Estate agent warns smell of bleach could be a huge red flag
WHILE we all know that you need to see a house in person rather than just view it online, it turns out there are some things even a proper inspection can’t always reveal.
And now an estate agent has revealed why the smell of a house could be a huge red flag – even if that smell is bleach and chlorine, giving the impression of cleanliness.
The woman, who posts using the handle @capecchiandco on TikTok, described a viewing that had exactly that smell.
She and the prospective buyers were suspicious but a house inspection did not find anything to explain the strong chemical scent, so the couple put in an offer, our sister paper, The Mirror reports.
“I was showing buyers this house that they wanted to see, and we knew that the seller was gonna be present because she was not gonna leave the house,” the American estate agent explained in the clip.
“That’s typically not the norm, but frankly it’s her house and she can decide what she wants. So we arrive and she’s like ‘come in.’ We open up the door and it’s really dark inside, and the smoke smell just hits you, but on top of that there was a strong chlorine scent.”
During the viewing, they went into the home’s garage, where she found many of the home owner’s pets sitting inside the car in the garage, and she said she could tell there was a lot of them as they were making an awful lot of noise.
“So we get the house under contract and during the inspection period there are quite a few things that are uncovered. We had a hell of a time trying to negotiate with her (the owner) she was really, really difficult to work with,” she said, adding that during the buyer’s final walk-through, they could still smell really strong chlorine.
“You’re kinda like what is she trying to cover up here, but also you don’t know what you don’t know. Anyway, it closes and my clients are thrilled. They go there on day one, ready to do all the remodelling,” she said. “They start pulling up some of the floors - you might want to hang on to your stomach for this one.”
Upon pulling up the floors, they discovered that all of the subfloors were so soaked in animal urine that it made them sick, with the estate agent explaining: “They had to throw out, not only all the floors, the subfloors, all the trim, it was soaked.
“It was so bad, and they call me right away and they’re like ‘well, we finally realised why the strong bleach smell’. She was covering up pet urine odour.”
Gross. As we’ve learnt, just because something smells clean, it doesn’t mean it is.