House for Sale – Viewing a House

There are typically two ways that you can view a house for sale.

Open Homes

Many houses for sale have open homes. Details of the time of the open home are usually included in any advertising, and your local weekend paper is the most up-to-date resource for these. There are many pros and cons to open homes. The main pro and con being, there will be other people there. This makes it near impossible to have a confidential chat with the agent if you have any questions to ask, or to do a thorough inspection. But the presence of other viewers means you can wander around the house at your leisure independently of an agent. If you are interested, or have questions to ask, you can either ring the agent later or wait for them to call you. Don’t rely on a call from the agent, usually they will call you by the Monday night following the open home, but if there has been lots of interest, or they are not following the usual agent protocol, they may not call.

Arranged viewings

An arranged viewing is when you organise to see the house with the real estate agent at a time that suits you. Agents often need to give vendors and/or tenants plenty of warning before they can show you through a house, so you need to plan in advance for these. Also with some organisation you can see all the properties you are interested in one after the other, saving you time. Again, arranged viewings have pros and cons. You are no longer blending into the crowd at an open home. Good real estate agents will direct your attention to good points of the house and away from bad points, this is their job. They may also try to brush over what may seem like important issues to you. Just remember they are trying to get the house sold and you should only rely on what is on record at the local council and the opinions of independent professionals like building inspectors, and valuers. The main advantage of an arranged viewing is that there are no other potential buyers there, so you can do a thorough investigation. But try to have a look around independently of the real estate agent. After some advice on what to look at when viewing a house – Propertytoolbox has house viewing tips and 10 quick visual checks when viewing a house.

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