[Closed] House viewing faux pas

1: only one in that relationship wants to move house
2: lowball offer then.

Not me, but my neighbours place is for sale and they had a viewing last year 10 minutes after they got a call from the vet to say their beloved dog hadn't made it.

She greeted the potential buyers at the door in floods of tears and barely able to speak.

Still for sale......

We visited a house which looked inside like it was inhabited by squatters. Their dog went for my 3 year old daughter making her scared of dogs ever since. The garden was like a jungle and covered in dog turds one of which I trod in then walked it through the house and up the stairs into the bedrooms. The house was a 5 bed detached in a nice street so it wasn't what were expected to see inside.
The estate agent wasn't remotely interested when I gave him my feedback.

Edit: None of this would put us off. The house layout was just rubbish and not what we were looking for.

We saw one like the second, tenants were being evicted, can't imagine why, seemed like lovely people who just wanted to be left alone with their crates of Costco vodka and malting dogs.

Having a long list of "we'll fix it before it's sold" things. So blooming fix them, I don't really want to be buying into your half finished projects (at a price where it really should be perfect).

So what is the strangest thing you have ever seen (as a buyer or seller)

Not as a buyer but I remember looking for a place to rent as a student in Leeds and being shown somewhere that stank really badly, where we weren't allowed to look in either of the bedrooms, and there was a shower in the kitchen/front room! Erm... nah you're alright thanks.

We were viewing the house we now live in, and standing in the master bedroom with the estate agent.

There was a large duvet bunched up on the bed that began to move. The estate agent jumped and let out a slight scream as the tenant (a 20-something year-old student) emerged from underneath the cover.

He just looked at us through groggy eyes, and laid back down.

We ended up getting the house for 25% less than the original asking price. 8)

We went to view a house with the estate agent, booked a couple of days before so plenty of time for the owners to have a tidy up /clean .
As we walked in the front door the stench of piss was so strong we just walked straight out again.

We had neighbours that couldn't understand how come our house sold within the day and theirs was on for months with little interest.

Pretty much identical 12 y/o houses, and ours was dearer.

Could've been something to do with that you couldn't actually see either the colour of their carpets or any surface due to clutter/crap/washing etc...

We showed someone round our old house that had a cast iron bath. The prospective owner said he would enjoy throwing a sledge hammer through it.

Me and the wife agreed that under no circumstances would we sell the house to him.

I was round Pimpmistress Jazz's ground floor abode on Saturday morning early in our courtship and we were naked under the covers. Suddenly there was a voice outside the window which made me think 'that sounds like Paula, the estate agent' (I was looking at houses at the time). I mentioned it to PMissJ who said something like 'oh bother. I had forgotten that the estate agent was popping round this morning to show prospective tenants this wonderful dwelling'.

Sure enough we heard a key slide into the Chubb (not a euphemism) and we greeted Paula and a young couple in our dressing gowns.

Don't think they rented it, but to be fair it was a pretty shitty flat.

Massive guy, small loft hatch, tiny wife. He points at the hatch and says "I've never been up there". No sheet! I have an enduring mental image of her on a stepladder trying to push him through the hatch.

Massively overgrown garden at another house. The guy hands his glass or red wine to his wife and walks into a bush. Shortly after, there's a flush and he reappears. Fully working outside loo behind the undergrowth! Went ahead with the purchase on that one! Ideal for post ride pit stops.

We viewed one where the floor in the living room was on the piss, sloping off down into one corner.
The estate agent (who couldn't have been more than 19 years old) tried to put a positive spin on it by saying "At least if you drop something, you know where it will end up"

Touché, salesman...

While selling my listed building, steep stairs accessed second floor flat next door to a noisy pub, the estate agent showed a disabled old lady round. I really didn't understand that one.

Working at home one day estate agent also showed an investment buying older South African couple round who did nothing but moan about the height of the ceiling (low, but at 6ft I was still safely several inches from them) and how much they could buy in South Africa for the same price. Sooo tempted to tell them to **** off back there if it's so ****ing cheap and wonderful. To his credit, the estate agent did have the good grace to apologise afterwards.

An estage agent I knew once found a man who'd hung himself whilst showing people around - managed to get out without them seeing though.

Then there's various rubber items that are revealed when opening up fitted wardrobes.

Viewing a house we liked the look of and the owners son had obvisouly been out for a few the night before as when we were viewing he was asleep on the sofa. She had covered him right over with a blanket and asked us to ignore him while we pictured ourselves in the living room.

Another place where a batty old woman was selling a massive house at a great price, the place was covered in rubbish and the garden was covered in dog eggs. While we were viewing the upstairs one of the 3 dogs put his head under her skirt and starting licking her leg, I kid ye not, the sound was vile, like a scraping rasping licking off the hard skin from her leg. The woman just laughed and said 'oh he always does that' - oh so you let him do that a lot then? gross.

Then there's various rubber items that are revealed when opening up fitted wardrobes.

Reminds me of the very visually catholic house we viewed, apart from the very gay son's rather black S&M themed bedroom. 😯

Viewed one house where somebody had obviously broken in, got nervous and laid a huge Richard III in the middle of the carpet (apparantly it's quite common amongst burglard). The whole house stank - we didn't buy.

However, the house I'm currently in was an absolute tip when I viewed, lodgers kipping on mattresses on the floors, overflowing ash trays, underwear in the garden (I mean wtf 8O) etc. It had been on the market so long I managed to batter down the price, then re-decorate throughout. (One room smelled so much of cat p*ss taht the surveyor refused to enter 😡 )

Once we moved in kept getting dodgy adult catalogues through the post and debt collectors calling.................

Being shown round houses as a kid when we were looking to move house the estate agent was in bit of a state of befuddlement. At the previous viewing the person looking round was in their early twenties - looked about, liked it then asked "so do I pay you now?" He had the asking price in cash in a carrier bag. His parents had died - that was his inheritance - he had no idea how buying and selling houses worked - but imagined you just turn up with cash and get given the keys.

According to the sales blurb, the house would make "an ideal project". Should've guessed something was up when the estate agent got out of his car in wellies. Then he opened the front door and two chickens flew out...

Went to view one where we were shown around by the estate agent, walled or into the back garden to find the whole family sat in the car on the drive staring at us. Very odd. You'd at least drive round the corner surely?

Saw a property in Guildford a few years ago that was stuck in the 70's in terms of decor (right down to avocado bath suite with matching mats), looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the 70's, had been smoked in since the 70's, the owner was smoking as we were viewing, and the place was full, and I mean FULL of Elvis memorabilia....

Think we were out of there in under 5 minutes.

Most annoying one for me was a house I wanted to buy where the owner was storing silly amounts of furniture for a friend so taking up most of the floor space. As far as I could see all was fine and got the survey done - then the owner decided she couldn't afford anywhere big enough for all the furniture she was storing so pulled out of the sale. Bit odd really.

When we married we viewed something like 53 properties so I can't remember all the nutty owners. There was one up on the moors somewhere between Burley and Rossendale that was an old farmhouse; the back wall was falling down and the place was miserable and freezing. The poor seller, a lady whose husband had left her, had done her best by lighting a huge fire in the grate. It was quite sad.

We saw an old weaver's cottage right beside the M65, which was just about to open, where you had to climb through a cupboard door to use the bath, which filled the entire cupboard. The main bedroom was stacked up with furniture because downstairs was being refurbished. We had been there a few minutes, peering in through the door because you couldn't actually enter the room, when a movement over by the window attracted our attention and we noticed a bloke sitting at a table working! It was the seller's husband, almost invisible in the clutter, marking school books. We couldn't see how he had actually got there.

We went to view a house a few years ago, advertised as do'er-upper, it had been on the market for a few months and had just dropped in price and peeked our interest.
The front living room was completely bare, had lovely wooden floors, a boarded up fireplace, but with a 10" hold cut into it, the ceiling light has been disconnected and new cables were attached to the ceiling and switch on the wall and there were thousands of staples in the walls, all over the walls and window frames...
Dining room was the same. Quite odd I thought, but we kept going, the agent was lovely and had helped a friend buy her place so we were casually chatting away. The kitchen was normal, lovely kids room with toys in it still though... A bit odd as the rest of the house was bare. Spare room was the same as two downstairs, littered with staples and botched wiring.. Then the penny dropped! It was a cannabis plantation! The tenants moved out in a hurry leaving all the kids stuff and the landlord and agents didn't even bother to tidy up the place and disguise what it was.
It took a further price drop before out sold a few weeks later.

We knew from the photo's that the house may be a bit 'odd' as it had a urinal in the family bathroom, next to the trap.

However when we got round the hosue was totally deserted, like they'd popped out to work, even washing in the machine, kids toys out on the floor. All very odd.

We didn't ask what had happened.

[quote="Harry_the_Spider"]
We showed someone round our old house that had a cast iron bath. The prospective owner said he would enjoy throwing a sledge hammer through it.😀 An ex landlord of mine paid me to help him take the cast iron bath from a house he was selling and put it in storage, and to replace it with a bog standard 50€ plastic thing after the buyer said the same thing. Apparently the plumber was due to come in as soon as the sale had completed to refit the bathroom. (Which was an amazing art deco type thing) The landlord spent quite some time removing other bits and pieces. Sinks, taps, toilet........ tiles. Mirrors...

I suspect the plumber was a little pissed, as selling the stuff that had been removed would probably have doubled his profit on the job. New owner had given permission as well.

Viewed a student property where the tenants were pissed off with the letting agents just showing up, not giving any notice, so three of the four bedrooms had the floors strewn with tatty jazz mags and sex toys. The fourth was immaculate. Chatted with one of the tenants and they were apologetic but wanted to embarrass the agent into doing things properly. It seemed to work, he went crimson.

We viewed a house in Holmfirth. The owner was heavily pregnant and moving for an extra bedroom. She hadn't been up the stairs to the top floor for a while as the stairs were too narrow and steep for her bump but that's where her two teenage daughters' rooms were.

That floor was like a dirty protest - dirty underwear everywhere, used 'sanitary products', broken windows and internal doors, graffiti on the walls etc etc. When we went to the lounge, the daughters were sitting there in their underwear.

We suspected that the girls were somewhat reluctant to move.

Oh - and the owner told us that the kitchen never got any daylight and the parking was a nightmare.

a man who'd hung himself whilst showing people around

I'd like to think I'd at least try to talk him out of it while he was showing me round.

[quote="Pieface"]We didn't ask what had happened.Friend of a friend "didn't ask". Got told instead.
Got to the house for a viewing, grass in the back garden was ~1m tall, could still see kiddies toys and stuff in the garden. Couldn't get in through the front door, no keys. Stuff everywhere. Same as yours pretty much. Except a lot more mold and smells.

Turns out the family had been in a fatal crash. The inheritor of the estate (one of the grandparents i suspect) didn't want anything to do with the sale, or the house or anything. Just wanted shot of it. House hadn't been touched for months until the estate agent turned up to sell it. No idea who bought it in the end, i suspect getting a house clearance company in first might have been sensible.

We viewed a house which was currently owned by an Indian family. They were all in the house during the viewing with the agent and it stank of their cooking but the weirdest thing was that we weren't allowed to view one of the bedrooms. It had a hasp lock on it and was a no go room.

Who'd buy a house without first seeing all the rooms?

My funniest moment viewing house had nothing to do with the house but the estate agent, a young girl who arrived in a Golf that was making more noise than an old era F1 car.
She started by appologicing for the noice but she could not get herself to tell the boyfriend that she did not like the sport exhaust he had given her for valentines day.

Viewed the house of a divorcing couple, both were present during the viewing and clearly wanted to punch each others faces in.

The man had some kind of nose/sinus problem and sniffed about every 3 seconds. Intensely annoying, and whenever he turned his back, his wife impersonated him while pulling a massive belm 😆

Edit: thinking back, making conversation I asked about the cats they had (some kind of beautiful long haired ones). "THEY ARE HERS" was the rather terse reply with a healthy dose of superman eyelasers aimed at his wife. Wondering now if she knew he was allergic and she'd got them to shit him up.

Lots of damp and mould and general unpleasantness, but a couple that stand out...

House that was currently being let by a lovely Eastern European gentleman, landlord had it up for sale. Wasn't quite the area we wanted but we went for a look anyway. The tenant clearly took great pride in his home and took great pains to point out to us the "repairs" he had affected not to mention the decorating. The front room - which had the curtains drawn despite it being a lovely day - was painted bright orange with a red lightbulb. Mrs Eastern European was reclining on the massive L sofa that took up 70% of the small room whilst Jr played on the Xbox at full volume in the corner. It was also hotter than the sun.

Then there was the house where the floor in the main bedroom was - genuinely - about a foot higher in the middle than the edges. When I mentioned this to the estate agent she affected a bemused look and said "oh, I hadn't noticed".

Viewed a house last year. We were told on the phone by the agents that the owner would show us round, but that she was a bit poorly. We were greeted by the owner, who, it turns out, was in the very late stages of terminal brain cancer. She was literally days from death. Unfortunately, the tumor was having a quite serious effect on her mental state, she was all over the place. We wanted to just go, but she insisted on showing us round and telling us all about her life. She was lovely, but she was clearly not fit to be showing people round a house. We stayed with her for nearly 2 hours, she seemed to appreciate the company and having someone to talk to, my wife is brilliant with people and we left her cheerful and (relatively) comfortable. Many phonecalls were made following the viewing, not least of which was a call to the estate agents suggesting they try a somewhat different approach to selling houses.

A friend got a house at auction in Copenhagen, it was stripped bare, wiring removed and animal shit everywhere, downstairs in the basement there were various animal enclosures, potentially for large reptiles and maybe a Croc, lots of porn left lying and I guess they gave up flushing the bog.

Owner left and fled the country with creditors chasing all the way to the airport I think...

We knew from the photo's that the house may be a bit 'odd' as it had a urinal in the family bathroom, next to the trap.

Er... there's nothing wrong with having a home urinal in the house, we have one in the downstairs loo and it's so discrete, covered with a lid, that many visitors don't even notice it. The reasoning is that when gentlemen use a standard WC pan to pee, they splash everywhere no matter how careful they may be.

the weirdest thing was that we weren't allowed to view one of the bedrooms. It had a hasp lock on it and was a no go room.

That would be where they were keeping a mentally ill relative or somebody else they didn't want you to meet. My Asian neighbour is a PC and he tells me that his community has its own way of dealing with family problems of this kind, which seldom involves Social Services.

We did view a house in a place called Hapton, a huge Georgian place you can see from the M65 overlooking a landfill site, that had been split into two homes. The place was empty but warm and clean and the owners seemed to be very nervous about their neighbour; they wouldn't allow us to walk the wrong side of a white line painted on the flat roof and they spent a very long time pointing out the exact boundaries of their bit of the garden. We guessed they were no longer even living there and were desperate to get rid; the neighbour had a filthy Transit tipper truck parked outside his half so we guessed he was the problem. Exactly the same thing happened to us a few years into our new married with child life in the nice house we eventually bought, when a violent drug dealer moved in next door (complete with night time drug deals, huge bonfires, loud trance music and three dogs, which whined and barked outside our window all night) and we tarted the house up, put it on the market for less than it was worth and moved out fast. It was re-sold three times in the following four years.

An ex landlord of mine paid me to help him take the cast iron bath from a house he was selling and put it in storage, and to replace it with a bog standard 50€ plastic thing after the buyer said the same thing. Apparently the plumber was due to come in as soon as the sale had completed to refit the bathroom. (Which was an amazing art deco type thing) The landlord spent quite some time removing other bits and pieces. Sinks, taps, toilet........ tiles. Mirrors...

This was a mint 1920's bathroom. The couple that we sold it to appreciated the original features.

1976 - a house that had been a nursing home that had gone bust, been repossesed and then occupied by squatters and then empty for two years.

My parents, me and my brother and sister go to view it. Great house, six-bedrooms, 250 ft garden, lovely location but man it was a total mess inside.

The patio doors had wooden slats nailed across them just like you see boarded up windows in the movies.

The whole house stack of p*ss and there were six cans of air freshener by the front door.

You picked up one each as you entered and carried it around with you and kept on spraying. I can still smell that brand now.

Ended up buying it and my dad renovated it, he was a bit of a DIY whizz. I remember helping him knock down breezeblock walls that had been erected to create corridors in the bedrooms.

I also remember the first thing we did was pick up all the carpets and take them to the local tip in the back of our Ford Anglia estate. I was hanging my head out the window to try to get some fresh air (and the summer of 1976 was mighty hot so boy, did they hum something bad).

Took years to renovate it but my parents eventually sold it for an absolute mint.

Selling our first place, 2-bed city centre terrace thingy, we got back to our house after a viewing to find the whole place freezing cold, all the windows open, door wide open, understandably I flipped out a bit even though nothing had been nicked, and phoned up the agent to bollock him.

I ended up apologising to him instead. Turns out when he'd arrived the whole house had been absolutely full of gas, which was blasting out of all four burners on the unlit hob in the kitchen. He'd opened everything to air the place out, then heroically turned off the gas to prevent it from burning down.

What had happened was that just before my wife had left the place that morning her lovely, darling mother had arrived, and had decided to "help" by giving the kitchen a quick clean whist waiting for my missus to finish faffing with her hair or whatever. During her well-intentioned wiping of the (already pristine) worktops she'd managed to flip all the burners to open, and because the daft old bat is deaf and has no sense of smell she'd not noticed what she'd done. My wife and wonderful, dear mother-in-law then left in a hurry, with the house slowly filling with deadly explosive gas.

It's the only time I've ever really felt sorry for an estate agent.

After leaving university I looked round a shared house with six rooms; one wall of the landing was just a big glass wall and door into the bathroom. It was opaque, but not so opaque that you couldn't see basically everything going on inside in fairly fine detail.

I guess they must have all been very friendly people.

Back when I was at Uni in Edinburgh we looked at a flat that was listed as 4 bedrooms. One of the bedrooms turned out to be an all glass walled room (think giant fishtank) in what would have been the living room. I can only assume the flats previous use was a swingers club.

I think it was upstairs from Doctors Pub 😀

Or, they could have kept giant fish.

I viewed a reposessed house once, turns out the couple split up and BOTH moved out leaving the place half decorated, unfurnished but with black sacks of their posessions about the place. There were bits of ceiling falling down and and the walls looked like they'd been plastered with a spoon.

I placed the offer that afternoon!

It wasn't till we moved in and got stuck in clearing that we found most of a ford escort in bits in the basement.

We've looked at some right weird places

* bathroom door lying on the landing. Owner had ripped it off 'during an argument' kthxbye

* conservatory to within 1m of the end of the garden, then a rabbit hutch attached to where the conservatory doors would be so the rabbits can 'come and go' kthxbye

* witch-like owner who'd painted the walls of an otherwise nice house in orange with purple carpets and blue furniture. All curtains closed, lots of voodoo shit and scary paintings on the walls

* central heating piping made into a feature and elaborately routed across ceilings, inside cupboards and out/in through the walls

* afternoon viewing where we had to step over the eldest son's body. He was alive but like comatose

Only really when selling our end terrace in Edinburgh.
First viewings were on Sunday pm. We had told the somewhat batty neighbours we were selling up.

Shared rear patio (not a euphemism..) with a lowish breeze block wall separating.

10am I headed out to dump some stuff, at which point batty old man neighbour starts with a sledgehammer to the shared wall (on *his* property as he later reassured me). Wife goes nuts understandably with viewing about 3 hours away.. children had painted our side of the wall with stuff so they were bawling as well. Came back to scene of carnage, wife still mental screaming at the not very nice neighbour.

Sadly I suspect he knew we couldn't officially complain as then we'd be in dispute with neighbour.. He did tidy it up, to build a bigger wall (it was the privacy he was worried about..) hmm. Would happily thumped him there and then..

Never trust a viewing if the estate agent isn't showing you round. One we viewed we knew where the house was (behind the bushes) but couldn't find our way into the property past the bushes. A second, whilst stood in the lounge downstairs, if you looked up, you were looking directly at the bedroom floor boards and could see into the bedroom through the gaps. Third, accessed via a ridiculously steep & blind gravel track, the wife refused to remain in the car as i drove out (requiring instruction from the owner on how to best negotiate the track). When we did get an estate agent viewing the property had a pond, we had a child, estate agent went on and on about how a child had recently died in a garden pond & that they shouldn't be allowed.

I viewed a repo that had been stripped. I mean totally stripped, the bloke had taken the sockets, skirting (!) switches, carpets and all the bathroom fittings. The estate agents had plumbed in a toilet and two freestanding sink units to make it mortgageable.

(not really a faux pas I know, sorry...)

Looking for a rental room in Oxford. Room had a mattress on the floor and bugger all furniture. Then the (black) agent knocks and says '...and this is the shared lounge' and there's a pile of skinny neo-nazi looking mohican guys, hard at the tinnies about 6:30pm. They were pretty friendly actually...

Oh and the 'room' that turned out to be a converted lean-to that you got to through the garage. I left that one too 🙂

The funniest one we had was when an agent showed us around a house, the main bedroom had the curtains drawn and the bed was unmade. When the EA opened the curtains so we could see the room, we saw a set of handcuffs still attached to the headboard.

The lady who lived there was sheepishly hanging around just out of sight "having a fag", I suspect if we had been there 5 minutes earlier we would have had some explaining to do to the kids 😆

We showed someone round our old house that had a cast iron bath. The prospective owner said he would enjoy throwing a sledge hammer through it.

Me and the wife agreed that under no circumstances would we sell the house to him.

Why would you care what a complete stranger did to [i]their[/i] house?

Then there's various rubber items that are revealed when opening up fitted wardrobes.

Are you sure you were viewing a house and not a condominium?

This was a mint 1920's bathroom. The couple that we sold it to appreciated the original features.

By modernised i mean ruined.

I looked at a small terraced house in Pontywaun that had a huge staircase that the owner had built, it took up so much space that the room it was in was rendered useless for anything. It was for sale for a good few years

^^Bravo Cougar^^ 😆

Tudor beams on the living room ceiling of a tenement flat in Glasgow.

Another tenement flat in Glasgow where the bathroom floor rose up quite dramatically towards the back wall, while the ceiling lowered simultaneously, meaning that only a small child would be able to stand up in the rear third of the room. The estate agent stood at the door with us in silence for a moment while we all took it in before turning round and stating "I have no idea".

Yet another tenement flat in Glasgow, where the large living room had another room contained within it. Picture a room with an immovable shed in it occupying over half the volume. The owner's friend was showing us around. "This is where he likes to do his music" was the only explanation. Despite it being a big room, this lunacy meant you couldn't fit a sofa in it. There was also what we were told was a ship's door between the living room (the outer one) and the kitchen. It was about a foot thick and metal plated. "He keeps setting the kitchen on fire, so thought this was safer" said the friend.

Another flat in Glasgow owned by a woman with about a million cats. The dining room table about twenty places set, all with miniature plates and cutlery and benches on all sides. Really hard to stop s****ing after seeing that.

Nowt as queer as folk.

Not me this one, but a friend went to view a flat on the south side of Glasgow. Thought it was strange that the doorbell was mounted pretty low down, but realised why when the owner was a person of short stature (if that's the accepted nomenclature). The whole house, including the fitted kitchen, was adapted accordingly with nothing above waist height.

Went to look at a place my brother was thinking of buying, the estate agent obviously had something on his mind then near the end suddenly goes "Of course, you'll be wondering about the murders". Wut. "But just to put you at ease, about the murders" Wut. "The same person owned both this flat, and the upstairs flat, and it was actually upstairs the murders happened". Ah that's OK then "Then he hid the bodies in this flat" Wut. "But if you didn't know already, you couldn't tell. They were over there, in the little cupboard. Really good storage in this flat! I don't think we've found them all yet." What, THE OTHER BODIES?

He ended up buying a slightly less murdery place a couple of doors down. Equally cupboardy though so you never know. I mean, it's not like he knew about the other place til the murder-obsessed estate agent started going on about it.

Why would you care what a complete stranger did to their house?

But it wasn't [i]their[/i] house, it was my future wife's house at the time and the other interested party wanted to retain the original features that my wife had spent about 10 years restoring.

Besides he was an objectionable cock who wore stonewashed jeans, a rugby shirt and looked like Bryan (with a Y) Robson.

tend to agree with Harry, it's just being a bit courteous really and engage with the other party -- it may give a clue as to how they'd conduct any negotiation, too.

We bought our end terrace off a nice pleasant couple - no other bidders, was easy enough transaction. When we came to sell, same story - plenty viewers (think many just having a neb, and told us how it was the bumpiest street in Edinburgh - which it was, but...) but only one bidder, nice pleasant couple we're still in contact with...

We were shown round house by the elderly vendor. He initially seemed ok, but then went on to tell us that the only reason the house was on the market was because his wife had done a runner with a waiter they had recently met on holiday, and now wanted to cash in her share of the house.

He casually observed on showing us one of the bedrooms, that this the room he tried to top himself in, ‘when it all became too much’.

He clearly and understandably didn’t want to sell - if this story was his not-so-subtle wat of putting off prospective buyers it certainly worked.

When the EA called for feedback, he didn’t seem too surprised by our experience!

my mate (and yes I know this is a 'my mate' story) but he's a straight up guy.

In his previous house he started digging the garden over as his wife is a keen gardener. Pretty soon he hit metal. Strange...

He dug around it and found more and more metal.

Finally found the edges and it was a car roof. he dug down at the sides and it appeared to be a whole car buried in the garden - I say appeared cos he didn't bother digging the whole thing out. He just showed the wife and they agreed to cover it up again and they ignored it.

They moved.

A pal of mine wanted to buy an old farmhouse from a bloke who seemed strangely reluctant to discuss the selling price. It took a visit by another pal, an experienced and wise solicitor, to work out that the seller wanted to undervalue the sale massively and receive a large part in cash because he had just split with his wife who was supposed to get half.

I was once shown around a house by the owner who was wearing the most ridiculous , ill- fitting toupee ever! Things didn't get off to a good start when i found a massive damp patch he'd tried to hide behind a wardrobe.Then, when we went into the bathroom I touched a tile in the bathroom and dozen tiles fell off the wall.
Needless to say, I didn't make an offer.
Then there was the place in Kennington - the owner explained in his poor English that a condition of the sale was that he would continue to live in the master bedroom until he died! Honest!

Arranged to view a house for the second time to be greeted by the seller and an ambulance outside the house, she was very apologetic about not being able to do the viewing as when she went round to open up found the next door neighbour dead on the lawn!!! he had apparently had a heart attack whilst cutting the grass for her. I still bought it and no I did not haggle !

But it wasn't their house, it was my future wife's house at the time and the other interested party wanted to retain the original features that my wife had spent about 10 years restoring.

that’s ridiculous, why would sentiment get in the way of a business transaction?
i have a thing about kitchen cupboards and low worktops, i’m a 6footer and constantly bang my head on cooker hoods and hate having cupboard doors in my face when i’m using the work surface.
so i don’t care if the new kitchen was hand made and the colour specially chosen by the lovely wife. it’s sledgehammer time if i can't lean over a pan on the hob or wave a knife around above a work top and see what i’m doing.

it’s a house you a buying not a historical monument*

*obviously there are important historical homes out there.

Why would you care what a complete stranger did to their house?

that’s ridiculous, why would sentiment get in the way of a business transaction?

have you dealt with women before?

ooh, another house I viewed in Epsom had a crack around three sides of the upstairs bay window that was so large you could see daylight through it: not around the actual window but the supporting wall beneath it, I kid you not.

Oh that's not a problem said the young female estate agent. Yeah, right.

Not me this one, but a friend went to view a flat on the south side of Glasgow. Thought it was strange that the doorbell was mounted pretty low down, but realised why when the owner was a person of short stature (if that's the accepted nomenclature). The whole house, including the fitted kitchen, was adapted accordingly with nothing above waist height.

That doesn't make any sense, why would he need to ring his own doorbell, surely he'd have a key?

On second thoughts, maybe he fitted it himself and that's as high as he could reach to do so. As you were.

maybe all his friends were...

Once went to see a house in New Mills, Derbyshire, with a working indoor toilet.

Well, I say working, we assume it should be as someone had used it (and left it to fester), but the estate agent just closed the lid and we moved swiftly onto the next room and then quickly out of the house

we didn;t buy it

I;'ll leave the other poo story (and the tales of buying our house) to mrs NBT...

found the next door neighbour dead on the lawn

If I've ever seen an excuse to haggle over the price, that's got to be it.

Mind you, there's an excellent chance you might find my next door neighbour dead on my lawn. Accident, obviously - he was running with scissors, tripped, and accidentally cut his own head off. 😈

I went to look at a flat in Clapham in the late 80's. Over the bed in the main bedroom was hanging a 5' by 7' photo of Maggie Thatcher. Probably an effective method of contraception.

that’s ridiculous, why would sentiment get in the way of a business transaction?

It didn't. I didn't budge on the price because I told the eventual buyer that someone else was interested.

14 inch (I didn't measure it) dildo on the landing floor.

But it wasn't their house, it was my future wife's house at the time and the other interested party wanted to retain the original features that my wife had spent about 10 years restoring.

If you're that bothered about it then you wouldn't be selling, no?

Perhaps because it's a home not a commodity

It's a home until you put it on the market, then it's a commodity; the place you're replacing it with is your home.

Genuine question, is this just me being weird / Aspie? I've lived in the same place, for all practical purposes, all my life. It's my home right now and I've got nigh on 40 years of sentiment here, but if I moved it wouldn't be any more and the new owners could use it as a crackhouse for all I care.

Actually, thinking about it I do understand it from a preservation angle, if there's fittings in there worth protecting. Like, you wouldn't modernise a National Trust property. But if it's 'just' a regular house, it's ultimately down to the owner what they do with it surely?