What makes buyers book a house viewing?

[sbplanet]

We're looking to put our property on the market and had some estate agents round to do valuations (or appraisals apparently). (FWIW it's a 3 bed semi in a rural location in very good renovated order) There is a difference in fees charged and also in what is offered in their marketing package. Some do videos, some photos only, maybe premium listings, or social media postings.

So if you were looking for a new home what makes you go to view a place and how have you found out about it?

Location
Number of rooms/room sizes
I like videos as long as they show every room and all of the garden
I ignore most of the EA blurb
And a floor plan with room sizes on is a priority.

Location, suitable size and layout, garden not paved over, nice view, reasonable condition but I don't expect perfect, I usually prefer properties which have not been extended. I don't care about tidiness or furniture arrangement. I do care about how damp problems have been sorted out.

Decent photos.

Properly priced. I find houses that are well priced are still going quickly so I rush to see them.

i want to see measurements on the floorplan and ideally measurements for the garden too if that’s done in your area.

I’ve only looked at the video for a few. it wouldnt put me off looking if there isn’t a video. I’m not on FB, but am signed up to all agents so should get emails before things go live. My Rightmove is set to map view so for me personally the premium listing doesn’t show.

Well we find out about it by searching for our criteria on Rightmove. Which usually goes by no. of bedrooms and property type and location. And price within our budget.

I would probably say decent photos that show space and light.

But then everything else is very specific to what the buyer is looking for.

Quality clear photographs
Floor plan with measurements
Many of estate agents seen to use chat gpt style blurb and it’s so generic, I generally ignore the text. In my opinion it’s the photos and floor plans that get someone picking up the phone to organise a viewing.
The 360 tours some agents offer are really good.

I would say 99% of interest comes from Rightmove/Zoopla.

Also, it sounds simple but you need a good agent who answers calls and gets back to prospective buyers promptly. When I tried to sell my late parents house the agent I had at the time was awful at answering calls and returning calls to prospective viewings. Once I changed to a different agent it made such a difference.
Good luck with it all.

I’m in the process of buying a house. I’ve been searching by location, number of bedrooms and price.
I then look at the floorplan. There’s one local agent that makes the houses look much bigger than they are, which always leads to disappointment when we view. It has put me off viewing other houses with them now.
i do like a video of the house too.

It’s important to consider not just the number of viewings you get, but the quality of those viewings. For example, you may not get more viewings with a video, or measurements on your floor plan, but the people coming to see have more information, and therefore are less likely to be put off by something like a small bathroom, for example, because they already know that it’s small.

Oh just to add, when we were looking for a house, we contacted an estate agent for a viewing, and then got pressured to view a second house they had which was out of our budget and wasn’t right for us. Not looking for that kind of thing either from an estate agent.

Floorplan with measurements is almost more important than the photos tbh, i just wouldn't view if theres no floorplan or it has no measurements as id assume there is something they are trying to hide.

Not bothered about whether the decor is perfect and or whether it has been 'dressed' to sell as honestly its my stuff ill be moving in and ill be redecorating it to my taste anyway. A few plants at the front door and tastefully placed cushions and art make zero difference, im looking at the bare bones and whether it can become what i want/need.

The only exception to this is demonstrating for eg that a spare room can fit a double bed in it with space around the bed, or if it has a small boxroom demonstrating that the boxroom will fit a bed in it.

And fundamentally: price. A massively overpriced property says something about the owners and how realistic they are about actually selling.

Floorplan is essential

Ideally a photo of every room

Photos taken without weird lens that make a room seem wider than it is

Price - realistic for the 2026 buyers market, not the market 3yrs ago

I think maybe ‘What makes you not book a house viewing’ !, For me it’s offers over, too many poor quality photos. No room sizes on the floor plan. Too flowery and long descriptions.

Thanks, for your replies. It's kind of where my head is now. We were in the process of appointing an agent after the appraisals and had paid up front for the photos while still negotiating the Terms. The photos were awful, they made the house look nothing like how it is. I know everyone says this but whenever we've had trades round and the work experience lad with one of the agents, they all really like the house and garden. There is no way those photos would have got them through the door!
So I've been negotiating fees but really I want to confirm the importance of which bits of the marketing are a must. Now obvs Rightmove/Zoopla but what else? I agree I need a floorplan with measurements, but do I need a video? They give a very different view to even what good photos make of a house. Or are good photos enough? As to price, well there's the difficulty. We're in a rural area but only about 6 miles from town, we're not isolated but in a hamlet. Property ranges from £3.35m to us! :D How to get the price right when places sell infrequently and are often very different...

A good floor plan that includes dimensions of each room.

Photos of every room. I don't look at houses that only have 6 photos including front and back exterior, but four beds and two receptions.

I don't like arty photos of the current owners beautifully positioned houseplants. I'm not buying them. I'd rather have a photo of the first floor landing to see how wide/light it is.

But I do quite like additional photos of nearby areas, like parks and nice cafes in walking distance. If moving to a new area, it gives you a sense of the location.

I've never heard of agents charging you to do the photos. Is that a new thing?

I find the 360 views useful. I also can't stand the ones with 40 photos, a third of which are close ups of the wood burner or a vase of flowers on the sink, who cares about that?

I don't care about decor or flooring. I want to see good photos of the garden. I would also find a compass direction useful because I do not want a south facing garden.

In order, I look for

Parking
Location
Price
Floorplan
Photos
Flood risk

Photos should preferably be front of house, parking area, hallway, kitchen, dining room, sitting room, bathrooms, bedrooms, garden. Not too many and no video.

We've not sold for over 20 years, so I'd have said yes. But now it seems some do, perhaps to offset the 'no sale. no fee' element of the process?

Price, size, location

I like the 360 because I want to know the size of the hall and landing which isn't often photographed well if at all.

As everyone has said, floor plan, good photos in a sensible order and no photos of a candlestick looking artful.. I don’t want fishbowl photos either. They distort the dimensions of the rooms.

I want an agent who can show recently sold prices of similar houses in the area, a clear explanation of the terms and conditions, as well as fees. I want one person to do the viewings, who has made the effort to know the house and can answer questions about it and the local area. I also want a company that communicates effectively and promptly and is realistic about pricing.

I think the video or not depends on who your target market is. If I were viewing local properties, I would not be that bothered as it would be easy for me to go and see them. But if you are the kind of 'rural' that people relocate to from a long way away (this is the case where I live), then the video is useful because people want to see more of what the house is like before committing to travel up and book some viewings.

We moved from a city to a rural area a year ago. 150 miles away. So we relied on estate agents a lot. Quite a difference between our estate agents and the rural ones.
I wanted to see video as well as photos. Street view was essential. I was ringing estate agents too as they seemed very slow to put houses on Rightmove. I found the speed of everything much slower and prices always much higher than what they eventually sold for. You need pro active EA who will be pushing your property, keeping a dialogue with you, feeding back on every viewing and discussing price if your property is slow for viewings/offers.
premier listings made no difference to me as a buyer of social media posts.

I agree with all that and would add that I also distrust agents who put on overpriced properties. It is self serving to make the average area sale price to look higher than it really is. There's a lot of this going on where I live, and the houses are left on for months before reducing. Last year I had to insist on a 10 percent reduction. Overpricing doesn't always come from the vendor.