did you do viewings when you sold your house

I've had a lot of experience buying and selling homes. Last house I bought the owner was there and I admit I think it does effect people. The house sold itself though. Any questions can be answered later if the people are truly interested. I do know interested people somethimes stay longer to get the feel of the place.They may even sit down for a while with the EAs and discuss your house or others they have seen.

We are in the process of marketing our home. We have opted for EA viewing with our presence in the house.
The reasons are :
We didn't want to hear negative, fatuous comments, as we had experienced selling previous houses.

One of us stays discretely in the house because the EA would need the alarm code and strangers going over the house where we have personal information in is a no, no.

Also, we are there to answer questions.

We have requested that the EA employees who do the viewing familiarise themselves with the house, ie. do their job. We viewed a house recently where the EA couldn't find the garage and didn't even no it existed!
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I think they need to 'imagine' themselves living in the house without the owner being there. I've never actually sold a house though; being me I would probably go round showing the prospective buyers all the faults before they even notice them.

Know* , of course! x

tegan that is the thing - it is so easy to 'rabbit' on telling the prospective buyers everything (warts and all)
when I view a house I find the persistant vendor who tells me everything including his sock size is very off putting that is why I always suggest viewers have a look round on their own (take their time) if they want to.
Usually it is those who are interested who take up the offer - the ones not interested are already heading for their car.
how can anyone never actually sell a house? (think of the fun you have missed out on)
so when selling my house - I am not wrong for the EA to do the initial showing (one would assume they are already familiar with the house - otherwise they are a waste of space) but be there to answer questions.

I have sold a few houses, I choose agents who will do the first viewings and we go out, I found that I really can't cope with 'Oh how lovely!' and never hear from them again. Then, if the viewers are really interested, we do the next viewing. Also, viewers are more honest about their feelings with the agent, who can then give us feedback.

Agree with JaneRowena. we pay the EA to sell the house, and they are better at it. also I don't want to be pestered with questions at too early a stage in the selling process.We have sold loads of houses this way.It's also the way that we prefer to view houses ourselves when buying, who wants the owner breathing down their necks?

We did agree to let the agent do the viewings when we were selling three years ago - I really didn't want to have the hassle - but they proved to be a bit of a let down so we took it over ourselves in the end. In fact, we sold it pretty quickly. I think we just had a bad experience. DD had agent led viewings when they sold their house and didn't have a problem.

We've only sold one house and that was 25+ years ago. We did viewings ourselves by appointment only. One couple turned up on speck one Sunday afternoon. Reluctantly let them in as the house wasn't at it's best.
They bought it there and then !
When viewing I prefer the owner not to be there.

I have always let the estate agent do the viewing – that's part of his/her job. I have too many more interesting things to do than traipse around the house burbling about boilers and double glazing. I provide a supply of information sheets about when the boiler was installed and last serviced, the council tax band, etc. I also think that most prospective buyers prefer to view without the current owners being present.

Did the viewings myself three times, by appointment via the estate agent, so no direct contact with viewers until they arrived on the doorstep. I would have found it much less convenient "not to be around" the house I was living in while trying to sell it.

Mind you, I'm probably a bit weird: I've also, twice, moved into a house at the other end of the country, that I hadn't viewed. In each case my doing the viewing would have been difficult. In each case my husband was told my basic requirements (and I mean basic) and told left to get on with it. It worked fine in both cases. It is perhaps worth adding that I may be weird but my DHs are weirder . Perhaps that's the trick.

DS/dil are currently selling their property and have opted for EA to do viewings. Their thinking is that two small boys of 3 months and 2yrs plus associated chaos may not be helpful in selling a not very big house! Dil goes to visit friends or loads the boys in the double buggy and goes out for long walk until viewing is over.

Always did the viewings myself. Then I was able to answer questions about carpets and curtains and lawn mowers!

Not sure I agree that EA do the best job though. I've been looking at properties recently and the EA couldn't answer any of the questions I asked. For one property they didn't even know that the house had a downstairs loo, they told me it was storage until I opened the door to take a peek!

We have made sure that the Accompanying Viewers, who are professionals appointed by the EA, have all familiarised themselves with the EPC and had a tour of the house from us.

They use their marketing skills to ' sell' the house to its best advantage. They can appear more objective, rather than gushingly over selling.

Second viewers usually ask the more pertinent question. However time will tell.

So far one criticism was that the main bedroom faced the wrong way! x

one house I sold was through an excellent EA who not only came out to see the house and took copious notes but sent every member of his office out (other sales staff and receptionist/office manager) so they all had knowledge of the house - this was a while back (well at least 2003) and I did not encounter the same level of service with other EAs.

I see you got the same service J52 - it is not that uncommon still - yours sounds like a good EA.

I would tell myself to write things down. You think you'll remember, but you don't.

Every thing has changed so much since we last sold, nearly 30 years ago. Before it was as if the EAs were doing you some sort of favour.

Now, I interviewed 4 EAs, as if they we going for a marketing job and appointed the one who not only sold their agency, but also convinced me to buy my own house.
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I've just spoken to DD1 whose house is up for sale.They came home from a camping holiday last night at 9pm and brought all the stuff in from the car and dumped it all over the place 'to be dealt with'. This morning they had a call from the EA saying someone wanted to view at 4pm today. I asked if there was anything I could do to help but she said it was ok as they were just putting everything back in the car and parking it down the road!

kitty - don't blame them.

BabsAnn, I wonder if you had our agent. I gave them a full written list of all the stuff people might enquire about - age of fixtures and fittings, servicing, alterations, renewals, etc. but we still had a couple of people who had viewed actually knocking on our door saying the agent didn't have information about this that and the other, so god knows what they did with the list. On one occasion, just as we were about to make ourselves scarce, the viewers turned up, but the agent didn't. We rang and were told she was stuck at the other side of the city and would we mind doing the viewing as they couldn't spare anyone else from the office! At that point we decided to take over the viewings ourselves. I would have sacked them altogether if it would not have cost us money.

We usually let the EA do the showing round. We're there but stay out of the way unless there's a question.
We have sold one or 2 houses privately though, and then we did the showing.