I love a good survey, particularly when its findings are comedy.

Take this one from GoodMove, in which recent movers were quizzed on the most shocking things they’ve seen during a house viewing.

The top three presents a fairly pedestrian round up of generic moans - bad smells, dirty/damaged flooring and dodgy DIY. We've all seen (or smelt) a bit of that on property viewings.

Fourth on the list is the rather more alarming 'animal faeces on the floor/furnishings', a spectacle seen by almost one in five of the 1,000 respondents. I've viewed a lot of places over many miserable years of house hunting, but have yet to encounter this. Thankfully. 17 per cent of respondents have, been less lucky, however.

Then there's the fifth placed shocker, which is arguably even more disgusting: 'pubic hair on the floor/furnishings'. 11 per cent of movers have witnessed this horror on a viewing. Who are these animals and have they never owned a vacuum cleaner?

Not everyone's going to be bothered to go down the scented candle or freshly-brewed coffee route in an attempt to woo potential purchasers, but taking a minute to remove the faeces from the floor or sweep up the body hair before inviting the viewers in should be an effort worth making.

Even the epic fixer-uppers I've seen haven't offered these levels of grossness. I don't know about you, but I'd take any amount of peeling wallpaper and overgrown gardens over an actual animal turd IN THE HOUSE.

After all, pets can be off putting enough without their excrement coating the floors and furnishings. We went all out to made our place look petless when moving, parking our cats at a friend's cattery for the day and taking the dog for a very, very long walk.

Do these people want to sell their homes, or what?!

As GoodMove note in their press release: 'Make sure to avoid any of the above if you want to attract buyers to your home!'

Erm, YES!