We met with our realtor on a surprisingly chilly Wednesday morning in late April at a tower called The Stanley in Guildford, Surrey.

Both my fiancee and I had some trepidation about looking at a building that had a sketchy reputation as a place to live, and in a neighbourhood notorious for drug dealers and other criminal activity.

The tower is located just off 148th Street in Surrey, and we were to look at three units in the building, two of them are 900 square feet, and the other, just over 1100, but the caveats with it being that it's on the third floor and facing a busy street.

One thing we both noticed immediately was the building had a vast accumulation of green mildew on the outer fascia. The outside of the building also had an antiquated look -- while the windows were big and let in a lot of light, they were very unattractive on the outside -- making the place look about 15 years older than it actually was.

The first place we looked at was about 15 floors up, and had all the hallmarks of extensive pet ownership: damaged floors, dust everywhere, hair covering the furnishings, and the unmistakable aroma of feline urine.

You'd think if someone wanted to sell their home to you, they'd at least scoop out the cat's box before perspective buyers arrive.

Also, for some reason, the owner knocked down a wall to make room for a tacky dining room table.

We, along with the realtor, shook our heads as soon as we left.

Behind door number two, in the same building, was a unit the same size, but two floors higher.

This one had all the hallmarks of bad tenants: damaged walls, thrashed appliances, ambiguity about the original colour of the carpet, no lightbulbs and several walls that looked like they needed new gyproc.

With extreme prejudice, we dismissed the first two units. They were priced at $257,900 and $259,000 respectively. As today (July 29), both are still on the market.

We were optimistic about the final unit on our tour, which was considerably larger than the other two.

Unfortunately, we were disappointed yet again, as this place had all the telltale signs of a well-meaning but completely incompetent owner. Several renovations were started on the unit but not completed, and what was done looked terrible.

Parquet floors, which were put down across the unit, had peaked and were beginning to curl. The kitchen ceiling, only eight feet high at construction, felt like it was caving in, because it was painted a very dark brown. An attempted re-paint of the place was done haphazardly, as outlet covers weren't taken off and had brushstrokes of white paint all over them.

I thought about making a lowball offer for the place (priced originally at a below-market $264,500), but after seeing brass fixtures in the master bath that had turned green, we left, never to return to the Stanley again.