What's your view of viewing?

City Living: Agents strongly recommend that vendors vacate their homes for viewing times, reports Edel Morgan

Should you be present during a viewing of your house or is it better to vacate and let the estate agent take over? Most estate agents strongly advise the latter. It can be difficult for a prospective buyer to scrutinise a house when the vendor is anxiously watching their every move.

"The feedback from viewers is more honest when the vendor isn't there," says Iris Keating of HOK Residential, who says people are inclined to sheepishly pop their head around the door of a room rather than head straight in when the owner is there.

She continues: "Most vendors wouldn't want to be there anyway. They don't necessarily want to hear negative comments about their house." However, some insist on being present during a viewing. "It usually happens when a person is elderly and can't easily come and go or when a vendor is nervous about having strangers in their house," says Ms Keating.

At an open viewing of a house in Dublin 3 recently, a family was not only there but lurking around every corner. Some of them were positioned in the sittingroom, another was in the kitchen and the most disconcerting of all was a teenage boy in the attic who stared intently at anyone who dared enter - perhaps afraid someone would abscond with his Jordan posters. The estate agent had to stand in the back yard because the house was so crowded.

One advantage of the vendors being present was they could give a detailed history of the house and knew about amenities in the surrounding area. Perhaps they insisted on being present to protect their valuables. After all, even the most hawk-eyed estate agent cannot be in every room.

"We always advise people to put away anything pocketable or valuable and not leave anything in the way of temptation," says Iris Keating. Leaving surfaces ornament, trinket and photograph-free also makes aesthetic sense. A potential buyer needs to be able to visualise how a space will look with their own possessions in it.

Flexibility about viewing times is key if a vendor wants to sell a property quickly - but is not always easy. It can be inconvenient - not to mention Trojan work - to keep a house in pristine condition on an ongoing basis "and for the elderly or families with young children it can be difficult to uproot", says Ms Keating.

A vendor might be keen to pack as many viewings as possible - and may prefer a certain time of the day - but the estate agent may only have the staff to handle a few viewings per week. If viewing is by appointment, the general rule is that the vendor is given plenty of notice to organise their departure but this is not always the case. If selling a rented property, the tenants won't have a vested interest in keeping the place tidy or co-operating with viewing times. The answer may be to reduce the rent in accordance with the level of inconvenience. But what if the "For Sale" sign in your garden attracts unsolicited callers at all times of the day and night? Should you risk losing a sale by turning a potential buyer away?

For security reasons alone, it is probably wise to tell them to liaise directly with the estate agent - assuming you are selling it through an estate agent. "You are paying an agent good money to deal with the public. If they are genuinely interested they won't mind going through the proper channels," says Iris Keating.