What’s the point of feedback on viewings?

[nightnightcircus]

We’re first time sellers and our first viewings are today. The estate agency mentioned getting us feedback after and I’m wondering what on earth the point is? I didn’t understand this as a first time buyer and I don’t understand it now!

As a buyer, my feedback was either “I don’t want to buy your house for reasons you can’t change” or “I want to buy your house and I’m offering £XXX.” We almost never gave the real reasons, as they were things like “I didn’t realise how much I’d hate a front door that opens straight into the kitchen until I saw yours” or “You should have left the kitchen and bathroom instead of fitting brand new ones in hideous colours” and why would anyone find that helpful?

As a seller, I’m not interested in the kind of pointless feedback people mention a lot on here eg to do with structure, location. I just want to know if they want to buy it or not! If they don’t, it’s unlikely to be because of anything we can change.

I suppose the only useful feedback might be if they think it’s overpriced, but we’ve priced it very sensibly for the current market.

What am I missing here?

We were considering the 3 bed - list of 2 second on list after a 4 bed we saw straight after and immediately offered on.

Two reception rooms and kitchen dinner - assumed it was viable to use one as a bedroom - but on looking kitchen was actually too small for table so would need dining room - plan b was share one of the bedrooms but on looking too small/awkward - then thought swap main bedroom but main bedroom was small due to en-suit which put third toilet and second shower in house.

Could have been extended or en-suit removed but we weren't up for the work and cost. The real big no was bar in next door garden right next to garden fence.

We said lovely house but layout didn't work for us as couldn't use second reception room as bedroom and here's our offer for the 4 bed. Suspect first owners got told we wanted a 4 bed and were left wondering why we viewed.

It can be. As a surveyor, I think vendors can be a bit blind as to the off-putting things in their house (though usually prospective purchasers are too polite to mention these things!). However, if you've got a bathroom that isn't often used (like a guest bathroom) and the trap dries up in the shower, a mention of a funny smell might remind you to run the shower in that bathroom periodically to get rid of the smell. Dog poo in the garden is really revolting but is easily overlooked by owners... that sort of thing. Your teddy/doll/other collection which you think is super cute people might find bizarre - and also might make the property seem cluttered. The best thing to do is try to look at the house objectively. Good luck!

If it’s useless, just disregard it. If they tell you It’s lacking in curb appeal, for example, you can have a tidy and buy some pots.

Last time we moved, feedback was that the courtyard garden was too small. I cut the plants back really hard, and replaced my four seater table with a minuscule bistro table and two chairs. Sold quite quickly after that.

I do agree most of the time it’s a bit pointless. I never knew what to say when the EA asked us, as usually it was just “it’s not the house for us”. Or something unchangable like the location or road.
once I fed back because the garden was full of dog poo, at least the sellers could do something about that!

You don’t need several tins of paint to cover bold wallpaper. You strip the wallpaper.

We were told that our house was too close to the road and that they didn’t like the boiler being in the garage. Nothing we could do anything about at all.

I think the feedback is more useful for the agent getting a feel for what viewers will compromise on. When we were looking, a busy road was an absolute no for us. The agent would tell us to look anyway as it wasnt noticeable, the house would wow us etc We'd go. Then feedback that the road was a no. Then the agent stopped showing us things by a road when they realised we werent wowed by other stuff. But the agent wss thrn stuck feeding back something the vendor knew about their house. I suppose if enough people say it, you know to drop the price.

My DS had his flat on the market last year and several viewers said it needed too much work. I think the agent took the pictures in a way that hid this and did not mention refurbishment in the advert. This feedback allows the vendor to change the advert, or reduce the price.
I viewed a modern property with a young family in it. It looked cluttered in the ad but thought that did not matter. When I viewed there was far more clutter and it made me wonder if they were hiding some big issues in the property as it was impossible to see. One room was too full to go in at all. The vendor's child also followed me around and talked all the time. I did tell the agent. The vendor should have been made aware the property was unlikely to sell like that.

We’ve just given feedback on several viewings. 1) services all turned off - how can I check water pressure/ electrics working / gas boiler working at least via hot water.? 2) no access given to garage or brick outhouses- does it have electric/water/ hole in the roof? 3) another property had an entire garage wall falling into the neighbours garden and no clear boundaries yet wanted top price!

I can check location, size of rooms, layout etc prior to viewing. But the things we flagged up do need to be addressed, especially if vendors want the top of the market price. For us they were red flags and if we proceeded would have given us cause to offer significantly less than asked.

Feedback is partly for the agent too. A good agent will use the information to find you a closer match prospective buyer.
The agent will also be listening to the prospective buyer, to be able to offer them a more suitable house, from their list too.

You would want to know if viewers reported a smell they were suspicious of (cat pee, mould, damp, smoke, mustiness), or tatty carpets, bad paint job, dripping tap in kitchen or bathroom, worn flooring, door that doesnt shut right, a garden half under water after rain - sometimes you get used to things when you're living in a house day to day but if there's anything fixable that has been noticed by buyers, you can bet that that thing has distracted them significantly from the house's good points.

My DP did get some good feedback form estate agent selling DGP house.

DP kept putting on plug in diffusers to smell nice - but shut up house it was overpowering to younger noses and assumption was they were trying to cover something up. My DP didn't want to listen - they liked the smell but eventually did as it kept coming up and it did sell shortly afterwards.

We viewed a great three bed house which was perfect except the third bedroom (box room) was not long enough for a standard single bed. The floor plan measurements were from the door to the back wall and not from the cupboard over the stairs to the back wall which was the only place to put a bed. It had a cot bed in which took up the entire space, and was clearly too small for an adult bed

We got the estate agents to measure the space for us. It was 183cm. A mattress is 190 cm long so there was no way it was fitting in. If the details had said two bedrooms and a nursery we wouldn’t have bothered with the viewing.

When viewing, some of the feedback I have given is:

House stinks of dog (I’m a dog owner but this house really stank)
House needs more work than expected
The details on the house didn’t show that it was a downstairs bathroom only (no floor plan and wasn’t clear in the write up)

We went to see a house once and as soon as we arrived we spotted the two massive motorbikes on the driveway adjacent with the two young men from next door tinkering with them - tools everywhere. DH and I just licked eyed for a brief second and said nothing. Then as we were looking around upstairs, we heard the revving (this was 9.15am on a Saturday morning). The noise was horrendous. There was also a big barky dog.

Same house - as we entered the very small internal porch, we practically tripped over the Dyson vac.

Plus her ironing board was behind the bedroom door.

Our feedback was we were worried about inconsiderate/noisy neighbours (with a large dog) and a distinct lack of large cupboard storage.

I had a four month old baby and her room would literally have been overlooking the front driveway.

I once fed back to an EA that I couldn't walk on the lawn in the back garden because of the amount of dog shit on it. I think that was useful feedback.

Some feedback can be useful but most isn't.

I suppose EAs ask for it as most sellers do want to know what potential buyers are saying about their property in case there is anything they CAN change.

When we were selling my Dad's flat we got feedback from a few viewers that is was more dated than it looked in the photos. That was a fair comment and helped us to understand that we would have to reduce the price to sell.

Ugh I had the same thing on a viewing once. Who doesn't even pick up dog shit from their garden when they know they have viewings?? It was quite an expensive house too.

I’m not a great believer in feedbacks. Most of the time whatever I was not happy about with lower price would be fine, but it meant much lower price so in reality sellers (and EA) were not keen on this.
I can easily see beyond the cluttered room, paint differently walls or repair the fence but it all depends on the price.
And in reality EAs don’t like your feedback, they argue back e.g. the shared drive is normal thing and absolutely not an issue at all; the house is in good condition, it was painted just 25 years ago; solar panels are absolutely enough for heating and hot water without having central heating.
The reason why people leave ridiculous feedback is that they don’t want to say “overpriced “ when called, they want to look good or even more often they are unprepared and don’t know what to say so they tell the first thing coming into their mind: the bedrooms were a bit on smaller side for us. And then seller is sitting and thinking: we put dimensions on the floor plan . Why the hell did you come for a viewing??

When we were selling my Dad's flat we got feedback from a few viewers that is was more dated than it looked in the photos. That was a fair comment and helped us to understand that we would have to reduce the price to sell.

@Twiglets1 ’s experience just proves my point - with lower price buyers were happy with dated look.

I agree some feedback is very useful, my friends house languished on thr market for best part of a year. No takers, lots of views. Feedback was all it was too overlooked. She put up a bloody leylandi hedge round the perimeter of the back garden, cost her two or three grand,I thought it a terrible idea. As the garden was small. She literally sold it the week after. Money well spent for her.

We got lots of feedback saying "lovely but too small" it was a 2 bedroom cottage built in 1881. Of course it's small. Plus the room sizes were on the house details. It was irritating the first time but after months of the same feedback it got very grating

Did you not think that the photos must have made the rooms look bigger, giving people an unrealistic expectation?

I always hated giving feedback as a buyer as I was never really sure what was actually useful to the sellers.

We did a lot of viewings and lots of my feedback was too small for us, mainly because almost all the estate agents around us had a real love of the wide angle lens, quirky photograph angles and didn't seem overly keen on taking lots of photos. Rooms would look huge on the photos and then be a shoebox when you got to them. They also seemed to have a huge aversion to floor plans and measurements.

One house we viewed had 3 "double" rooms and a single room. There was one photo of the master bedroom and one of the single room. It was priced inline with other houses with 3 and 4 doubles. We got to the house and the master bedroom was a double, the other 2 could fit a double bed pushed against the wall and with a 1m wide walkway all way round and that was it, the single had a cot bed in it and a toddler set of drawers and that was it. It was overpriced for the actual size.

Same with gardens, what an estate agent labels and generous garden and what is actually a generous garden IMO are 2 very different things. BIL's Victorian terrace with a back yard that can either have a trampoline in it or a swing set was marketed as having a "decent sized family garden" with the photo taken at a strange angle which makes the garden look like it goes on forever. The reason BIL is moving is because the gardener is too small for the DC to ride bikes or kick a ball around.

We saw lots of "compromise" houses. They ticked most boxes but had some kind of compromise. E.g. on street parking/ opposite primary school/ not in the area we really wanted/ national speed limit road ect. But we were willing to compromise for the right house and price.

We viewed our current house 3x, the first time it was tenanted and the tenants did not want to move. They were very vocal about it throughout the viewing and told us that they intended to wait for bailiffs. They were allowing 3 open house days and that was it purely to tell everyone interested that they were been made homeless. They were so hostile to everyone, including the estate agent. It was an awful viewing. It was an absolute state, the garden overgrown and it stunk of wet dog. The estate agents had used old pictures from when the house was first rented so the pictures online did not match reality. Gave that feedback and the estate agents admitted that the tenants are difficult and had refused entry to the photographers. We viewed again 6 months later after the tenants had left and it stunk, the tennants had "redecorated" by painting all the walls random colours. It needed a really good clean. We fed back it required a lot of work for the price. It was reduced and we viewed again 2 months later and it was a different house altogether so someone had listened to some feedback.The garden had been cut back, the carpets were replaced (all be it with very cheap rental beige), all the walls painted in trade magnolia, everything had been deep cleaned.

When my elderly parents were selling their house the photos were flattering. It was a big, beautiful, homely, structurally sound period house with a superb garden (my parents were green-fingered) but it was tired and in need of cosmetic work and a good deep clean, which wasn’t reflected in the pictures which made it look like a show home.

The disappointed viewers either said that they were not up for the decorating work or that they’d pay ££££ below asking price. My parents were stubborn, but after multiple viewings with exactly the same feedback and a decent offer of about 5% below asking price on the table from a chap who was proceedable, they accepted the truth, and accepted the offer. So, I think that feedback can be useful when it’s consistent and eye-opening.

Yes pizzaHeart but the feedback allowed us to understand the source of the problem. We then had the option of either doing a basic upgrade or reducing the price.

I agree that if people reduce the price far enough then a property will sell regardless of the problem. But it's still better to understand what the problem is and in some cases the sellers will be able & willing to do something about it. Certainly if the feedback is along the lines of too dated/too tired looking/too cluttered/overlooked garden etc