Real estate agents warn of a time slot that plays bad tricks on buyers, to the point of clouding their judgment on essential criteria.
Visiting an apartment or a house theoretically requires a minimum of method, since a few minutes on site can weigh heavily in a decision that binds for years, even decades. We check the general condition, we imagine our furniture, we look at the storage spaces and we try to evaluate the neighborhood. However, in the midst of these reflexes, a factor strongly influences the perception of the property without visitors realizing it.
In practice, many buyers plan their visits according to their professional constraints, leading them to accept slots at the end of the day. On paper this seems convenient because everyone is available after work, but the quality of the home assessment takes a hit. When the exterior light drops, artificial lighting takes over and transforms the atmosphere of the rooms, softening certain imperfections and hiding others, while making it more difficult to assess the real orientation of the property.
A room that appears warm under well-chosen lamps can turn out to be dark and unpleasant during the day, while a living room bathed in sunlight at midday can seem mundane or dull at nightfall. This shift distorts the ability to project oneself into daily life, because we no longer clearly perceive how the light changes over the hours, nor whether the apartment will be bright in the morning, dazzling in the afternoon or plunged into darkness for a good part of the day.
What’s more, brightness is almost always among the first criteria cited by buyers when they describe their ideal home, at the same level as the surface area or the presence of an exterior. A property poorly evaluated on this point can be unfairly dismissed when it could have corresponded to expectations, or on the contrary be overestimated because it seems more flattering than it really is under normal conditions. To give yourself a chance to judge correctly, it is therefore recommended not to plan visits after 6 p.m.
It is better to favor a time slot where there is still plenty of daylight, ideally between late morning and mid-afternoon, allowing you to see the accommodation come alive naturally. So the next time you want to make an appointment with your real estate agent, think about it.
