Have you ever bought a house when it wasn’t “show home tidy” for a viewing?

[Boatshoes]

I’m selling my home (it was a new build when I bought it) and have my first viewing today. I’ve been up since 3.30am making sure it looks all nice and tidy and clean (viewing is taking place after I go work at 7am). I have a few more viewings lined up next week when my DC and DH are here (they were away overnight). My question is, have you ever viewed a house that wasn’t 100% neat and photo ready and bought it / sold it? We are generally a tidy house but now there is the pressure to keep it nice! The houses we have viewed so far (3!) have been lovely and tidy - I’ve not yet seen one with a cereal box on the counter or a child’s toy out of place!

I wasn't attracted to present house when first saw the photos on Rightmove....of course on viewing saw the potential. Very neat and tidy, there were those basket-like boxes everywhere, every room painted white, not a picture or a book to be seen. It was more like an office or a doctor's surgery.

Our house was in a terrible state, the tenants who were in it at the time were clearly unhappy the landlord was selling. I can see past clutter and mess and certainly wouldn't pass up a great house because of it - it'll be empty when you gef the keys!

We tried to sell our spotless house for months with no luck.

Then one Saturday morning, mid breakfast, very untidy house, beds unmade etc, the estate agent just lets himself in with a potential buyer. They'd forgotten to let us know. We sat in the kitchen mortified whilst they looked about.

He bought the house!

Mess and clutter doesn't put me off at all. If anything I like seeing the potential of the property and knowing I can add some value to it.

My DH is quite different. He has been put off by more than one house because it was 'grotty' or 'looked like a rented house' or 'badly cared for'. He can't see past the clutter and the need for a lick of paint.

I don't think the house needs to be spotless but I wouldn't take the risk of coming across a buyer like DH and I always clean the house before viewings. Even if it's only shoving things in cupboards, giving everything a quick wipe down and opening the windows for an hour.

Yes, my house was a probate sale. Leaves on the hall floor, post piling up, marks on the walls where there had been pictures, old carpets, nothing in the kitchen except a sink.
We could see that it had been, and would be again, a lovely family home.

I bought a flat that had 17 indoor cats living in it. It had amazing proportions, and had been beautifully refurbished by a previous owner. It was a massive bargain. You just needed to see past the sea of cats … and the smell.

I honestly couldn't, so would have been out the door in a shot.

I think people obviously can still sell places that are presented badly. Just not for the best price they could have achieved, and it might take longer.

I bought a house that had been unlived in for a year, was freezing cold (Scotland, December, no heating on) and dusty. Plus had hideous decor (dark mustard paint on sitting room walls, dark brown wallpaper in bathroom, lurid flowery wallpaper in boxroom). But it was large, had a fab garden, and a good village location with views of the hills.
I think if your buyers are sensible they will see the house’s potential and ignore temporary things like clutter or decor, which will not be there after they move in.
The only caveat is that clutter sometimes suggests inadequate storage.

Tidy/clean doesn't bother me. We did buy a tidy/clean house and let the decor fool us into thinking all was well. All was not well. Homeowner spent thousands making the house look pretty but the conservatory roof leaked and the heating pipes were blocked so some radiators were stone cold come winter.

It's a balance. Is a house, uh, well lived in and untidy but the owner can point to major outlays like a recent new boiler, or a new bathroom or maintenance to the roof or new windows then you balance that against the kitchen being grubby and untidy or the skirting boards needing replacing.

However, we have not made offers on houses for all sorts of reasons:

• layout didn't work for us
• house looked REALLY scruffy for its price. I'm not paying top whack for a house that needs 10k+ doing and I'm wary that if an owner hasn't done much to keep the interior up that there's a lot of maintenance they'e skipped out on as well.
• houses pretty much perfect but size reflected in its price so too small for us
• project house I loved (like a time warp to the 1970s) had a garden backed on to a pub's smoking area so really noisy
• decor too fashionable and not to our taste so no point replacing brand new kitchen and built in wardrobe.

Of course, it's easier to sell a house that is pristine, relatively fashionable and clean but you spend so much in time, effort and money that you need to be dead canny to make sure you get your money back.

It's never been a problem for me, I try not to pay attention to the sellers' 'stuff' and see beyond it. I'd love to see all houses empty! No way to hide the damp patches, stains etc. We had to move out of a house before it had sold and so marketed it empty (with photos taken before that showing furniture), and it took ages to sell as agents kept telling us people don't like to see an empty house. People are idiots - can they not imagine a sofa in the sitting room, beds in the bedrooms etc? For me that's much easier than trying to see the house through the clutter and stuff of the sellers.

Well, we must have broken all the rules! We bought a house that smelled of incontinent dogs and cats and people, 28 years ago. We brought in industrial cleaners, changed some carpets and left the windows open for weeks. And the smells went. But we have spent several multiples of those costs, replacing windows, and central heating... and... and... and. We were here 25 years before we updated the kitchen, which was well planned to start with. We did a supermarket-level refurb rather than a luxury version, but it looks great and works really well, and I'd defy even the snobbiest person to find fault. |

Ok I’ll be round tomorrow to check it out

I'll have the coffee pot ready to go @Twiglet.

Lovely! 😊

Yes because I could see past in and look at the actual house and what it could look like with my things in!

Ours was actually quite cluttered and messy tbh, mould stains on parts of the walls etc. Got 7 offers (including us) but this was when the market was in a bit of a frenzy tbh.

Yes, when we bought the house we live in now, it was so dirty we called in cleaners who usually specialised in crime scenes or places where a body had lain undiscovered for a while (have forensics friend) — and they claimed the living room broke their equipment.😀

Many years ago, my now ex husband and I nearly bought a house that was a bloody tip. I don't know what was going on there, they were both professionals and had two kids but it was something else when we walked in. The bath was full of shitty nappies and they hadn't even bothered to clear up dirty dishes in the kitchen. However it was a house with potential and we had our offer accepted. We were then gazumped so never did move in.

I'm about to start the process and I'm worried about this too. I need to declutter but otherwise my house is clean and I'm not going to go mad. It's my home after all!

I bought a flat that was utterly rammed with furniture, ornaments,room dividers, book cases, piles of stuff everywhere, kitchen and bathroom surfaces covered with stuff. Crap everywhere.
A total mess that wouldn’t be there when it was mine and minimalist.

When we viewed our current house it was an absolute mess. The women living in it didn't want to sell ( forced to because to divorce) and she had made no effort to make it at all appealing. Graffiti scratched into the woodwork , dirty

We saw through the mess and could see the potential.

The house we sold was show house condition. We had made it beautiful and it was really hard to leave knowing what we were going to.

Hope your viewing went well :-)

We bought our first house 10 years ago and it was messy, garden overgrown, crazy wall colours but we still bought it , I loved it That being said, the price was right and they had dropped it twice… in my opinion if it was presented better they probably would have got more. We moved from the house 7 years later and I found the selling part super stressful. My LO was 10 months old, I was crazy and was trying to keep my home up to a show home standard, each time we had a viewing, anything I thought made the house look cluttered I’d hide in my car 🤣, I’d take down the baby gates, a massive deep clean, I’d have it immaculate. We had a few viewings but no sale for the first few weeks and I was exhausted and on edge we could get a call at any time for a viewing. One Sunday, the one day where I knew we wouldn’t need to worry about getting a fall, that morning at 8am, a man turned up at our house, no appointment booked but said the estate agents didn’t answer his calls … it was Sunday and early! I said he’d have to wait till tomorrow to arrange an appointment to which he said he was visiting his son with his wife and could he come back with his wife that morning. My house was a shit tip, washing out, toys out, messy kitchen from breakfast and exactly how I didn’t want it….and… he bought the house and moved in last year! When viewing houses, I loved houses that smelled nice (diffusers, room spray etc, Next do lovely ones), clean hoovered carpets and things tidy, doesn’t have to be deep clean ‘ I don’t live here’ immaculate but kitchen and bathrooms to be clean for me. I’d find it harder to knock a house down on price if it was presented nicely x

Well, I've bought three tragic wrecks at auction, so yes! More to the point for you, @Boatshoes, most people have a really poor imagination. They can't 'see' space behind clutter, and a surprising number can't even imagine their own stuff in it. This is why developers set up show homes: they're selling life in that exact home for all the buyers who can't picture it to themselves.

I also got a fantastic deal when renting a flat that was being vacated by a crowd of student sharers. It was packed to the gills; the agent said all the other viewers had been put off by the stuff.

So if you're selling - I'm afraid it does make sense to 'dress' the place. There are people who make their living out of it! One of the easier, if inconvenient, things you can do is put almost everything in storage while you're selling. It's also worth touching up chipped paintwork, fixing saggy curtains and so forth.

I’ve always been of the mindset ‘worst house in the best area’ so fixer uppers/mess doesn’t bother me. I figure it’s priced to sell. The only one that made me really gawp was this huge, beautiful, Victorian townhouse in a desirable suburb and I was really excited about seeing it as the pictures were impressive. The owner had knocked through the kitchen and dining room to create this massive kitchen diner (I’m talking about 25-30ft wide) . He clearly hadn’t sought planning permission or had plans drawn up and the whole ceiling was so bowed it looked like it was one heavy rainfall away from collapsing. I just thought, ‘If he’s been mad enough to do this, what else has he done?’

I’m always up for a project. I’ve bought houses and had them rewired, new kitchens and bathrooms, new windows and doors, new roof in one case. I’m not afraid of the hard work or expense as long as we get it around the right price, but in this case there were too many unknowns and the feeling that the house was likely held together with spit and twigs.

A bit of household mess s fine - people can understand a few toys about and a rumpled bed. But dirty dishes and dirty bathrooms are not - people will think if you can't be bothered then what else have you neglected?
It's a pain for sure. Maybe consider an open day where all viewings are done in a couple hours?

My first house was a probate sale and still had all the previous occupant's furniture in it which was a bit daunting.

The only very tidy house I have bought, is the one that has caused me the most problems. Ten years in, I'm still repairing the previous owner's botched jobs.

Anyway, I've never wanted to buy a show house, they make me uncomfortable. All this dressing of rooms is weird. Just clean and tidy will do fine.