My guilty pleasure is viewing houses I have no intention of buying

As the estate agent led me from one hushed, beautiful room to another in the five-bedroom period property, I gazed at its ornate cornices, original fireplaces and sash windows, my heart racing. This was 'the one'. The house I'd dreamed of living in with my husband, Ed, and our six-year-old son, Rafferty.

Yet I had zero intention of even putting an offer in, let alone buying it. For starters, at £950,000, it was at least £250,000 more than our budget. Not that I'd let a little thing like money stand in the way of my secret hobby.

Some people visit art galleries or museums, but my guilty pleasure is viewing houses I'm never going to buy. Since my son started school last September, freeing up my schedule, I've viewed some 30 homes that are up for sale, despite having no intention of moving.

Rightmove had long been a source of escapism for me in the evenings or during a quiet half hour at weekends. From houses that were run-down or quirky to impressive and vast, I pored over them all, imagining us living there, holding dinner parties in grand dining rooms and summer soirees in lush lawned gardens.

It seemed like a natural progression to move from viewing them on screen to in person.

The first house I visited was similar to our own £600,000, four-bed Victorian semi on the fringes of Somerset, but a steal of a price as it required major renovations.

As I wandered around, I felt a frisson of excitement, imagining all the things I'd do to upgrade the house, a feeling that quickly became strangely addictive. Since then, there are days I have viewed several properties back-to-back, though I can go weeks at a time without viewing one when I'm too busy with my work as a forensic photographer.

Part of the thrill is hoodwinking the agents. Measures such as asking for proof of a mortgage offer in principle, or that your own home is on the market, are designed to filter out time-wasters like me. Fail to tick those boxes and some agents won't give you air time – like the one who asked me to provide payslips to prove our monthly income and an email from a mortgage provider. I didn't go ahead with that viewing.

It's why I've become a dab hand at story-telling – 'I've had an inheritance so we don't need to sell', 'I'm moving back to the UK from abroad', or, best of all, 'I'm going through a painful marriage break-up'. The latter always guarantees no further delving from an agent – the last thing they want is a heartbroken, hysterical woman on their hands.

And I have certain measures in place to avoid raising too many red flags. It's human nature to make assumptions about people's wealth – and what they can afford – so I tend not to view houses that are more than £300,000 over the value of my house, not least because it would arouse suspicions when I pull up outside million-pound piles in my Volvo.

However, call it a schoolgirl error, but I once booked viewings with two agents whose offices are on the same street, but fed them different stories, forgetting that most of them talk to each other despite being in competition. It prompted an unusual amount of follow-up questions ahead of the viewings – which were in the same week. In the end, I cancelled them, vowing to get my story straight in future.

Where others wax lyrical about their hobbies (do cyclists and runners do anything but?), I keep mine secret, aware that most people would likely hate me for it.

House-buying and selling are emotive subjects and I've nodded faux-empathetically as friends bemoan the amount of cleaning and preparation that goes into getting a house ready to view. Not that it bothers me. In my eyes, I'm doing sellers a favour by giving them a kick up the backside so that their homes are pristine for genuine viewings.

That said, I recently experienced my first prickle of guilt when I viewed my most fabulous property to date – a gorgeous stone cottage in a village near Bath that I could never afford. I was seduced by its wonky floors and ceilings, and several hundred years of history. Unusually for this price bracket, the elderly owners did the viewing as the agent wasn't available, which presented a dynamic I'd not encountered before.

As the sweet old couple explained to me that their house had been on the market for over six months, and how desperate they were for it to sell so that they could downsize to something more manageable, I faltered. Their sense of hope that I might be the one to finally buy it and enable them to move on with their lives was palpable and I momentarily felt a bit terrible.

With roses and apple trees in their garden, outside was as immaculately presented as the inside, which also made me think about the amount of time and effort it must have taken for a couple who were well into their late 70s to prepare it for me to look around. Still, it's short-term stress that people will be over pretty quickly. The whole moving experience is stressful regardless of me showing up, so it wasn't enough to put me off.

I viewed another property a week later, any shame I may have felt negated by the fact the agent showed me round, providing a sense of detachment.

Why do I get such a kick out of viewing houses? I love seeing how a property is made to feel like a home rather than bricks and mortar, and piecing together a family's story from the personal items on view.

It's also the perfect way to collect ideas for our own renovations. Wood panelling has been a big recent interiors trend and I've seen lots of examples – both dreamy and dreary. We've started saving up to install versions of the most beautiful examples I've seen in our own home as they can look so classy, while adding interest to a space.

I blame my property lust on my mother. As a child I used to trail behind her while she browsed properties she very much did intend to buy. Her day job was as an office manager in a law firm, but she made extra money through property, buying doer-uppers for a snip, renovating them, then cashing in. I often joke that at 38, I've had almost as many homes as birthdays.

It was after Mum asked me to join her on a house-hunting trip to southern Spain in 2018 that I got the bug for looking at properties online. Since then I've eyed up hundreds, probably thousands, before moving to doing so in real life.

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I loved one property I visited in the spring – a chocolate-box, beautiful cottage with a walled garden – so much that when it was listed with a different agent after six months on the market, I viewed it again. Why? It's pure escapism.

But perhaps my most controversial viewing was a house across the road from where I live when the elderly owner died this summer. I'd never been inside her home but was desperate to have a nosy because I knew she'd lived there from birth.

Much to the disdain of my husband, who said I'd gone too far this time, I booked a viewing and had an enriching look round, imagining our late neighbour as a little girl there and how those walls had seen all of her life, during which she'd never married or had children.

Sadness was the feeling I left with. She'd obviously struggled to maintain the house, yet there was such a feeling of warmth from the beautiful wooden floors and original features.

Inevitably, I've set foot in some grim houses, with terrible smells and carpets clawed by pets, which have left me thinking: 'Why am I even viewing this?' Serves me right for snooping.

Another memorable no-no was a property with carpet in every room – bathrooms included – and frilly curtains in varying shades of peach by all the windows.

So far, nothing I've seen has convinced me to consider actually moving, although a few of them that are way out of our price range would certainly have tempted me had finances been different. 

We moved into our home in 2021, after six years in our previous house, which we'd slowly renovated then sold for a profit, enabling us to buy a roomier family property. We benefited from the post-Covid boom, with our old house being snapped up after just two viewings, so I've never known the angst of having to repeatedly tidy for people looking round, or of months wondering if it would ever sell. Though our current house is certainly not our for ever home, we'll stay put for a while.

Yet I'll continue with my voyeuristic viewings. I've just spotted an advert in a local glossy magazine for an exclusive private development of ten new-build executive homes near us with price tags of £1.2million to £1.6million.

As show-homes, which basically have an open-door policy, buyers – real or faux – should be under less scrutiny, so the temptation to go and view them guilt-free, no questions asked, is proving irresistible.

I might just have to park my Volvo round the corner.

• As told to Sadie Nicholas. Anna Thomas is a pseudonym and names have been changed.