What do you wish you had checked when you viewed a property.

[AddictedToRightmove]

Just as the title says. What do you wish you had checked during your viewing?

So we moved in our property 3 years ago and after we moved in we found out:

1. none of the extracter fans were working (2 en suites and 1 family bathroom)
2. one of the sparks wasn't even there on the stove.
3. wish we visited during early evening to see how warm the house would be and how daylight effects the house.

Probably some more to add later! But also what is the etiquette on viewing a house? Can we just gi and put the stove on to check? Check the water pressure in the shower? Check the extractor fan?

I’m a ftb and this thread is really useful. I’d never think of asking to do things such as flushing the toilet, switching the lights on and off or the taps!
I think I’d find it a bit awkward asking 😄 but understand how important these are to know

I wish I’d checked all the rooms had lights. Bedroom had a massive fan and we assumed it was a fan/light… nope, no lights at all in the master bedroom!!! Wtf?

@TeenLifeMum our landing had a light fitting, it didn't work so we got an electrician in ... there were no wires running to it! They'd faked a light fitting 😂

@daffodilandtulip there were grubby hand prints along the ball between the bed and the door which we’d noticed and thought it was odd. Now we’re know why. Oh and the bedroom has a massive bolt on it. Now, they had teens so I do understand the bolt as I now have teens but this is some heavy weight bolt that makes you wonder if it was some kind of dark sex room.

@TeenLifeMum eugh. I'll keep my dodgy light fitting thanks.

Ignore all the typos 🤦🏻‍♀️

Water pressure and temperature (one bathroom didn’t have hot water 🙄)
stains underneath big vases and ornaments on carpet
insulation (loft wasn’t insulated properly)
good schools in the area (moved before I was pregnant and now have a huge dilemma of no good secondary schools)
check windows (had broken bathroom window handle which meant the whole window had to be replaced for £££)

Agree checking out smells, one house had air fresheners in every room which were ( unsuccessfully) covering up wet dog smell. We weren't too worried as the offending animal would be going with the sellers, but turned out it was also masking dodgy drains and a very poorly insulated and prone to mold extension.

Check that there are keys for all the doors. We moved into a house where the back garden could only be accessed through the kitchen door which had no key.

That the built in oven was an actual working oven and not a burnt-out shell, that the shower actually worked and didn't need replacing.

Our sellers kindly left the rug in the dining room. It was only several months later when we moved it that we realised they’d painted the floor tiles around the rug but not underneath 😂
So check under rugs!

This. My house has lots of garden on three sides and not one aspect of it could be described as "in full sun".

Agree with this! I once bought a house where the flush had broken on the toilet which was very annoying

Trees overgrowing around phone lines. In our last house we had 87 outages in nine months.

What's out the front? If motorbikes, kids bikes etc, great, safe. If every house has a burglar alarm, nope.

The EPC certificate. Absolutely critical. Double whatever the kWh says and work your costs out on that, because they are all shit.

Have to disagree with PP who says snow on roof. Ours stayed on the roof because the house literally never got warm. Not even approaching it.

Oh and the door thing PP mentioned might sound pedantic, but not only would I check it closes, but I would ask to lock it.

One of ours drags across the floor. The other one, you have to double or triple shove the handle upwards so violently to get it to lock that virtually makes the house shake, and it puts us on edge. Same with the garage. It's because the house moves, you see. I know our house moves because we regularly have cracks around the landing ceiling appear, disappear and reappear. Last week we had particularly high winds and my bedroom door briefly stuck where the doorframe has moved. The result of this 'moving' house isn't just as mentioned, virtually every floor tile and a ton of the outside paving slabs have either cracked, or every piece of mortar or grout around them has.

(Thankfully, it's a rental)

So, lock the bloody doors!

(They 'drop' when houses move)

Windows are in working order and have keys