than that they’re quiet and nice!

That's really weird and odd.

The only I've ever done that when looking to buy a place was when the numbers on a street weren't well signposted (mine wasn't) for flats and I couldn't find mine and no one else was answering the flat bells. So knocked next door and got a grumpy woman answering the door who wasn't much help! EA was next to useless too. of course

I've sat outside the houses we've been thinking about buying a few times at different times of the day/night/weekend after we drove past the first house and ex-partner and I were thinking of buying and the heavily tattooed bloke who would have been our new next door neighbour was holding what looked like a bikers convention in his driveway at 11pm.

Once I knew I was buying a house I have spoken with the neighbours, but if I was only viewing a house I would not be so entitled as to knock on a stranger's door and waste their time for my own benefit, and I definitely wouldn't 'pretend' I'd got the number wrong - it's such a pointless lie. What if they were sleeping? What if they weren't well? Why is your curiosity more important than their right to peace and quiet in their home? What if everyone buying that house did it?

You sound incredibly pushy, tbh.

Does the house for sale not have a big "FOR SALE" sign on it though?
If you did go on to have problems with future neighbours, it would probably be your fault for being creepy from the get go.

This!

We had a knock on the door from a couple who were thinking of using the builders working on an extension next door, asking what they were like on a day to day basis as they were thinking of using them. Never taken so much pleasure in relaying the truth of what they were like to live next door to. Don’t think the wanky builders will be getting that contract, as these people valued their neighbours!

You can't really think that everyone does this.

If this was the case, I imagine the neighbours would become quite irate quite quickly to be bothered so many times either when getting on with their evening or enjoying their weekend. So they might become rude/grumpy when they're not normally like that, defeating the point of knocking.

Imagine evening viewings. If the first prospective buyer knocked on my door while I was trying to feed and bathe my small child, I might be slightly annoyed at having to get said dripping, shivering child out of the bath to answer the door just to be fobbed off with a silly excuse. If two or three more viewers did it after that, I'd be hard-pushed not to swear at them and would probably stop answering the door! Likewise for weekends...

You obviously don't live next to problem neighbours. I promise you, they're usually very easily identified.

Cringey and weird.

I agree with others that pretending to have the wrong house or otherwise fibbing is a bit silly. I doubt you’re as good an actress as you think and will just look like a loon.
Also, we have much less of a knocking on peoples’ doors culture than we used to. Firstly more people are out at work now, and secondly people are in touch all the time with mobiles, internet etc. so people knocking unannounced at the door is much rarer and may actually may some people nervous.

Yabu and weird lying like this.