i bought my house then discovered .....

Davesnave

There was nothing about the house that we didn't know already, as we do our own survey and we'd spotted the issues. It was somewhat better than we'd thought. There aren't many houses that actually look better when the previous owner's stuff is gone!:rotfl:

However, we did a pre-exchange check to see that the 10 tonne lorry had gone....

The 150 wine bottles in the hedge weren't recycled. Many of them contained dead shrews which go in and can't get out again. The smelliest [STRIKE]dump[/STRIKE] recycling centre drive I've ever done!

About a year later, someone from the council came to inspect the horse burials. They were OK, apparently, so we got a piece of paper and a map to add to our documentation....

Meanwhile, we'd discovered a 50 tonne pile of manure, wasn't. It was mostly soil and the remains of a former enterprise, bulldozed into a heap and set fire to, by the look of it. Luckily, the council were still accepting dumpy bags of detritus at that time without questions or charge....even around 30 of them spread over some months.

There was other stuff hidden in the overgrown orchard, like two 15' pig arks and a host of iron objects, but at least they had scrap value.

We knew that the long barrow in the front garden would contain builders' rubble, because nobody, except neolithics, builds a long barrow for any other reason. No surprises there.

And finally, after clearing up that lot, we found out that after a lightning strike in 2007, a neighbour, emboldended by the overgrowth and neglect here, had relocated a telegraph pole onto our land. It took a couple of years, battling with Openwretch, but eventually we had it moved where we wanted it and received the wayleave cheque we were due.

peachyprice

A serious gas leak.

The old owners opened all the windows on moving day to get rid of the smell of gas and let us move in with a newborn baby without saying a word.

WobblyDog

A surprising number of small animal bones buried in the back garden. My new neighbours have commented that the previous owner really didn't like cats.

principlecounts

peachyprice wrote: »

A serious gas leak.

The old owners opened all the windows on moving day to get rid of the smell of gas and let us move in with a newborn baby without saying a word.

That is shocking, why oh why!

Davesnave

principlecounts wrote: »

That is shocking, why oh why!

Presumably they weren't living with it themselves if it was that bad, so maybe something happened close to completion.

Doesn't excuse them, though.

maisie_cat

A garage full of old wood and tools, he was downsizing and couldn't take it all. I still have some of it and I used a beautiful old piece of oak to make a bench. There were also a large number of beer cans under the floors, empty unfortunately!

EssexExile

There was a nice gas fire in the lounge & a big chimney sticking out of the roof. There was nothing connecting the two though.

Snakey

Mine is a "silly me for not thinking to check" story:

...that there were prepayment meters installed, with massive massive debts on them, leaving me with about an hour to get an interim fix sorted out before darkness fell and no clue how to go about doing this.

I had not even thought to ask the question. I hadn't seen prepayment meters since I was a student, despite living in several rented properties over the intervening years, and it didn't occur to me that anybody had them any more. My face must have been a picture when I opened the hall cupboard.

peachyprice

principlecounts wrote: »

That is shocking, why oh why!

I really couldn't fathom it. They knew we had a newborn, we had to put off completion for a couple of weeks while I gave birth.

They could have at least told us on the day, before we closed all the windows in a freezing house and turned the heating on. Just a mention on the way out would have done.

peachyprice

Davesnave wrote: »

Presumably they weren't living with it themselves if it was that bad, so maybe something happened close to completion.

Doesn't excuse them, though.

They moved out the day we moved in. It was a cracked pipe under a concrete floor, I guess they didn't want the hassle or cost of dealing with it, maybe it happened in the last few days so they just kept the windows open.

Silly thing is it was easily resolved, we just had the gas cut off to the kitchen and bought an electric hob.

I was just dumbfounded that they didn't say a word.