Excuses for not buying a house V real reason

[NanaPurple]

What reasons have you given for not buying a house to cover up the real reasons? Or are you always 100% honest?

My recent house viewing feedback was: "Sorry we've decided to buy elsewhere" when asked. None of the Agents asked for any more detail.

For one house it was the terrible smell at the entrance hall, the staircase that felt like it was about to collapse and next doors messy garden with rubbish everywhere.

Another was when the seller who showed me round insisting we buy as he had purchased elsewhere. All the time his partner and 3 children huddled around one corner of the lounge as if they were trying to hide something. House was ok but folk really put me off.

Should I have been honest with the agents?

I don't know. I tend to give honest feedback but usually, something that puts me off is something the Vendor can't really do anything about anyway. In which case the feedback is pretty pointless. Most houses have positives and negatives and I think everyone prioritises different things.

I saw a house that was lovely had wooden floors but smelt so badly of wet dog. Estate agent asked for feedback on the spot right in front of camera in hall way... so tried to be as diplomatic as possible as I couldn't see any dirt or fur but the smell seemed imprinted.

We had feedback that our kitchen being 13 by 13 wasn't big enough for double American style fridge and two large freezers. I saw their point tbh although wondered what kitchen would have been able to fit that.

Another weird feedback was the viewer didn't realise we had stairs as she didn't want stairs (in a terraced 3 bed upstairs and downstairs). I was puzzled by that one and I assumed just didn't like our house tbh

Feedback always seems pointless to me, it's not as if you can change much at that point. When we sold recently dh was obsessed with feedback, people said the garden wasn't big enough and things like that. Pointless.

One viewer said she wanted a garden beyond the garden. I didn’t understand that at all.

At our last house, one man said the whole house needed decorating, the garden was a mess and there had obviously been a leak in the living room ceiling. Then he made a derisory offer. The whole house had been decorated within the year, the garden was landscaped and we’ve never had a leak anywhere of any description. The agent was appalled.

We looked at a house where the owner had moved away. The agent was embarrassed to show it, because it was disgusting. The walls and ceiling were yellow with nicotine, the smell was indescribable and there were random holes in the coving.

I always gave honest feedback after viewing a property. I don’t see the point in making up a reason. A lot of feedback is pretty pointless anyway as you can’t change the fundamentals of a property, ie. if someone wants a south facing garden when yours is north facing, or whatever. If a place was a complete shit tip, I’d probably say something like it needs too much work, if I felt the need to sugar coat it a bit!

One viewer said the garden was 'too much'. It has the biggest garden on the entire street, was photographed properly and described appropriately. It was my mum's pride and joy and was the biggest selling point of the house.

Viewer was like 'we didn't think it was going to be so big, we only want a small garden'. Why the fuck come and view a house with a massive garden then?

OTOH I've always given constructive but honest feedback. Needs more work than the listing suggested (on a 'needs redecoration' sale that actually needed ripping out and starting again), smells of dog wee (tiled floor throughout, 5 untrained dogs and one weed whilst we were looking round) and my favourite was a neighbour with a scrapyard in the front garden who was using some screeching machinery throughout the entire viewing

I think it's fine to give honest feedback. The estate agent can filter that and decide if its the same thing putting people off. I recently viewed a house that needed a lot of work and the estate agent told us that previous feedback had been about the windows all needing replacing. The owners had decided to replace the panes in the upstairs windows. To me that was even worse because the frames were hideous and poorly fitting, I'd rather get money off the price and be able to chose my own new windows. I think it's useful but sellers should always consider reducing the price rather than doing a cheap rush job on the work.

I’m always honest. I’m not the seller’s friend, they might be a bit butt hurt for a brief while that a stranger thinks their house smells of dirty nappies or can’t face putting right their bodge job DIY, but they’ll get over it and it might make them do something about it. But tbh the case where there’s any specific feedback are relatively rare. Mostly the reason I’m not making an offer was “I looked at the photos online and it looked nice enough so I thought I’d view to see a bit more, but it’s just not grabbing me.”

There’s usually enough for me to go on to tell half truths to avoid hurting vendors:

The garden is half the size it looks in the photos (and I almost laughed my head of when the EA kept gushing about how well it had been maintained whilst standing in front of a cracked and rotting windowsill)

There’s less privacy than was obvious and some of the rooms look a lot smaller in person (and the area around the corner is grim AF and I wouldn’t want to walk it at night)

The road is relentlessly busy (and whilst you have done a good job of the kitchen I need to re-do 3/4rds of the rest of the house where your stripping it back to true Victorian decor has gone badly, badly wrong and it looks like a student house - and I simply cba)

It works and for the most part, it’s never the vendor who comes out feeling bad.

I'd rather have genuine feedback, even if its not something that I can do anything about. It may be that the listing is giving the wrong impression and so we may wish to review that for example to stop getting the wrong people through the door.

The one thing I don't like hearing is "Its perfect, but we think its overpriced". Well put in an offer then! No? Oh well it wasn't perfect then and the price isn't the issue.

I've always been honest. I'm sure one seller thought I was an idiot when I said the bedrooms were too small. The measurements were on the floorplan but it was only once we were in the house that we had a sense of scale. It was 3 small doubles so you could only fit a bed and a slim wardrobe. For another house, the garden looked huge in the photos but was quite small in real life.

Even if it's something they can't change it's still worth saying it. If 5 buyers say the same unchangeable thing, then maybe you're in the wrong price bracket. If it's something like a dog smell, it would be good to tell them. They'd obviously be blind to it.

I think it’s a bit like online dating in that the photos aren’t always a true representation of the actual property. Inevitability people get to the property and the well proportioned kitchen you viewed on the website isn’t big enough to swing a cat, or the long and wide garden is 3m x 3m.

If the photos look a lot better than the actual hosue then people will
be disappointed at every corner. If the photos look real then people will be pleasantly surprised more so

It's a tough one. I usually err on the side of being polite, especially as we've viewed a number of properties owned by old people who are downsizing. The properties needed a lot of modernisation. One we viewed was a probate anyway so we didn't need to worry about offending as the owner was no longer alive! My partner got tea and cake at one viewing - it was in a lovely setting but an older property with pretty solid walls so would have been hard to change the configuration to suit our needs. I think we just said we'd decided to be closer into the town as it felt there was little she could have done with the feedback. Others we just said the work to modernise was a little more than we wanted to take on. I class modernisation as needing new bathrooms, kitchens, windows etc. rather than decor. I don't really care about the flooring or paintwork as it's easy to change so I wouldn't bother to feed back about that.

We viewed a few where we were put off by the road noise. We don't currently live in the area so it was hard to know that prior to viewing but once we were standing in the garden, we just knew it wouldn't work for us. We were honest about that, even though the owners can't change the fact. Either they will find someone who can live with it, or they will get lots of similar feedback and reduce the price to accommodate.

I agree it’s often just this. I remember showing the RightMove listing of our current house to my parents after I’d made an offer and telling them it was a full immediate gut and renovation job: but they thought I’d be able to get away with giving it a good clean and coat of paint and doing big things gradually - whilst it was obvious from the photos that it was very dated and tired, the photos just didn’t show the detail like bathroom water damage, the kitchen carcasses completely disintegrating inside, that the owners had at some point replastered and painted around all their furniture without moving it, filthy stinking old carpets etc

I give polite feedback, but I'm not really sure of the benefit because most of the time it's not something they can fix. But might help them decide to lower the price if eg 5 viewers all say "for that price, I think its too small, and you can get much larger houses round the corner"

If the real reason is something rude, I don't say it. For example we viewed a house that absolutely stunk, I mean really really strongly, of cigarettes. It was awful. There were two parents and two adult children living there and I think all four smoked heavily.
Maybe I'd have overlooked it for a house I really loved. But I was pregnant and didn't want to move in somewhere where we'd have had to pull up the carpets and give everything a really really thorough clean straight away.

Generally I try to be honest but flattering. EG, "the garden is beautiful, but too small/ too overlooked / too shady for us", or whatever.

In reality, the EA will probably rephrase feedback if its too direct, so "the stairs are fucked and the drains stink" comment becomes "they thought there was too much work".

Usually what people mean when they say "the kitchen is too small" is "I viewed because I was prepared to compromise on the small kitchen, but I don't love the house enough to overlook that", rather than their being too dim to understand the EA listing.

We got close to exchange and we were waiting for the homeowner to provide the local certificates for the double glazing he had installed himself. It turned out that the job wasn't registered. When we found out that he had also replaced all the drains for himself and the neighbours, we just used the lack of certificates, and refusal to get them, as the excuse without having to say that we didn't trust him to have done a proper job on the drains!

I don't make excuses I just don't answer the utterly pointless question 99% of the time. I didn't buy it purely because it wasn't suitable almost guarantee thats a reason you can't fix, and thats it.

I don't have to justify what I do or don't buy with my money.

I don't care what furniture you have, if you personal photos or 'clutter' or what colour the walls are or the weird 'mumsnet' stuff... non of that stuff matters.

Some reasons I haven't bought in the past (but useless to the owner):

TINY kitchens which has been more than once (cannot even fit bare bone basics like a fridge... it surprising how many people just accept their fridge being in a hallway, under stairs cupboard, porch... somewhere other than their micro kitchen)

A sewerage problem and rancid damp/mold issue that smelled so bad I nearly threw up and had to rush home and shower

Death stairs (seriously at what point are stairs so steep they should be classed as a ladder?)

What good does it do the owner to know that? they logically already know these things about their house.

In fact 'death stairs' house while they bigged up the house and it was lovely decorated etc... they even told us they where selling because they fell down the stairs and broke their hip. Regardless of them telling us or not we obviously noticed when we nearly set our necks trying to walk down them and they clearly felt they had to warn us to hold on in case we fell and died in their house. So they obviously KNOW what the issues are without us saying it.

Sometimes there isnt a reason, you just dont feel it. So your brain makes you say something tangible instead of just a feeling

On the other hand sometimes there are definite things, I remember a house which was nice and nicely done up but the owners were smokers, the work involved in getting everything stripped back, the house was really strong smelling of cigarettes, it would be in everything, the walls, skirting, carpets, flooring, paintwork. I wasnt prepared to do it

Others were where too many steps down to the garden, some noisy roads, some parking not as described, some with sloping unmanagable gardens, etc etc

One that was always a given for me was if the current owners were in the house while viewing/ doing the viewing themselves.

On principle I couldn't overlook it, even for a near perfect house.

Immediately it put me on edge, I couldn't imagine myself living there, and I couldn't speak honestly about the place to the estate agent or whoever I was viewing with.

(We moved during Lockdown 2 so it happened a lot- which sort of made it worse because you had to socially distance so they'd all creep around into other rooms pretending they weren't there like the servants in Downton Abbey!)

We've always given the real reason but then the reason has never been anything that the sellers could take personally so we didn't feel we were being rude. If it was because their house stank of cat wee or something I would probably come up with something more generic to spare their feelings even though I know that isn't particularly helpful.

Agreed, feedback is absolutely pointless. It’s basically either ‘we like the house and offer you £X’ or ‘we don’t like the house because of reasons you can’t change’.

When I sold my house I told the EA I wasn’t interested in any feedback. Tell me if there is an offer, otherwise I don’t want to know.

My H tends to do these ( we rent - but very nice roomy houses) and the thing with rentals and paying a fair old chunk is you either have to like it 'as it is' or turn it down because there is little you can change.

My H says things like 'far tattier than it looks on photos' or needs a top to bottom decorate or boiler looks ancient etc - he doesn't beat about the bush

I’m always completely honest. I think there’s definitely a point in feedback. Even if it’s simply that it’s massively overpriced, and if enough people say the same thing then maybe they’ll realise and reduce the price.

As others have said, it's mostly pointless giving feedback. If it's something the vendors can easily change, then it's also something a keen buyer could change. Price excepted, of course.

The only useful feedback I ever gave was with a house that was being sold with some land. The vendors were a bit vague about which sections of land they were or weren't selling and where the boundaries were (it was part of a bigger estate). I did suggest to the agent that they needed to decide and be more precise.