33 Questions to Ask When Viewing a House Before You Buy

Nobody warns you about the silence. You walk into a house with the agent, and for the first three minutes nobody says anything useful. The agent points at the kitchen. You nod. You both stare at the kitchen. Then you say "it's lovely" and the whole visit quietly goes to waste.

I know this because I wasted two of them. The first time I viewed a house seriously, I spent forty minutes asking about the garden. I never once asked about the boiler. That boiler cost me £4,200 nine months later, and I still think about it every time someone mentions underfloor heating.

Since then I've viewed more than thirty properties, bought two, walked away from a chain that collapsed, and sat through enough agent conversations to know which questions produce real answers and which ones produce a shrug. This is what I'd ask if I were standing in your shoes this weekend.

Questions to ask when viewing a house that actually change your decision

Most question lists you'll find tell you to ask how old the roof is. Fine. But there's a difference between collecting answers and using them. The questions below are the ones I've found move money — either into your budget as a hidden cost, or out of your offer as leverage.

The trick, and I say this as someone who learned it the slow way, is to ask them in the right order. Structure first. Then running costs. Then the seller. Then the neighbourhood. Cosmetic questions last, because they barely matter and they make you look like an easy buyer.

The building's real condition — where the budget goes to die

Start with water. Water is the single most expensive thing in any house, and it hides. Damp patches under windows, a faint musty smell in a wardrobe, a suspiciously fresh coat of paint on one wall only — those are your signals.

• When was the roof last inspected or replaced, and do you have paperwork?
• Has the property ever had damp treatment, and is there a guarantee still running?
• What's the age of the boiler, and when was it last serviced?
• Are the windows double glazed, and roughly what year were they fitted? (Old double glazing fails silently — the seal goes and you get condensation between panes.)
• Has any structural work been done, and was it signed off by a qualified engineer?

Ask about flooding even if the house sits on a hill. I once viewed a place where the owner casually mentioned the cellar "gets a bit wet in winter." That phrase cost her £18,000 off the asking price a month later with a different buyer. She'd volunteered it because she assumed everyone knew.

Running costs, utilities, and the bills nobody mentions in the listing

Energy performance figures on a listing are a starting point, not the truth. Two houses with identical ratings can have wildly different bills depending on how the heating is zoned, how thick the walls are, and whether anyone has ever bothered to lag the pipes.

Ask to see actual bills. Not a summary — the real ones. If the seller refuses, that's an answer too.

• What are the average monthly energy costs across a full year?
• How is the property heated — gas, oil, heat pump, electric?
• Is there a water meter, and what's the typical quarterly charge?
• What's the broadband speed you actually get, not the advertised maximum?
• Are there any service charges, ground rent, or management fees on top of the mortgage?

One more thing about service charges: if this is a flat or a leasehold property, ask for the last three years of accounts and any planned major works. A friend of mine bought a flat with a £1,300 annual charge. Two years later a roof replacement landed and her share was £9,000. Nobody had asked the right question, and the agent certainly hadn't volunteered it.

What to ask the seller (and what to never ask)

Here's where most people get it backwards. They open with "why are you selling?" which is a fine question but a weak one, because almost every seller has a rehearsed answer: downsizing, relocating, wanting a garden. You need to ask in a way that makes the real answer harder to dodge.

"Why are the owners selling?" — how to ask it properly

Instead of the direct version, try timing it. Ask near the end of the visit, when the agent has relaxed and stopped performing. Then follow up with "and has anything come up in the survey stage before?" or "how long has it been on the market?"

A house that's been listed for eight months in a market where similar homes sell in six weeks usually has a reason. Sometimes it's price. Sometimes it's a legal problem with the title. Sometimes it's the neighbour. All three are things you want to know before you spend money on a surveyor.

Spoiler alert: agents are legally obliged to pass on anything they know about material issues, but "knowing" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Sellers forget useful things. You have to dig.

The questions you shouldn't ask during a viewing

Don't ask "what's your lowest price?" on a first visit. You're showing your hand before you know the house's faults, and you'll get a defensive answer that tells you nothing. Don't ask the agent what the house is worth either — they're not a valuer and they're not on your side. And don't ask about furniture or fixtures that might stay unless you're genuinely interested; it clutters a conversation that should be about the building.

Also, and this is a small pet peeve of mine: don't criticise the decor out loud. I watched a buyer do this once, loudly, about a kitchen that was clearly the owner's pride. The visit got noticeably colder and the seller later refused a perfectly reasonable offer out of pure stubbornness. People sell to people they like.

Second visit, different hour: the neighbourhood questions

Every house looks fine at 2pm on a Tuesday. The real questions belong to a visit you schedule yourself, ideally on a weekday evening and again on a Saturday morning.

When you visit	What you're checking	Questions to ask
Weekday evening, 6–8pm	Traffic noise, commuter parking, lighting on the street	Is this road used as a cut-through? Where do residents park?
Saturday morning	Foot traffic, school runs, local activity	Is there a school nearby? How busy does the street get?
Late evening	Noise from pubs, neighbours, late deliveries	Anything you'd want to know about noise after 10pm?
After heavy rain	Drainage, flooding, standing water at the entrance	Has the road ever flooded? Is there a drain in the drive?

I once skipped this step. The house was lovely, quiet at 11am, and I nearly offered on the spot. A neighbour later told me the road became a de facto car park for the local leisure centre every weekday evening. Six cars, right outside the front window, every night. It wasn't on any listing and no agent was going to mention it.

Planning permissions and things the seller might not know

Ask what's been built nearby in the last few years and what's been applied for. Your local planning portal is public and free — spend twenty minutes on it before you offer. An empty field next to your dream garden looks like a bonus until someone files for forty houses there.

• Are there any restrictions or covenants on the property?
• Who owns the boundary fences, and is that documented?
• Is there a right of way across the property for anyone else?
• Any disputes with neighbours you're aware of?

The last one is worth pushing on. Sellers in most jurisdictions have to declare disputes on a standard form, but "dispute" is a slippery word. A neighbour who parks across your drive every morning might not count as a formal dispute and might still ruin your life.

If it's your first viewing ever, read this bit twice

First viewings are strange because you're trying to evaluate a building and manage your own excitement at the same time. Both are hard. Most people fail at the second one and end up asking soft questions because they've already decided they want it.

Here's my advice, and it's blunt: on your first viewing, do not decide anything. Your job is to gather facts and to notice what your body does. Does your chest tighten when you walk in? Does the hallway feel cramped after ten seconds? Those reactions are data, and they're often more reliable than any checklist.

Bring a printed list if it helps — a page with the categories above and blank space for answers. Write as you go. I've watched people view six houses in one weekend and confuse them all by Sunday, and I've done it myself.

And if you can, bring someone who has bought before. Not to give opinions on the decor, but to ask the boring questions you'll forget because you're busy falling in love with the bay window.

The five questions to settle before you make an offer

1. What will it cost me monthly, all in? Mortgage, energy, service charges, insurance, and the council tax band.
2. What's wrong with it that I haven't seen yet? Get a survey. Ask the surveyor what they'd fix first.
3. How long has it been listed, and has the price changed? Long listings plus price drops equal negotiating room.
4. Is there anything on the local planning portal that changes my view of the road?
5. Did I visit at a bad time of day? If not, go back before you commit.

None of this is glamorous. There's no moment where you stand in a sunlit kitchen and feel the universe align. What there is, instead, is a very ordinary afternoon where you ask about the boiler, get a straight answer, and realise you've just saved yourself four thousand pounds and a winter of misery.

That's the whole game. The house you want is the one where the answers hold up — not the one that looks best at 2pm on a Tuesday.