Catherine’s recent post on Suburban Finance really had me remembering all of the crazy things that we saw when we were house hunting, before we ended up finding “the” house (the house we currently live in and ended up purchasing).

We didn’t search for that long, because I spent a lot of time online looking for the perfect home. Scouring the MLS listings does a lot to eliminate the ones that don’t fit the criteria, and I would send our Realtor the homes that we were truly interested in.

I would estimate that we probably saw 10 houses, so it’s not a huge sample size, but we still had some very interesting homes and many of them had some quirks.

Aqua Blue Carpet

We saw this beautiful home which, oddly, had aqua blue carpet throughout in pristine condition.

I’ve seen green carpet, even rose coloured carpet (t’was trendy in the 1990’s), but never aqua blue.

It was in such good condition for a family with children that I think it was possibly new. As in somebody purposefully put in aqua blue carpet prior to listing their home.

Either that or the family was just meticulous with regular carpet cleanings and perhaps the children weren’t allowed to walk on the floors – which is highly unlikely. There wasn’t even any dulling of colour in high traffic areas.

The home was priced right around our budget and to get new flooring at it’s cheapest would have been thousands of dollars, so we kept looking.

A Family Who Insisted on Being Home When We Viewed

This was incredibly awkward, because it wasn’t just a couple that was home; the whole family was there, from their teenaged son and his friend, to their adult son and both members of the couple.

If you are serious about selling your house, I wouldn’t recommend staying home when somebody wants to view it. It makes it difficult for the potential buyers to picture themselves in the home; after all, not only is all of your stuff there, but you are too!

The potential buyers see it as your home, instead of something that they might want to live in.

Even if the family wasn’t there, we wouldn’t have seriously considered the home as it was in shambles, but it’s still not a good idea.

“Nobody Smokes in the House”

As two non-smokers, we don’t want to live in a house where the previous owners have smoked inside. It gets into the walls, leaves a terrible odour and I’m actually very sensitive to air quality.

When we arrived at one house that we wanted to see, which made it through the initial “pre-screen” online, we noticed the owners pulling out of the driveway and driving away with the car window down. The man was smoking.

When we climbed out of our car, the selling realtor was getting ready for an open house later on that day. We saw her and took the opportunity to ask, before entering, whether or not anybody smoked inside. She told us that the owner claimed to have never smoked inside.

We proceeded inside to look at the house and it was clear right away that somebody had smoked in the home. If not recently, the smell lingered perhaps from weeks past and my eyes immediately started to sting.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, we continued on out of the foyer which fed right into the main living area. The house was clean and well staged, but there was a full ashtray on one of the side tables that the owners clearly forgot to clean up.

 

Have you ever noticed some home selling faux pas while house hunting?