A woman has shared a little-known hack that made her and her partner retract their offer on a house that would have been ‘the biggest mistake’ to buy.
Lisa, 29, and her partner recently moved into their second home together in November 2024 with their baby boy Cole. While being happy with where they ended up, it wasn’t the only house they put an offer on.
Taking to TikTok, Lisa revealed that her and her partner had fallen in love with a differnet house when looking for a home to buy, but revealed how a quick search on social media made them retract their offer and look for a different property.
“If I could give you one tip when buying a house, it would be try and find the owner of the house on Facebook,” she said.
“I know some people might find this very strange and probably a step too far, but it saved us from making a huge, huge mistake in buying the wrong house.
She went on to explain that she and her partner had been looking to buy a house in a neighbourhood closeby that they weren’t that familiar with.
During the viewing, they had fallen in love with the house and decided to put in an offer to buy it. She went on to say that the owner of the house had been the one to show them around, and she’d gotten her name from a document from their estate agent.
“So obviously, I Facebook her and found her profile,” Lisa revealed. “I then went on the local pages of where we lived, you know how every area has like a Facebook group about what’s going on, you know, all that.
And I thought, I’ll search this girl’s name and see if anything comes up,” she said before making a face to the camera.
She continued to explain: “So one of the first things was ‘Does anyone know how to put in a noise complaint against my neighbour?’ That was a big red flag. And then it just got worse and worse.
“This girl had made so many posts and a door had got kicked in by a group of teenagers several times in the past few months, and these teenagers were jumping in her garden when her dogs were there, jumping on other people’s roofs, like it was just horrendous. Like all the posts were about anti-social behaviour, targeting their house, everything like that.”
She told her viewers: “I would have had no idea about all of these issues if I hadn’t just Facebooked the girl whose house it was.”
“See, we retracted our offer and I did feel really bad about putting an offer in and then retracting it,” she said. “But I am so pleased with it because it would have been the wrong decision for us.”
She then added: “It’s also like a lesson that if you are trying to sell your house, don’t post bad things about your house and your area on Facebook, because people like me might find it.”