House viewers not giving feedback

[SomethingWitty44]

We’re currently on the market& have recently changed Estate Agent as the old ones weren’t not actioning requests. We’ve been on the market since mid November, absolutely wrong time of the year I know but we had to go on the market then so have a chance of securing a house we’d seen. With our old EA, out of 9 booked viewings, 5 cancelled on the day or day before. We’ve only had one viewer so far with the new EA, my question is the lack of any feedback. Viewers are just not responding to EA’s request for feedback. If you don’t like a property, absolutely fine but how can we sell without knowing what it is you don’t like & allow us, if possible to change it.
Has anyone else had this issue? Thank you

I suspect that usually you can’t fix things that the buyer doesn’t like. Whilst it’s possible to read online descriptions there’s nothing like seeing the property in person. We nearly wrote off the house we bought as it looks very boring and ugly from the outside but an internal view changed our minds. You really can’t fix size of rooms plot size and aspect etc so I’m not sure feedback will help you much.

That’s odd, it’s normal to give feedback. You were right to change agent. Give this one the opportunity for a few more viewings as there will always be the occasional viewer that won’t.

Are you happy with how it is pitched? Eg photos, description, value and so on.

do you want to share details here?

Equally, it is incredibly frustrating you be told "we don't like X" when X is clear on the photos and unchangeable.
Feedback was rearely useful in our experience.

It’s not always easy to give feedback. If I had given honest feedback on some of the properties we viewed I think the vendor would have been offended.

Feedback is pretty pointless to be honest. Basically it’s either ‘we like the house and offer you £X’ or ‘we don’t like the house for reasons you can’t change.

When I sold I ended up telling the agent to stop giving me feedback, just let me know if there is an offer. I got fed up with being told the garden is small, it’s on a main road, there is a big tree outside (with TPO) etc. Yes I know all that and can’t change any of it!

We didn't bother giving feedback after reading comments on Mumsnet like the above poster. We looked round houses for about a year so there was a lot of feedback I could have given, but it would have been pointless. Generally it's a case of you've looked at something that was in the photos but in real life it just wasn't right. Realising the space is too small once you're stood in it, yes you've seen the floorplan but it's different when you're in it. Realising the location wouldn't work for you, yes you knew the location in advance but it's different once you're there. Sometimes it's been the neighbours and their big dogs, garden boundaries, the road noise, it's more dilapidated than you'd hoped etc. Mostly we needed 3 bed but most in our price bracket were 2 bed so we would look round to see if we could make it work or not. I don't think there's been a single bit of feedback that the seller could have changed and wouldn't have been annoyed to hear. I would have said it if I hadn't read on here how annoying it is to hear things you can't change. Be thankful you've not heard, well we really wanted an extra bedroom, over and over again.

My daughter (without me knowing) recorded a house viewing (audio) on the hidden iPad. Was interesting hearing the comments and I binned of the estate agent as they were terrible!!

If the feedback is about something that can easily be changed, then it wouldn’t stop viewers making an offer. They would just buy the house and change it themselves.

If the feedback is about something that can’t easily be changed, then the vendor can’t change it and the viewer won’t buy the house.

So feedback is a pointless exercise. The only feedback that matters is receiving an offer.

Maybe they are embarrassed to give feedback as it’s something they don’t like that’s quite obvious from advert, but maybe they thought they’d go and see anyway. Eg need 4 bed but went to see a 3, or don’t like fact it’s on a main road etc. Otherwise don’t see why people don’t want to give feedback.

I am just starting to think about viewings now as can move from early July. Not 100% what I want, whether to go to top of budget or right at bottom and do some work, but am trying not to waste people’s time. But I might see a couple that I really don’t think i’ll buy, but when you’re not 100% set on size, location or price, handy to at least know what you don’t want and can’t always know that without going to see.

Thank you all for taking the time to respond, I really appreciate it & it’s been helpful to get your perspective & has really put my mind at ease. You’re all right that feedback won’t necessarily help but I guess I just want to know people’s thoughts on the property & whether there is something we can do, which as may of you have said, there’s really not much we can do. We’ll keep on & hope the right person is out there and will come along soon.

If you're feeling brave, you could post a link here. You'll get lots of feedback.

We had the same issue when our house was on the market , rarely received any feedback from the viewings, often not even a basic it’s not for us. The estate agent was quite dismissive when we mentioned it. The usual comment when anyone did say anything was they couldn’t make the layout work for them, which always sounded like an excuse as the layout was obvious from the plans, though I guess you do need to see it yourself. The only feedback we ever received which potentially was useful was one who said they didn’t like the decor and the carpets were mismatched , though again, what did they want we would have happily negotiated on price if that was the only issue, estate agent in all honesty felt like a waste of money, even when we finally sold,they did absolutely nothing to keep us informed what was going on

I tend not to if it's something that the seller can't change.

I agree with PPs that feedback can largely be useless. We’re in the process of moving having finally found a buyer and our EA was good at passing on any reasons why a viewer wasn’t interested but it was largely ‘the bedroom is too small for them’ or ‘He didn’t like the [apartment] building itself’. Can’t do much about either of those! No feedback we were given was anything we could act upon.

Ps.. Good Luck! The market in our area has suddenly started to pick up now we’re well in the new year, hopefully you see the same.

When we went to look at houses some we went to just to confirm it was definitely what we didn’t want - for example I was sure I would hate completely open plan living, went to look at one and I was right. But I wasn’t sure the sellers wanted to here “I just wanted to confirm I would never want to live in your house”.

As for us giving feedback on things we’ve viewed the most helpful thing would really be ‘The EA pictures are wildly unrepresentative of the reality, maybe dial down the editing rather than wasting people’s time’. This specifically applied to an absolute hovel that would have cost tens of thousands to renovate but in the pictures just looked like it needed a bit of cosmetic work.

To be honest OP a good EA should have given useful feedback before you put the house on the market.

For example staging room better (eg moving a sofa or declutterimg) or finishing any easy cosmetic work (such as repainting a room that had seen better days paint wise).

Buyer feedback only matters if it results in a potential sale. For example we like the house but want to know if the range cooker is staying).

No offer and no feedback means it’s not the property for them and highly unlikely to about anything you can change.

Only suggestion really is to go back to the EA and ask for their blunt assessment re: anything you can do to make the property more appealing to buyers.

It's a little frustrating or rather when we get "ghosted" I find it frustrating. To be honest the feedback we've had has never been useful as such - it's mostly been "great location but the house is too small", or "we wanted 2 bathrooms" (which we don't have). In fairness you can't always pin down what is "wrong" when you view anyway, you just know that it's not right for you so whilst I very much appreciate a "no it's not for us" (or better yet, an offer) feedback I don't mind whether or not we get any. I guess no reply is an answer in itself. That said, one couple viewed ours, ignored all calls from the EA asking for feedback then booked a second viewing 6 weeks later 🤷‍♀️

Having helped to friends buy in the last couple of years, and bought twice myself but >5 years ago.

This feedback obsession is relatively new in estate agents.

Generally we had no useful feedback to give the seller. If it was one of the more proactive agents who had a wide range on their books would occasionally say something like ‘liked the parking arrangements and garden, have you got anything with a similar set up’. Which wasn’t for the seller in the slightest.

A lot of the time you view things that are fine, but just don’t quite feel like what you’re after. If you tell the seller the bathroom was too small then they humpf that you could have told that from the photos and there’s nothing they ca do about it. Whereas you’ll probably know from looking yourself that if everything else is perfect you don’t actually care about bathroom size. It’s just the first thing that comes to mind when you’re pushed for feedback.

Only feedback gave was when landlord was selling with a sitting tenant and the place was a tip.

I hated giving feedback.

The EA pictures mislead about how big it was (this was the biggest bugbear of mine).
The EA pictures didn't show missing skirting boards or doors falling off or the rotten fence panels leaning over.
The EA pictures didn't show next doors Steptoe collection - or there was a motorcycle repair business in their garden - or sixteen cars with missing exhausts on the street.
Nowhere on the blurb was it mentioned about the barking dogs in the area.

But sometimes, every now and then, the house just doesn't "feel" right. How the heck do you explain that?

Feedback usually boils down to there being too many compromises for the cost of the house! EG garden size or style or orientation, neighbours, lack of daylight inside, rooms to small, too much work, decor not to your taste but expensive to change it all, road noise, railway line, flight path, bus routes, parking... etc. I think feedback is more useful to an agent who can push the potential buyer to more suitable property.

The lack of interest does suggest it's overpriced for what (or where) it is.

I hate the trend for feedback. ‘Garden faces west and we want south’ ‘we were hoping for a 5 bed’ and ‘we’re actually keen on the next town’ are all things I had in the last few years. Why waste all our time viewing when all these things are obvious from the listing? Infuriating, just makes the agent seem busy.

Realistically if there was something you could change the EA should notice - either with their own experienced eyes, or from chatting to the viewers - and tell you. Otherwise, you don’t need to know.

Feedback is generally useless in my experience. ‘North facing garden’ (though they viewed it three times); busy road - got that one a lot though it was a well known road, and yes busy. Usually the feedback was positive but still nothing came of it. And even if negative it might not mean anything. People feel they have to say something and so pick some random excuse.