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?

It depends how much you want to sell.
If you really want to, what some sellers do is go into a rental and put their stuff into storage.

But if the pool of houses you want is very low, you may not be able to move anywhere at all for a long time.

I don't understand your 'what buyers are looking for'.
Every buyer is different! Different needs.
Are you in the catchment area for schools?
Is there demand for your house? Is it a family 3 bed semi as a starter home or a £2M home for someone moving up market?

You must know what gets snapped up and what hangs around for months in your road/ town.

Buyers work on these -
1 Budget
2 Location
3 Type of house
4 Garden/ no garden, access to good schools or shops or transport.

You can only sell what you have!

Make sure it's maintained, isn't a do-er upper unless you're pricing it at that level, is clean and tidy, clear kitchen worktops other than for a few applicances, remove all products from your bathroom, put all personal stuff away for the EA photos, mow the lawn, clean the patio, repair anything that looks tatty (ie fences or gates) hide signs of pets (I wouldn't be keen on seeing litter trays or bowls of pet food), make the front welcoming and clean.

"I don't understand your 'what buyers are looking for'."

I asked for what made buyers decide to view, as I originally said "Some (EAs) 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?"

Social media postings? Never found a property through that and premium on Rightmove? Who cares. When I look I look at Rightmove pretty exclusively. Criteria is location, amount of bedrooms and price. After that it’s particular features like garden off reception room rather than bedrooms, separate kitchen (or at least not obviously within reception), amount of space and actual street. I’m good at seeing through decor and current layout. But you can’t change the amount of light without adding windows/skylights. You can’t change orientation. You can’t change the noise from outside. You can’t change proximity to transport. It’s up to the individual what they prioritise and what I want might not matter to someone else.

Right Move
Registering with local agents to be told about what's coming onto the market before it's listed on Right Move.

I don't know anyone who doesn't use Right Move, along with talking to local agents. You can register with RM to be automatically sent new listings.

Why would I view it?

It's within my budget

It's the location I am considering (sometimes narrowed down to a street in a town.) Location is not just the town or street but looking at issues with traffic noise, flight paths of airports, pollution etc.

It has the number of rooms I need (perhaps with some compromises.)

I am not swayed by photos other than them showing out the layout.

I am prepared to decorate, change carpets, bathrooms and kitchens.
I'm not buying someone's 'lifestyle' photos. It's the location, rooms, extension potential that counts.

In the thread you can see that others think differently to yourself, and to me. That is what I wanted to find out and have done. After the immutables like detached etc then what makes someone view. Is it worth paying extra for video, drone shot etc.
This thread has been helpful in canvassing views.

The videos I've seen, (family buying within the last 3 years) have been useless. If you can follow a floor plan they don't add value. Most are very very short.

Drones? Maybe if you have an estate/mansion and the buyer needs to see the location from the air, but being honest, this is all available on street view online, choosing an aerial view (landscape.) Buyers can see the drone view without you paying for it!

Make no mistake- EAs are out to make money. They will squeeze as much from you in any way they can.

A drone shot of an overpriced house will just get laughed at, you might as well dress the drone up as a kite.

Drones are the height of pretentiousness.

And pointless unless you have an estate of several thousand acres.

On the contrary, I find them very useful. I’m looking for a house in a very specific type of landscape and I need to know the actual size of the garden and how close other houses are before I’ll travel to look at a house

I saw a listing for one yesterday that claimed it had “extensive gardens”, but the only photo was of a scabby paved area. If there had been a drone shot showing this garden I might have gone to look at it, but as it is I won’t bother.

For a rural house they are very valuable. I buy a house based on the surroundings, if there is no google street view I appreciate drone footage.

Why don't you look on street view and the landscape view?
That way you can see everything.

Did younot know it exists?

Most houses even rural can be seen on google maps, even if street view isn't available.

You really don’t need to be so rude! Of course I do, but as an example two houses I’ve considered recently have been in dense woodland and there is no way to see the garden when it’s under trees.
In remote areas there isn’t any street view - we don’t have any for our house as we are over two miles from a road. The Google satellite photos are years old, so when we do sell ours I will definitely be asking for drone photos.

Fair point.

Fair enough, but loads of people think that they need to put drone shots and have the house all over different social media platforms because that is the "thing" now, for the average overpriced basic house it just makes the seller look stupid, the next stage for a lot of the totally delusional is a "house raffle"?

Location and price

I like photographs of all rooms.

when we were looking so many 5 bed places had photos of inky 2 or 3 bedrooms.

I also like photos that are helpful - show the size and shape of a room, show the furniture in there as that gives me an idea of what of mine would fit.

i don’t want arty shots of the fruit bowl - why is that such a thing now!

Yep, especially if using mortgage debt.

And taps.

How many shots of kitchen taps do we need?

Agreed! When we were selling our five bed thatched house in 2014 our EA suggested some 'lifestyle' shots as it was definitely an aspirational type of property. The professional photographer they used completely disagreed, refusing to take anything too staged (for example, a photo of wine bottle/glasses on a table in the large garden). He even made our elderly cat get down from the insulated hot tub cover where he liked to sleep as it was warm, saying that shots of pets put off some buyers who were allergic etc...

As mentioned previously, we had drone footage done on one house which had extensive grounds that were hard to capture by camera and weren't easy to distinguish from the neighbouring land on Google satellite. This was included in the EA fee, not an add on.