How are working people meant to view houses these days?

[Clare1207]

Just a bit of a rant really, so sorry in advance for the long post! I'm just so frustrated over this situation.

My husband and I are looking for our first home, FTB with a full 10% deposit, AiP, Solicitors on standby, just trying to find the right house. The biggest hurdle we're facing in finding a house is we live in a different city to where we're wanting to move so can't just pop out of work for an hour as it take over an hour each way to travel and the estate agents are being so ridiculous with the viewing times.

I spoke to one estate agent the other day asking for a viewing and the latest time they do is half 2 in the afternoon! What? How do these people expect to sell these houses? Are they all just hoping landlords go for them? Another one, when I phoned them to request a viewing of a house they'd just had to reduce in price, said I can't book a viewing over the phone and have to request details through rightmove and someone would phone me back, which no one ever did.

I can't book time off work to do viewings as I work Term Time Only so don't get standard holidays and have to wait until the school holidays for time off and even when I do have time off, we tried to block book viewings during half term last month and it was impossible! Almost every estate agent was fully booked and could only do the following week when we were back in work except for maybe 3 we were able to look at, spread out over the week we had off, couldn't even get them for the same day. The earliest we can get to the city we're looking at is 5pm and barely any do bookings that late and none we've come across have the option for the seller to do the viewing instead.

The houses near where we want to live seem to sell in a matter of days, unless it's massively overpriced or needs a lot of work doing to it, so it's not even like we can book weeks in advance either.

Even when we manage to actually view somewhere we like, we put an offer in recently for a house that we were literally looking at as an 'it will do for now' and got told that someone else had made an offer 'way over asking price' which we weren't willing to do because it was already overpriced for the area it was in. One house we actually managed to get an offer accepted and then we got the survey and it easily needed about £20-30k worth of work up-front and we just coudn't afford that straight off so had to walk away. Every single place we actually manage to view needs so much work, all seem to be elderly people who have passed away. Are families not selling anymore?

It's all just so frustrating and disheartening. We have pressure to move because my mum isn't very well and needs us much closer and it's just so difficult to arrange anything. It's really getting us both down and just can't see an end to it unless we get very lucky.

TLDR: estate agents are being so difficult with house viewing bookings and makes it near impossible for working people to actually view a house these days!

Is anyone else having issues like this at the moment? What is going on with the housing market that estate agents feel like they can just completely ignore prospective buyers willing to view houses?

The trick is to do most of your choosing virtually, leaving you with 2 or 3 potential houses which you then arrange to see in one afternoon. whether that means viewing them on a Saturday or taking half a day off work and going in the week would depend on you.

There's no need whatsoever to spend time looking at houses you are unlikely to buy.

Or how about sending your other half to do the viewings, and then he can pick out 1 or 2 for a second viewing, the two most promising ones perhaps.

When we were house hunting and worked full time, we only ever viewed houses on a Saturday-do they not do that any more?

Yeah but.. I've found with the rented market that you can't do that, it took us weeks and weeks to finally get 3 viewings on the same day ( and one of those was cancelled). I'm guessing the selling market is similar.
I'd start trying to contact the seller direct if you can work out the house number from the photos.

It must be standard as I keep being offered mid/way through the viewings. We always allowed weekend viewings.

We ended up buying a new build when we were relocating. It was the only way to manage it.

We only try to arrange viewings on houses we'd happily buy, based on the pictures, the one that we offered on the basis of 'it will do' looked great in the pictures but was tiny in real life. We can't take time off work because we don't get holidays as term time only staff, have to wait until school holidays for any time off at all through the week. My husband works in the same place as me and has the same contract so no one of us can't go alone. We try to arrange for a Saturday and have no luck because all the estate agents near where we're looking at only do half days on a Saturday and are always fully booked up!

As I mentioned, where we're looking, most houses go really quickly so it's really hard to arrange a second viewing before it's gone. I basically need to call the day it's advertised, try to see it that week and then make an offer straight off and it's just not possible with our work schedule and how far away we are.

Or how about sending your other half to do the viewings, and then he can pick out 1 or 2 for a second viewing, the two most promising ones perhaps.

That's a good idea, or have DH take along a trusted friend/sibling as well for a second opinion. My DBro and SILs house, DH went along to view with SIL as DBro couldn't get the time off work (he's a paramedic).

Our house we've just bought, we had a viewing in the evening, but the householders were in so we couldn't have as detailed a look as we would have had otherwise.

If the estate agents were having difficulty selling the houses you’re interested in, they’d be more willing to fit you in at a time you can conveniently do. I’m guessing they’d be happy to book Saturday viewings for the outdated houses that have been on the market for months.

I expect it’s very regional (because why would you make your business harder to deal with than your competitors) but when we were selling every estate agent said we’d have to do any weekend showings ourselves - they would only do ones during the week.

I was in a similar situation when I last moved, I was teaching full time at a school over 100 miles from my new job. I was however able to stay with my mum at the weekends so booked all viewings on a Saturday without any problems. I saw the house I wanted the first weekend I had viewings, it was the third house I had seen that day and perfect for me. I put an offer in and cancelled the viewings the following weekend as I knew they were not really houses I wanted to buy but it was at a time when there were very few houses in my price range on the market.

i must have got it right as I am still here 15 years later!

Can you still get viewings on a Saturday?

When we viewed houses (bought 3 over the years) viewings were evenings or Saturday mornings.

Completely agree, this is the reason.

Are you going to be commuting an hour each way to your current jobs when you move?

Can you find some temporary accommodation such as a static caravan willing to let month by month and move to the area then look for a place to buy from nearby?

Its bloody crazy, but the games the game. Theres no point fighting it. So you have to figure out a way to make it work.

As a tip for ftb, don’t assume any home is not going to have 20-30k of work. Thats pretty much a definite. The only question is whether it’s immediate the ceilings falling in work or something you can phase.

Also if you are being outbid regularly and you don’t have anything spare for overbidding or works then I am sorry it sounds like you are in the wrong price category and bringing your budget down a little might help you secure the home.

Isn’t it blindingly obvious that if the houses ‘go really quickly’ your words, that they aren’t overpriced and they don’t want or need to work after 5pm or Saturdays, so why on earth would they?!?
if you want to buy a house op in an area where —very clearly— so do many others, then it is you who needs to bend, not they.

When we were selling and the market was good we just set 2 days for back to back appointments. Our reasoning was if someone wanted the house that much they would find a way to view. We had young children and did want to work around other people.
we have sold recently and were a bit more flexible as the market isn’t as good.
Selling houses is stressful and you get so many time wasters you have to do what works.

It’s not the estate agents though, you are viewing homes that people live in and they have to leave whilst you are in there.

Most work too so you can view when they are at work, otherwise they have to purposely go out.

If the houses are selling then its working out for them.

We're going to communte until we find a local job. We have really cheap rent where we are at the moment as we're renting off family so anything local is going to be way more expensive than we're already paying. The only reason we're leaving where we are is because of my mum needing us closer and the family member we're renting off wanting out of being a landlord.

I'd say anything that is way more expensive than anything currently for sale, or recently sold in the area is overpriced, personally. If people are willing to pay even further over the odds by offering over asking price that's their mistake to make I suppose.

I'm just hoping that some decent places come up over the summer holidays because I think that's going to be the only time we actually have to view anything with the way things are at the moment.

We're not though, where we're looking, pretty much every house that has come up has been an elderly person that has recently died and the family is selling it. No one lives there, the estate agent has the keys. I've barely seen anything come up in our price range (which isn't the bottom of the market by the way, for the area it is a decent budget) that is actually lived in.

Don’t look at pictures as the main way of seeing whether a house will work for you. You need to pay attention to the floor plan. That tells you exactly how big each room is so it shouldn’t come as any surprise. It’s well known that estate agents use wide angle lenses etc to make places look bigger so pictures are unreliable for showing size at best and outright misleading at worse. Just use them as a guide for the general state of the place, the floorplan tells you most of the info.

My gripe is "can we view it this Sat (in 5 days)".
"sorry, we have viewings available next week on tue and thu, which 20 min slot would you like"...
Yes, it is wuite hard to view houses if you work ft mon-fri.

As pp suggested, we divide and conquer now when something like that comes up. Whoever can view at sellers'/agents' desired time does so and makes a video.

I've recently bought. We had all our viewings on Saturdays.

Once we looked like serious buyers (IE made an offer or had several viewings on similar houses), agents started telling us about houses as they were just becoming available and before they were on Rightmove so we could book viewings in the day they started. This helped hugely. You need to speak to the agents so they remember you, know what you want and ask them their views on what stock they have coming up . They often know a while in advance.

For the most part, people buying are local, so owners and estate agents don't have to bend over backwards for buyers.

Our last move was a 5 hour round trip. We took days off work, came up Friday night for first thing Saturday viewings, the other half occasionally skived off work in the afternoon for a very late PM appointment then worked very late into the night when we got home. One of the biggest agents where we are get owners to show people around, so weekend viewings were easier with them.

In the end I couldn't physically do it anymore. I have M.E. and it was breaking me. So, we rented. Still had to take days off work to view rentals and even still come up the night before, but it got us here.

Now we're here it still took me 6 months to find a house I want to buy, but we're only 15 minutes away now.

We had a few bookings for Saturdays or even Fridays when we'd booked time off, but they'd often get cancelled by Wednesday where an offer had been accepted. Happened several times. Usually with the houses that needed very little doing to them.

So. Yeah. Rental.

From later on this year nobody will be locked into leases anyway. So a LL can insist on 12 or 6 months but as soon as the renters' rights bill becomes law, those tenancies will cease to exist and any tenant can just give two month's notice.

It was supposed to happen from October but the House of Lords are being slow bums so now it's looking more likely to be in Dec/Jan 26.

It buys you the ability to be more discerning and I would highly recommend it. What we've gained in the time we've been here is a far more in depth knowledge of the area, which means we won't be moving to an area/road that we end up regretting, because we've been stalking the roads and talking to neighbours. So although it's taken longer than I'd like to find a house, I know the house is in the right place, and we won't have to go through this all again in a few year's time. That alone is worth the horrible stress we had from moving from one bad rental to another. Two house purchase moves in as many years would set us back tens of thousands of pounds and untold stress of being in a chain when having to sell (we're also FTBs). Can't stand being in this rental but it worked out well for us in the end. We've been able to pick a chain free seller because we don't have the travel stress to get to appointments anymore, so haven't been forced into a decision through too much stress.

Exactly this! This is the experience we've had as well. The only times we can do outside of school holidays is Tuesday after 5pm as we finish work at half 3 and wih rush hour traffic, it can take up to an hour and a half to get there, or a Saturday at any time. Every other day of the week we finish work late. We both work in the same place and can't book time off work because of how our contract works so neither of us can go without the other to view it. I'm also the only driver so husband would physically not be able to get there without me anyway.

I think I'm just going to have to wait until the summer holidays and hope something turns up during this otherwise I honestly don't think we're going to be able to find anything.

I'm sure things didn't used to be like this, I remember my parents selling their house in the same area back in the early 2000s and did all the viewings themselves at whatever time they needed to, including both weekend days and up until 8pm in some cases. Clearly the market where we need to move to has just gone absolutely mental.