The door stands open onto the hall carpet, a clipboard hung from the doorknob by its string, two pairs of shoes lined up outside at attention. Inside, somebody is already running the kitchen tap with the seriousness of a surveyor. We have attended a hundred of these ten-minute audiences, at the board and off it, and the protocol never varies, which is remarkable, because nobody has ever written it down.

The clipboard on the doorknob

The clipboard is the viewing's true host, and it speaks before the landlord does. A sheet of time slots in pencil, names half-legible, a column for telephone numbers: its presence announces that demand exists and that your ten minutes are one of several. The grouped viewing, strangers queuing in the corridor pretending not to assess one another, became the tight market's signature ritual; the private appointment stayed the loose market's courtesy. Either way the clipboard performs the same office. It tells the visitor that the flat is being shopped, that a decision will be made at a desk rather than a door, and that the sensible thing is to look closely, ask briefly, and leave a name that can be read back.

Arriving: the unwritten rules

The etiquette is nowhere published and everywhere enforced. Arrive on time, or five minutes early, and spend the extra minutes reading the block: the walk shovelled or not, the mailboxes labelled or peeling. Knock even when the door is open, because the door is open for the flat, not for you. Then the shoes. The visitor reads the floor and makes the offer; hallway carpet and fresh hardwood mean off without being asked, worn laminate means they will not insist, and the offer itself is the point, a small proof that you understand whose house this still is. Photograph nothing without asking. If a tenant is still in residence, the viewing is also an audit of somebody's life, so the voice drops, the cupboards stay shut unless invited, and the piles of packed boxes are inspected with the eyes and not the commentary.

What the visitor actually checks

Not the staging. The experienced visitor runs the taps, because water pressure is the fact no listing has ever disclosed honestly; watches how long the hot water takes to arrive; opens and shuts a window, both for the hardware and for the street noise the glass was keeping out. Radiators get a hand's hover. Outlets get counted along the walls the furniture will need. The mobile phone comes out by the window, not for photographs but for the signal bars. Cupboards get opened, everyone does it, nobody admits it, because cupboard depth is where the flat keeps its real square footage. And underneath the whole inspection runs a quieter assessment: the fridge hum, the traffic hum, the neighbour's television through the party wall. The rooms can be repainted. The sounds cannot.

The questions worth asking

The questions worth asking are the boring ones, and they are best asked in the doorway on the way out, when the landlord is already writing your name. What is included: heat, hot water, parking, the locker, the laundry, and if the laundry is coin, shared, or a hopeful hookup in the basement. Who clears the walk in winter. How repairs are reported, and how fast they actually come, a question whose answer is usually a face before it is a sentence. When the flat is available, on what term, and what money changes hands at signing: first and last month's rent where the province runs on rent deposits, a security deposit where it runs on those, because the deposit question is a provincial question wearing a landlord's voice. What notice the last tenant gave, if they will say, tells you why the flat is really empty.

Reading the building through the flat

The flat lies a little; the building does not bother. The practiced visitor reads the common parts on the way in and trusts them over everything seen inside: the state of the shared corridor, the buzz panel with its taped names, the laundry room's lint, the notice board. A managed building has a notice board, and it has notices on it that are recent. A building where the corridor smells of cigarettes and boiled cabbage is telling you the flat's fresh paint is a local effort. The mailboxes are the census: full names, surnames only, initials, blank slots, the building's turnover spelled out in labels. The visitor who learns to read the common parts learns more in ninety seconds than the listing gave in four photographs and a paragraph.

After the door closes

The viewing is not over when the door closes; it is over when the notes are written, on the steps outside, because memory flattens viewings into one another within a day. Then the follow-up, which has its own etiquette: the prompt call if you want it, the prompt call even if you do not, because a viewing accepted and unanswered is a small debt left on someone's hall table. The landlord's side mirrors it, the shortlist, the references, the call that starts the lease. At the board we hold that the viewing, not the listing, is the real document of the lettings culture. Everything else, the counted line, the window sign, the portal page, the photograph, is its abstract. The ten minutes in the doorway are where a rumour becomes a dwelling.