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 that and don't know anyone who does. The closest we got was when two houses next door to each other were up for sale. We viewed both.

No. You are strange.

have you had a spate of knocks when your neighbors sell? Of course not.

Just before I completed on one property in a new (to me) area I knocked on the neighbours' doors on both sides and, after explaining that I was about to buy the house, asked them questions. I asked if they were happy there, what were the other neighbours like, any anti-social stuff going on etc. They both seemed OK with my questions.

I completed on the sale

I've never done that, no! If I did want to know what the area was like I'd just knock on the door and ask the neighbour rather than making up weird lies. Plus there's no guarantee they are telling you the truth or they will be there for long themselves anyway so I can't imagine it would be that useful.

I’ve never pretended to get the wrong house but I always try to talk to the neighbours. If it’s a semi or a terrace, what your neighbours are like is key. And even in a detached it’s a pia living next to a nutter/arsehole I speak from experience.

Did both neighbours on my current house. Got invited for a cup of tea and a great chat with both. Been in 5 years now and has never been a problem. Had I been greeted by a knuckled fragging bloke with a pitbull then I would have been out. Makes total sense and I don't know why others don't.

I never did this while house hunting and no one of my friends experienced this. The best neighbours we’ve had were students. And at the second place was family with 2 dogs.
You wouldn’t like me as a neighbour, I’m very suspicious if someone knocking during the day without legitimate reason and yours sounds as a non legitimate to me. In practice I’m very good neighbour as I keep myself to myself, take parcels in, polite and very rare have parties. However I’m also not British so your assumptions about people wouldn’t work.

I live in London and there are loads of 'for sale'/'sold' signs up.

I am an estate agent and this does happen but it’s not common.

Totally normal

I think it’s a great idea. Might not have our nutter neighbour now! That said we are detached and her crap is mainly able to be ignored

The pretending to have the wrong house is weird and not really believable. Knocking to say hi and ask about the area would be a lot more normal.

You can be upfront. One of our proposed neighbours openly knocked on our door told me he was looking a buying the house and asked what it was like in the village.

I thought it was nice and must have passed his inspection as he did buy the house!

We did it when we viewed our flat to buy, as wanted to know who lived above having had awful experiences before with upstairs neighbours. I was honest and just said I wanted to ask about the local area, safety, what the street was like, but secretly just wanted to see who lived there!
I'd be more inclined to go and park outside the house a few times to see what the street is like at different times of the day/week.

OP this is genius. Ignore the doubters. Look at the many threads on here about neighbours from hell. You can also glean intelligence about the general area/ any new plans that will blight or boost the area by chatting. Knock on my door anytime. Works both ways: I also want to vet prospective new buyers! I’m using your tactic if interest rates ever come down below 10000%.

My neighbour had a viewing this afternoon. They went out for an hour and the estate agent met the viewers out the front of the property. There's no sign, but anyone who's looked at the photo's online before viewing (so pretty much everyone?) would know which house they were looking for.

I’ve always done this going back to first house bought 25 years ago. I’ve never pretended to get the wrong house though! Just said thinking of buying next door and asked what the neighbourhood was like.

Didn’t really help sussing first neighbours though, they seemed lovely and friendly but were bloody nightmare nosey, noisy bastards who thought they owned the street (started a vendetta when we refused their repeated and forceful offers of their pot smoking teenage daughter babysitting our newborn) and we moved within a year!

Quite a few people did this when a house in our street was up for sale. It got annoying pretty quickly.

I also think it's pretty hilarious to pretend you got the wrong house - at least just be honest with them and ask your questions.

Nope it's odd, but funny!

I did notice an open day for viewing a house opposite ours last winter.

This coincided with DH getting a big skip on the drive and emptying our garage of all it's crap ... another neighbour joined to help, with a bottle of rum to keep them warm. They looked like wrong uns and it would have put me off buying.

I didn't do this when looking/buying 25 years ago, however I did, at the time, used do a door to door selling job (Betterware) and a particularly hostile and rude (really personal insults) householder put me off viewing the house next door whose details I had just been sent. The house was ideal but after this encounter no way was I going to even consider viewing.
Thing is I don't think what the OP is doing is wrong, in fact I think it is quite inventive, just think of the posts on MN about awful neighbours!

Of course you don't think it's wrong - you were happy to knock on people's doors trying to sell them stuff!

What does a quick "No, number 16 is next door" tell you about the neighbours?! Unless you then refuse to leave and try to engage them in random conversation, in which case I don't know why you haven't had more doors closed in your face.

Me too. They're literally everywhere!

id rather someone just asked straight out what the area and neigbours are like-i wouldnt hang round after oh i think i need next door sorry

Never done it, wouldn’t do it. Neighbour could change tomorrow, after all.

I did have somebody knock on our door when the house a couple of houses up was for sale. Ostensibly she claimed she didn’t know if she was at the right house number but pretty clear she was scoping the neighbours.