Why I Did Not Buy Your House

Last weekend was our first trip to Dallas to look at houses. We wanted to get an idea of location, size and style of house we might be interested in. My husband and I were able to see about 20 houses together and I saw 6 more without him. This blog could have easily been titled "What were they thinking?" So, here is a list of why we would never have bought some of these houses. This is also a bit of an advice blog to sellers and what to consider when showing their homes.

1. I just do not like the drive up to the front door homes. This may save space, but the curb appeal is horrible and it is pretty near impossible to get into the garage nearest to the house. At least for me!

2. Clean your home! Vacuum and clean your carpets. Hair in the bathrooms, stained or molded caulking, missing grout, dirt and finger prints on the light switches, cabinets and walls, animal scratches on the doors and baseboards, or chipped and peeling paint on the outside doors are not great first impressions. Also, mow your lawn and pull your weeds!

3. Women take showers too, and a master shower that is small and has no place for shampoo, soap, and shaving cream, or does not have a stool or ledge for me to shave my legs is a deal breaker. Am I right Ladies?

4. The kitchen's layout needs to make sense. I shouldn't be able to hit the dishwasher when I open the Frig or the oven. Why would you put the stove top in the island without any counter space around it?  All I could see was grease splattering on the floor, on the dog, on the baby, or on my feet. What were you thinking?

You can see in this picture that the gas stove is the same size as the island. It was not the only stove in the island that we saw on this trip, but is was the only one that had no counter top around it. Very strange and not for us!

5. Do not put a pool table in the living room. It should not be the first thing people see when they walk into your home.

6. No skylights in a state that has terrible hail storms.  And if you do have them, replace the glass when broken, do not use duct tape. It is safe to say that you should not use duct tape on any thing visible to a potential buyer.

7. No religious shrines in your bedroom and no shrines to deceased relatives anywhere.  I am sure they are very special places to you, but it just creeps out potential buyers.  We saw both on this trip.

8. Do not leave your pets in the house while I am there. Cage or crate your cats and dogs, or take them out of the house with you.  I do not want to be responsible for keeping your cat in the house. I also do not want to see them walking all over the counter tops. You may want to put their litter boxes out of sight too, and certainly out of the master bedroom. I also will not go outside to look at your property if there are dogs roaming in the yard. You just lost a sale!

9. Don't go overboard with the post it notes. Take our shoes off,  lock the door, don't let the cats out, turn off the lights, don't open the door to the castle bed, don't open the closet door..... In one house I also had to turn off the stove because the house smelled like gas because the burner was on with no flame. I didn't need a post it for that one. You are Welcome!
    We walked out of the house that had a post it telling us not to disturb the person sleeping in the bedroom. The absolute worst one said, "Please be quite. The baby is sleeping in the nursery, but you can still look upstairs." No thanks! Who leaves a sleeping baby in a house alone knowing that strangers are scheduled to come in and look at your house? YIKES!!!!

10. It is one thing to have a bad floor plan. We saw many Jack and Jill bathrooms that had a door to a sink room, then a door to a shower and toilet room, then a door to another sink room, and then another door to the other bedroom. There where doors running into doors. We saw smaller rooms off the master bathrooms that we were not sure what to use them for, and the only way to get to them was to go through the bathroom. The funniest thing we saw was the staircase railing in the picture to the left. Really? This railing was not functional, but it was hilarious!

Hope you learned a little from our house hunting experience, and we did see some beautiful homes in Dallas. We are looking forward to the trip where we get to actually buy our new home!