What estate agents don't want you to know!

We’ve been busy looking at houses. Yes – actually going out and looking, as opposed to virtual viewing on the Internet!  

Our intentions were to drive to a property and take a look at its location, and to see if it appeals ‘in the flesh’. If it passed, then we would contact the agent and arrange a viewing. But... So far none have passed the drive-by test, and when we’ve broken the rule and arranged a viewing because the property is too far away for just a drive-by – we’ve been disappointed.

Why is this? Is it because we’re ‘too fussy’, hard to please, as some of our friends and relatives have suggested? That unless it’s the most perfect property in the world, that ticks all the boxes (and more) and is at a bargain price, it doesn’t stand a cat in hells chance of even wetting our appetite? Well... I’m sure there’s some truth in it, but there’s another reason too: Estate agents don’t always present the truth.

Are we too fussy and hard to please?

We found a house on Rightmove that on the face of it was what we were looking for. It was a new-build, but constructed from old bricks and designed to look like a barn conversion, and was within our budget.  It was also empty, so we thought we drive over and have a look through the windows.

When we arrived there was a lady leaning on the five-bar gate at the top of the drive, looking suspiciously at us.

The number of times we’ve driven to an address, intending to park on the road while we take a leisurely look, only to find the owner in the garden glaring at us, suspecting we were casing the joint for a burglary! On this occasion we decided to bite the bullet and got out and said we were interested in the house. Mary agreed to show us around, as she was the owner.

It turned out to be a shared drive, and she lived adjacent to the property (not apparent on the promotional photographs), and half of the tarmacked parking area (which we assumed was for the new build) was for Mary and her visitors.  There was also an issue with the paddock at the bottom of the shared drive. The owner had applied to build bungalows on it, but the application had been turned down, but that didn’t mean a different, future, application might not be successful.

The worst omission was that in the field next to the house was a sewage works! Granted, most of it was hidden underground, but even so – the agent’s pictures had been carefully framed to hide it. And despite an assurance from Mary that it didn’t smell and there were no flies, you wouldn’t find out until the summer when you and your friends were sat outside cooking chicken on the barbecue.

Would there be flies and smells when barbecuing for friends?

If we’d known all this before venturing out, we wouldn’t have wasted our time. Obviously, vendors and agents want to present only the positives to encourage house hunters to go and see. But if you are tempted to view, you might feel you’ve been cheated.  So what’s the point, and how can you prevent it?

Street View can save you a lot of heartache. You can travel up and down the road where the property is located, do a 360 degree turn, all without leaving the comfort of your Alde heated caravan. Often it enables you to see the things the estate agent doesn’t want you to see. Street View has revealed to us nearby quarries, adjacent run-down farms, next door’s twenty foot Leylandii, over-shadowing factory units and busy roads within feet of the front door.

It does come with a caveat though. Some of those street views can be twenty years out of date. So the house you’re looking for, or the sewage works that’s there, can’t be seen, because they don’t yet exist. Same with the satellite view. Sometimes you’ve no alternative but to drive out and see things for yourself.

We did that the other day. In the photographs, the barn conversion we’d examined on Rightmove appeared to have a generous gravel drive. Just what we needed to park the caravan. When we got there, we found it was one of several properties set around a courtyard. The gravel ‘drive’ was a communal parking area. Not only was it unsuitable for the caravan, we could have our neighbours parking their vehicles right across the picture window!

The estate agents wide angle lens has a lot to answer for. It can make the frontage appear huge, with space to park several vehicles, and rooms big enough to host business conferences.

One other lesson we’ve learned, is read the agent’s description carefully. Often you can glean information by what they don’t say. Sometimes they don’t even state that a property is semi-detached, and carefully posed photographs make it hard to tell, so you might assume it is on its own.

Estate agents aren’t the enemy – but if you don’t want to waste your time and money on expensive fuel, you have to have to do your home-work and have your wits about you...

P.S. We're taking a break from house hunting, and are off to Spain for a walking holiday. Well, I'll be walking, Linda will be hobbling...

Read my novels; Stench of Evil https://goo.gl/VQOVuS and The Devil in Them https://goo.gl/aS1cjZ in ebook format and paperback...)