Homeowner Sparks Fury After Denying Ex-Owners a House Tour—Do They Deserve Visitation Rights?

If your home’s previous owners stopped by uninvited requesting a tour for old time’s sake, what would your answer be?

One homeowner was recently forced to decide on the spot when strangers showed up at her door, claiming to be the former owners and asking to take a look around inside “to see how everything looks right now.”

Her response—”I don’t feel comfortable with that; I don’t know you”—prompted her visitors to get visibly angry and call her “really mean.” It also sparked a social media firestorm after she posted her story on Reddit. More than 1,700 votes and 165 comments rained down, with commenters passionately picking sides.

One person came to her defense, saying, “Absolutely unreasonable for them to expect to come into your home.” But another slammed her, pointing out, “If I could make someone’s day better by doing nothing (it would probably take 5 minutes max), I would.”

Who’s right? Realtor.com® reached out to an etiquette expert to get her take on the matter.

Do a home’s former owners deserve visitation rights?

“The new owner is under no obligation to show the previous owner’s daughters the inside of the house,” says Jacqueline Whitmore, founder of The Protocol School of Palm Beach. “This is no different than letting anyone else inside the house. If she wants to show just the outside, that’s her prerogative.”

And this situation is actually more common than you think.

“I often see sellers who are super attached to their houses because of all the memories they made there,” says Rebecca Hidalgo Rains, designated broker and owner of Integrity All Star Realty in Chandler, AZ. “If they lived there for a long time or didn’t want to sell it, they may really struggle and find it hard to let go.”

Some owners are so bold as to just let themselves in: Right after social media influencer Jaci Marie Smith and her husband bought their new house, she posted about how the previous owner snuck in with a spare key when they weren’t home and (as he put it) “just took some videos for memories.”

https://www.tiktok.com/@jacimariesmith/video/7287662310062116138

She was so freaked out, she had her real estate agent tell him never to come back.

When it comes to giving previous owners “visitation rights,” it’s safety first.

“These days, I’d advise against it because of stranger danger,” says Cedric Stewart, sales team leader of Keller Williams Capital Properties in Washington, DC.

Tips for visiting your old home

If you want to visit a home you once lived in or owned, you can always look up the current owner’s info online and just politely ask, according to etiquette expert Diane Gottsman, founder of the Protocol School of Texas.

“If you get a no, it doesn’t mean the current owner is mean, it simply means that they value their privacy,” says Gottsman.

A knock on the door would be perfectly acceptable, too.

“If you are in town and just want to stop by, there’s nothing wrong with a knock on the door,” says etiquette expert Lisa Mirza Grotts. “I have done this myself more than once and the new owners were very generous.”

The goal is not to push too hard, Grotts says.

“Good manners don’t cost anything and will open doors that others cannot,” she points out.

But once you’re in, be careful what you talk about.

“Anything you disclose should have been made known when you sold,” says Stewart. “You could expose yourself to liability related to your knowledge of any known defects.”

So when it comes to conversation, less is more.

When a ‘yes’ just makes sense

But an owner visit isn’t always so creepy—and can actually have some upsides.

I myself got a knock on my door one day and found an elderly couple on my doorstep. They had our house custom-built more than 40 years prior and wanted to take a look to hopefully jog the husband’s failing memory.

I welcomed them in and finally got the chance to ask them questions that had been bugging me for years, like why had they put hardwood floors in the bedrooms but not the living room?

They loved seeing their marital home, and I even took some pictures of them out front.

It was a win-win.