Nightmare!!!!!!

Wee_Willy_Harris

Nah.... What this thread tells you is that almost anything can go wrong and, whatever you may feel at the time, you will almost certainly laugh about it later. Oh, and it takes exactly 2 years to forget the promise you made to "get the professionals in" next time you move!!!

pulliptears

When we viewed our home the then owners had a large dog that slept at the bottom of the stairs. The walls were white and where he lay against the wall was a dirty brown stain. Fair enough, not a problem and a lick of paint will cure. Somewhere between the last viewing and us moving in the owners decided to cover up the dog stain by painting the entire hall, stairs and landing "mulberry" which was actually quite a dark shade of purple. I could have cried moving in day! I painted the whole lot back to white the next morning, it took several coats as well...

First night in DS went in the bathroom to clean his teeth and the sink fell off the wall (wasn't fixed back), we found used sanitary towels thrown at the back of the built in wardrobe, and the best one was the kitchen! They had left us with a cooker and washer, unfortunately where they had chosen to place the electric cooker was on the opposite side of the room to the power point. Some weeks later we discovered that the wires to the cooker were bare in one part and hung over the back of the washer, meaning had anyone touched the washer while the cooker was turned on we would have been blown into next week.

I look back and laugh now.

pulliptears

Also slightly OT regarding inspections...

OH works for a Housing Association and has told some tales over the years. Two spring to mind which I'll share.

One:

OH is called to look at a property owned by the HA amid reports of the roof sagging. On heading upstairs he sees ladders leading into the loft. In the loft are 2 beds, sofa, TV etc. A full room! All well and good but the owner had sawn through the joists and removed them to install his new bedroom causing the roof to sag to such a dangerous extent the family were immediately evacuated.

Two:

Two tennants decide to exchange and OH is called in after exchange to take a look. Its a nice house, lovely porch, big conservatory etc and the couple who have moved into it are over the moon....that is until its noted that there are no actual foundations for the big conservatory, its built directly on top of the patio and in serious danger of collapse. The same treatment has been applied to the front porch too, its built off the path with no foundations and rocks if touched. Throughout the house was a series of similar disasters and a bill of almost 20k to put it right.

There are nights where he has come in, thrown his clothes straight in the wash and dived straight in the shower itching too. Not pleasant!

N79

Wee_Willy_Harris wrote: »

Urghhhhh...... Well, let's just say that this thread is open to landlords and tenants as well. I'll bet someone will trump dog poo now !!!!!

I could, but the incident is just too disgusting to mention in polite company and as for the photos...........

Evilm

having been talking about moving on a particular date (the Friday after a Bank Holiday) our buyers suddenly decided they didn't want to overlap mortgage with rent for three weeks so on the Thursday of the week before (were due to exchange on the Friday) said they could only do three weeks later.

Upon hearing this my sellers, who had been trying to sell a deceased family members property for nearly two years, decided that if we couldn't complete on the following Friday they would drop out and rent.

I worked all of Friday to try to reach a resolution and couldn't. So over the Bank Holiday weekend instead of having a packing party over the long weekend we didn't do anything except get drunk. We were heartbroken. The estate agent put a letter out to the buyer on the Friday night to explain the situation and beg them to reconsider... they told the estate agents to leave them alone and not talk to them ever again!

Tuesday morning my solicitor got into the office to find that both the seller's and buyer's solicitors were on holiday and the Locums (temps) had looked at the file and decided there was no reason not to complete and got both parties playing ball. So at 12 noon on Tuesday we got a call saying we could complete after all and we ought to get packing!

We still had half of the house to pack (and we had a lot of stuff!), the removers were under our feet from midway through Thursday and at 10am Friday were following us round with empty boxes and bin bags emptying all those little cupboards you forget are there until the last minute!

We were ready to leave at 11.15 and got the keys at noon.

(oh, and three days after we moved, and before anything really got unpacked, my hubby had to fly away for a business trip that lasted three weeks leaving me to unpack everything and alone in a new town with only my in-laws for company).

Evilm

Also: We put all the non-furniture boxes in the garage as it was quicker than trying to organise them around the house straight away. The thing we didn't realise until after we closed the front garage door is that it was self locking and the previous occupants had lost the key long ago.

The back door to the garage was blocked in by boxes and could only be opened an inch or so... we had to push stuff away from the door with a thin stick to finally force it open. We were lucky that we didn't need a locksmith in the end!

jenny74

vet8 wrote: »

They had also left all sorts of rubbish we had to move out. Some of it was usable, a hedge cutter, ladders etc. so we asked our solicitor what we should do about it. He said unless there was some arrangement we could assume that anything left behind we could keep, so we sorted out the good stuff. My OH managed to make one good wheelbarrow out of 2 broken ones. On the first Saturday we were there we went out in the afternoon. When we got back, the previous owners’ son had got into the garage, yard and garden and taken the mended wheelbarrow and all the other usable stuff leaving us the rubbish, which we spent the next 20 years chucking out.

Surely this is theft? I would have reported it to the police. Upon completion items left by the vendor belongs to the buyer. I would have been livid! They can't just wander in after they've completed and start helping themselves to stuff! :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

vet8

I agree, but they were total losers. They had apparently almost done a runner. After we moved in we got lots of odd, big, bulky guys in dark suits and sunglasses calling around trying to find them and lots of letters from creditors. They owed loads of money so I could not see any point in chasing them up.

We padlocked the gate, let our big dogs roam the yard and just let it go.

greenface

While ago my then boss sent me and another lad to shift the final stuff from his garage to the tip as he was downsizing to our suprise there stuff he called rubbish wasnt too bad (garage stuff like old excersise bike/ lp records half a set of golf clubs& kids bike) plus much more so on the way to the tip with a van full of booty we stopped off and dropped off certain items too good to throw at our houses;) no questions asked and even placed most of the other stuff by the side of the tip workers office . Later that night about 8 oclock my boss knocked at my door i opened it. Golf Clubs behind me he began to explain that the new householder started to put stuff in the garage the night before and thinks its been stolen cleared of everything even the broken lawnmower and old couch he was supposed to throw went too.:o

Slinky

I've seen a house like Doozergirl's many many years ago when I worked very briefly at an estate agents. This particular house was on the edge of a country village. The owner had bought it after he'd been paid an enormous sum of money for his farm by (I was told) the development corporation for a new town. Anyway, the vendor and his Mrs, I was told, liked a drink. They also seemed to be unable to say no to any old tat that came their way. The house filled up I would imagine over a number of years, including I recall, a room with a snooker table complete with an old hot water bottle lying on the top of it amongst other assorted tonnes of junk. I hadn't actually seen this house, the manager at the estate agents dealt with all the viewings on this particular property. We didn't even have any details to hand out, it was impossible to measure and in truth we weren't even sure how many rooms there were - probably in the region of 15. However the brave person who had decided to buy it wanted to show it to his wife, so the manager asked me to go out and accompany them.

The property benefitted from being spread over 3 floors. We entered via the kitchen - the back door was wide open, chickens were wandering in and out of the door, as was the occasional dog. A particularly interesting feature of the kitchen was a noose hanging from the ceiling. We proceeded around the ground floor, including a visit to what had probably been a charming reception room at some point in the past. Now it housed a load of junk, a large bed complete with drunk vendor lying in it watching daytime TV. 'Alright if we look round mate' said the purchaser (I was in shock) and I think the grunt that came from the bed was something resembling a yes. We wandered through more glorious rooms, picking our way through the junk and the dog poo. Eventually we got to the third floor, where everything changed. Newly plastered walls, no junk, it all looked like a different house. I was told there had been a fire and the insurance paid out and sent builders in to sort it out. The suggestion had been that the money was running out so they had tried to extricate themselves from their predicament. Unfortunately setting fire to the top of the house didn't clear the problems further down.

All in all, a most delightful abode. I never got to find out whether the junk was left behind, but the purchaser assumed it probably would be, I left the agents before the sale completed. I just wonder how many skips he had to get rid of it all.