I attended a nearby auction at the weekend. I ended up standing beside a neighbour, and asked him, had he been through the house? No, he told me, he didn't think it right to go through another neighhbour's house.
I admitted that I had never thought that there might be an issue in this regard. We agreed that in the circumstances, since he lived in the street in which the auction was occurring, and I lived a couple of streets away, I wasn't bound in this instance by his self-imposed standard of etiquette. Nevertheless, it left me wondering. Is it impolite to go through a neighbour's house when it's open for inspection for an auction?
Perhaps it depends on whether you actually know the vendors (if they're strangers, then maybe it doesn't matter)? Perhaps if you do know them, you ought to go through the motions of asking if it's OK (knowing that they can hardly refuse!) Or can it be that you are actually helping them by attending thus building up the crowd, in which case surely you can be rewarded by a peek through so as to admire their efforts at making their house ultra-presentable?
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