Getting ready for a viewing

The viewing is on Saturday at two and you plan to turn up and have a look round. That is what almost everyone does, and it’s why most viewings produce a vague impression and one forgotten question.

Half an hour in a flat is a small and non-renewable sample. The preparation isn’t about being thorough for its own sake — it’s that the specific things a viewing can measure are easy to miss while you’re being polite in a hallway, and everything else you could have found out at home.

Do the desk work first

Anything answerable before you leave should be answered before you leave, because viewing time spent on it is wasted.

The commute, at the real hour. Plan the journey for the time you’d actually make it, in both directions, and note the service frequency rather than the duration.

The route from the door to transport, on street imagery. You’re looking for what sits between them.

The address, searched. If it’s advertised elsewhere at a different price, by a different person, or was recently sold, you want to know that now.

The price question. Whether bills are included and roughly what they’ve been running recently. Ask it in the message, not at the viewing, because “included” covers different things and the answer changes whether the room is worth the trip.

Confirm the appointment that morning. Cancellations and no-shows are common, and a confirmation also establishes that you’re dealing with a person who replies.

Decide your three questions

Not a list. Three, chosen for this specific room, because three get asked properly and twelve get delivered as an interrogation that produces interview answers.

The permanent ones worth including most times: what happened to the last person in the room and when did they leave, how many people live here in total, and who holds the tenancy. Those three cover most of what’s knowable and most of what people are vague about — the fuller set of questions that predict problems is for the conversation, not the checklist.

Then swap one in for whatever this listing left out. A listing with no photo of the room gets a question about the window. A listing that’s been up a while gets a question about why.

Keep them in your phone. You will forget at least one otherwise, reliably, and the one you forget is usually the one that mattered.

What to take

Your phone, charged, for photos and for the journey home.

Something to write with, or a notes app open. Four lines immediately after, on the pavement or the train, before the flat compresses into a single adjective.

Nothing else. In particular: no money, in any form, and no original documents. There is no legitimate reason to hand over cash or a deposit at a first viewing, and having none with you removes the possibility of being talked into it. Nobody needs your passport to show you a room.

If a lister has asked you to bring identification or references to a first viewing, that’s worth querying rather than complying with. The reference stage exists and is normal, but it comes after both sides are interested, and it doesn’t happen on a doorstep.

Timing and logistics

Go in daylight if you can, and if the room’s aspect matters to you, go at the hour you’d care about it. A north-facing room in July at two in the afternoon looks like a different room from the same room in November.

Allow more time than the viewing needs. Fifteen minutes early lets you walk the street, see what’s within a few minutes’ walk, and notice the things that are about the area rather than the flat. This is often the most informative part of the trip and the part people skip.

Don’t stack viewings back to back. Two rushed look-arounds half an hour apart give you neither a proper visit nor a usable comparison.

Tell someone where you’re going. One message with the address and the time. That’s the whole of the safety consideration for a normal viewing at a normal hour, and it doesn’t need to be a bigger thought than that.

What to actually decide in advance

Two things, because both are hard to think about clearly once you’re standing in a room and someone is being nice to you.

Your walk-away conditions. Written down, before you go. Any request for money. Any answer that changes. Any refusal to say who else lives there. Deciding these in the kitchen at home is much easier than deciding them in the hallway.

What you’d genuinely accept. The one or two things that would actually make you unhappy for a year, separated from the long list of preferences. Most viewings go wrong because the visitor never distinguished the two and ended up rejecting a good room over a preference or accepting a bad one despite a requirement.

Flag check

FLAG CHECK — before you arrive

  · Lister asks you to bring cash or a deposit
    to the viewing
                    → WALK AWAY. Don't attend.

  · Asks you to bring ID or documents to a
    first viewing
                    → query it. Not necessarily
                      sinister, not normal either.

  · Viewing moved to a coffee shop or the
    street rather than the property
                    → WALK AWAY. There's a reason
                      you're not going inside.

  · Address only given an hour beforehand
                    → soft flag. Sometimes ordinary
                      caution on their side.

  · Reschedules once, apologetically
                    → NOT A FLAG. People have jobs.

  · Existing housemates won't be there because
    they're at work
                    → NOT A FLAG. Ask to meet them
                      before you commit.

Ten minutes afterwards

The record is the part everyone skips and it’s the highest-yield ten minutes of the day. Four lines: what’s good, what’s actually wrong, what you still don’t know, and whether you’d say yes today.

Photograph the room, the window and what’s outside it, the kitchen, and the bathroom — asking first, which nobody refuses. By the third viewing your memory of the first is unreliable in a specific direction: it improves.

What preparation can’t buy you

It doesn’t make the sample bigger. You will still not learn what the flat sounds like at two in the morning, whether there’s hot water when four people need it, or what the housemate who wasn’t there is like.

Preparation only ensures you spend the half hour on the things that are exclusively available in person, and that you leave without a forgotten question. That’s a real gain and a modest one — the viewing remains a bad instrument for measuring the thing you most want to know, and no amount of readiness fixes that.