When people are deciding which property to buy or rent through us, they often remark they spend more time in Marks and Spencers choosing which socks to buy than they do picking their home for the foreseeable future. Tenants can of course ask for improvements to be made before they move in and potential buyers will usually be protected by a solicitor and a surveyor. But nevertheless there’s a lot of simple basic instinct in peoples choices. It might sound a bit spooky, but after doing this for (too) many years I can often tell someone is going to plump for a house just by the look on their face when they first walk into the hall. Sometimes the ‘buying signals’ are not what you’d think. It may be when a viewer starts criticising the decor or the kitchen or the bathroom. If the vendor or landlord overhears, they often misinterpret this as negativity and think the viewer is a ‘timewaster’. But they may not be. It might indicate they are starting to think specifically about how they want the property to look after they’ve moved in or where they are going to fit in their furniture or appliances.
Of course there’s often a rational element in choosing somewhere to live. Typical requests from our clients would be to live near Grey Court or the German School. On the North Kingston side of our patch, the specific address is becoming critical. The catchment area for TKA (The Kingston Academy on Richmond Road) has narrowed, so our buyers might say they want a particular road or even specific house numbers in a road. Fortunately, Grey Court catchment still covers most of our area. And usually there’s some flexibility in where and what people choose, (budget permitting!) But you’d be amazed how often the home someone ends up in is completely different from the one they initially told us they wanted. A lot of us just get a gut feeling about being ‘at home’ in one property rather than another. This might be influenced more by the ‘feel’ – the dressings and the colour scheme than the bricks and mortar. I remember one lady choosing a house just because it had a crucifix hanging in the hall. On the other hand I remember one family who were going to buy a house and came back for a second look with their dog. The dog dug in its heels and refused point blank to go over the threshold. They couldn’t even pull it through the front door. They believed the dog sensed something bad in the house and pulled out of the sale.
All my family and friends ask me to look at properties they’re thinking of renting or buying. As I go round I’m looking out for cracks, asbestos, signs of damp, poor wiring or how old the boiler is. They’re looking at where their favourite cabinet fits in or how the cats going to get in and out. Viewers can be surprisingly influenced more by things that aren’t even going to be left there, like the owners’ books and paintings. Its why show homes have got carefully curated plants and colour coordinated pasta jars! The property website Zoopla recently did some research with Tobii, a tech company developing eye-tracking glasses. These can detect what people look at during a viewing. It doesn’t surprise me, but the surface items got more attention than the underlying property. In the hall, viewers spent more time looking at the coat rack, rug and ornaments than the ceiling, radiators or flooring. Eye-tracking in the bathroom found viewers looked at the ceiling, -potentially prone to damp and condensation -, for only 0.34 seconds. Even in the short time people had in there, they often spent part of it checking out the residents cosmetics or hand soaps. So be careful what you leave on show! I often advise vendors to think of your property not as your working home but as something you’re trying to sell. If you want to sell a car, you clear out the pockets and glove compartments and give it a wash and brush up. Its the same with your flat or house. The old adage still holds true – ‘you never get a 2nd chance to make a 1st impression’. Of 2,000 people Zoopla polled, 28% only visited a property once before putting in an offer. Even amongst eventual buyers, the number of viewings prior to purchase only averaged 2.1.
And one common folly is to spend time and effort on titivating the interior and completely ignore how it looks on the way in. Visitors are already forming an opinion of a property (and its value) as they approach the front door. If the fence is leaning or the doorbell doesn’t work (very common!) it’s a poor start.
But of course we often have to market properties that are just a real mess inside and out. So its lucky we live in an area which is lovely, even if a particular property isn’t. Which brings me to one thing on most people’s wish list, – a quiet location. Most of Ham and Petersham fits the bill and we’ve also been fortunate that despite Heathrow not being far away, we’re generally spared the plane noise overhead that blights much of West London. And believe me if you’ve worked in other parts of the Borough you’d realise how significant it is. I remember once having a beautiful Georgian house for sale on Kew Green. It had a roof terrace which on the face of it you’d think was a great selling point. Unfortunately, the first (and only) time I took viewers up there we could hardly hear ourselves think for the noise of traffic on Kew Bridge and M4, and a succession of planes coming in to land right over our heads. (They didn’t buy the house). The other day I was showing one of our maisonettes in Perryfield Way and both I and the viewer remarked how nice it was to watch planes coming down to Heathrow further North over the Middlesex side of the river, but we couldn’t hear them.
The reason planes usually descend to Heathrow on that path is that they want to land into the wind (its more stable and a shorter stop when you hit the ground). Luckily for us that’s the prevailing direction. But its also more stable to take off into the wind as well which means on some days planes ascend over us. Rather concerningly the Civil Aviation Authority want to increase the number of these flight paths. The Friends of Richmond Park have led the opposition so far https://www.frp.org.uk/save-richmond-park/ and the London Assembly unanimously passed a motion in November calling on Heathrow to protect the Park but there’s an obvious threat to the whole area. Hopefully sense and our oasis of tranquillity will prevail. We often say to people that you can change a lot of things about a property, but you can’t change where it is. Ham and Petersham are definitely a case of the three most important things about choosing somewhere to live – Location Location Location! (Hmm- that would be a good name for a TV programme ….)