Buying
The second viewing is a different job from the first
The first viewing decides whether you like it. The second should be spent testing the things liking it made you ignore.
There is a short answer about second viewings and a useful one, and they are not the same. What follows is the useful one.
The short version
- Go at a different time of day and on a different day of the week.
- Measure rather than estimate, because rooms read larger when empty.
- Bring someone with no emotional stake in the outcome.
Change the conditions deliberately
A property shown on a bright Saturday morning is a different property on a wet Tuesday evening. Traffic, parking availability, street noise and light all vary by time in ways that a single viewing cannot reveal.
Asking for a viewing at the time you would normally be at home is a reasonable request and a revealing one. If the seller resists every alternative time, that is information rather than an inconvenience.
Measure the things you will have to live with
Empty and staged rooms read larger, and a room measured on the floor plan may exclude the chimney breast or the slope of a ceiling. Check that a bed, a table or a sofa you already own actually fits, including the space to walk around it.
Doorways, stair turns and window access decide whether large items can get in at all, which is a common and expensive surprise. Storage is systematically overestimated on first viewings because empty cupboards look sufficient.
Test the services
Turn on the heating regardless of season, run the shower for several minutes and check how long hot water lasts. Check whether radiators are cold at the bottom, whether extractor fans work and whether windows open and close properly.
Where it helps most, look for the stopcock, the meters and the consumer unit, and note whether wiring looks original to a much older era. None of this diagnoses anything, and all of it gives your surveyor a list worth checking.
Re-ask the questions with a note in your hand
People answer more precisely when a question is repeated, and inconsistencies between the two answers are worth noticing. Ask specifically about work done without consent, disputes with neighbours and anything the disclosure form has raised. Ask what is included in the sale, item by item, because fittings assumed to be included are a routine source of late friction.
Write the answers down at the time; memory of a viewing is unreliable within days.
Bring a second opinion
Someone not buying the property notices the things enthusiasm has edited out. A friend who has renovated, or simply someone older who has owned a house, will look at different things than you do.
They also ask the awkward questions that a buyer worried about offending a seller avoids. If two people independently notice the same thing, it is probably real.
If that does not fit your week, it is not a failure of willpower.
Decide what would stop you
Before the second viewing, write down what you would need to find to walk away, and check specifically for those things. Buyers who do not do this find reasons to accept whatever they discover, because they have already decided. A second viewing that changes nothing about your assessment is still worth the hour, since it converts an impression into a decision.
The useful part is this: if you find yourself avoiding a part of the property, go and look at it.
The takeaway
Go back at a different hour, with a tape measure, a list and somebody unimpressed.
Small and repeatable beats ambitious and abandoned, almost every time.
Questions readers ask
How many viewings is reasonable before offering?
Two is common and three is not unusual for an expensive or unusual property. Agents expect it, and a seller who refuses a second viewing is unusual.
Can I take photographs?
Ask; most sellers agree. Photographs are far more reliable than memory when comparing two properties a week later.
