The rising fortunes of the property market mean that Saturday viewings have become something of a blood sport for house-buyers who are forced to rush around the city squeezing open house viewings into 30-minute, 15-minute and, most recently, five-minute time slots. It’s usually for properties with an asking price below €500,000, where they are looking at paying a premium to upgrade out-of-condition homes.
Brochures have somehow been dispensed with. One agent passed it off as “saving the trees” as he handed out colour photocopies instead. Others said they had missed their Friday print deadlines. Are sellers being charged the same amount for colour photocopies of their properties as they would be for brochures?
Simple requests about the orientation of a garden or its size are frequently met with a blank expression, or a referral back to the website listing for the property. In one case the measurement was not listed and had to be further sought by by email. The response put it at “approximately” 1000sq feet, and then in a subsequent mail it was amended downwards by over 200 feet, an over-estimation of the floor space of 25 per cent.
Another development has seen the return of the dreaded letters “POA” (Price On Application) on property listings, with one agent recently advising that interested parties would be “invited” to attend a viewing of a two-bed apartment, and only then would the price be revealed.
It can sometimes all feel a bit Fr Ted-esque, and capers that might make for great telly are somehow less funny when it's the increasing experience of frustrated home-hunters.
