House viewings: Advice on how to make the most of them from Zoopla

National World - LocalTV

Research from the property site Zoopla has found a fifth of prospective home buyers spent less than twenty minutes looking around a place before putting in their offer.

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00:00Is it something about the current housing market that's making people make these quick decisions, do you think?

00:06Well, you're totally right. Time is precious.

00:09But you've got to weigh this up against buying a home being one of life's largest financial decisions.

00:15The housing market is always competitive, even if there's a lull in supply or demand.

00:21But moreover, what we were looking for is with time being so tight,

00:27are those home buyers using the minutes they have in their home in the right way?

00:32That is to say, are they looking at the right things?

00:35How can prospective buyers ensure that they're making those decisions in an informed way, especially when the viewings are brief?

00:42What should we be looking out for to make the most of our viewing time?

00:46Home buyers were paying more attention to decorative items or to items that maybe had more of an emotional pull to them,

00:58and perhaps neglecting to spend their time on items that could cost them more in the long run.

01:05So I'm talking about things like boiler, boiler, health, ceilings, floors, windows, structural items.

01:15And so we ran an experiment with we staged a real house that was for sale.

01:21We got buyers in there who were genuinely interested in the property.

01:25And we fitted them with special glasses with eye tracking technology to see exactly where buyers are looking when they go around a home.

01:34And it did back it up because about 60 percent of the time was spent on those kind of decorative items, feature walls,

01:42furniture, arts, furnishings, stuff that probably isn't going to be there when you move in even.

01:47And much less time was spent on those items that or those areas of the home that if they're not quite right,

01:54could end up being a bit of a money pit for an unsuspecting buyer.

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