Completed yesterday !! bad surprise

HugoSP

As far as surveys are concerned I have rrecently gone for the cheapo mortgage vaulation then have a chat with the surveyor. I know many of them around here and they are usually more than happy to spend a bit of time with you over the phone to raise your awareness over certain things.

I regularly find that my knowledge is lacking every time!

You don't get the same comeback as you would with a full structural but if the surveyors are good at what they do you shouldn't need it.

phead

I had a full structural done on the place I'm in now, it was only £150 on top of the basic one.

After I'd moved in I went back through the survey to look at what needed doing. Some of the photos in the back were of someone elses property, and the "small section of rotten fascia board that need replacing" were all upvc. Looking through it I found loads of other minor problems in the survey that just didn't exist, or that he had misunderstood.

Next time I'll look into commissioning my own survey instead of using the muppets my mortgage company deals with.

Nicki

It's disappointing to move into a house and find it doesn't look as nice as you thought it did, but I'm not sure I agree with all those who have posted that it "isn't on" to leave a house with wallpaper peeling or grubby carpets. So far as the peeling wallpaper is concerned that is something which should be visible on a proper inspection of the house surely, and the price offered would reflect that. Even if the wallpaper was only peeling behind the furniture, I can't believe that all the wallpaper on show was in that case in pristine condition. In any case most people will want to redecorate in their own way reasonably quickly after moving in. As for grubby carpets, again these should be fairly obvious when you view, and if the bad patches are under furniture it is hard to see what the old owner is supposed to do if, as is usual, everyone is moving on the same day. In my experience, you are doing well if you have got all your furniture and boxes loaded onto the moving van and done a quick vaccuum and final mop round of the floors before the new owners are arriving. I've never had time to shampoo all my carpets for the new owners, which in a 3 bed house would take a good couple of hours. In any case if you did this, the carpets would still be damp by the time the new people moved in, and would quickly get even more trashed with moving men and furniture walking over it while it is still damp, creating mud instead of just dust.

The answer I think is to look carefully at the state of the house before you make the offer. It is usually fairly obvious whether the owners are neat and tidy or secretly slobs. If the latter, then hold a bit of money back in your budget to clean carpets, etc, or negotiate a price reduction to cover this. Moving into a house you own is not like moving into a new rental property, where you can expect everything to have been professionally cleaned for you and all appliances to be in full working order, and to be honest the most you can expect when you have bought a house is that the previous owners have taken all their belongings and rubbish with them. The rest is up to you.

Badger_Lady

Leaving rubbish behind is wrong. But I'm slightly more cautious about the state of your walls / carpets...

When I sold my flat this summer, I repainted all the walls and had the carpets professionally cleaned prior to viewings. A lady saw the place, fell in love with it and snapped it up.

When I emptied all my furniture out, I felt awful - there were rust stains on the carpet where the chair castors had rubbed off on damp carpet (from the cleaning), and there were marks all over the lower part of the walls where furniture had scraped against them - even some discoloured patches (fading?).

I had professional cleaners in to make sure kitchen / bathroom etc were thoroughly disinfected (I moved out long before buyers moved in), but that was it - I wasn't going to spend another £75 cleaning carpets again, or repainting walls just because they'd been hidden by my furniture. It looked grubby, but everywhere does when it's lived in and then emptied!

Don't worry too much about these things - I don't think the vendors were being deliberately sneaky by "hiding" things behind their furniture - it's just the way things go. By the time you've pasted the wallpaper back down, cleared out the rubbish and set all your things out, it won't look half so bad :-)

DenBo_4

I bought my little Victorian house two years ago, when I looked round it I thought it was absolutely fantastic and a complete bargain, especially after looking round at the other houses I could afford. It wasn't till I moved in (in September) and put the central heating on a few weeks later that I realised it didn't work, that the fitted kitchen had a fridge that freezes everything, a dishwasher where one of the arms falls off when it's working, the washing machine is on it's last legs (and was leaking, so the lino had to be removed), the skirting boards had obviously been wedged in and now are all unwedged and need replacing, most of the sash windows are broken and the rest are painted shut!

I could fill two pages with the faults, I didn't see them when I looked round, it was so clean and beautifully furnished, they probably saw me coming! I have just been awarded some back pay from DLA so on Saturday I've got a handyman coming round to give me some quotes to get things done, I just hope the house doesnt fall down before he arrives......................:eek: :eek: :eek:

HugoSP

phead wrote: »

I had a full structural done on the place I'm in now, it was only £150 on top of the basic one.

After I'd moved in I went back through the survey to look at what needed doing. Some of the photos in the back were of someone elses property, and the "small section of rotten fascia board that need replacing" were all upvc. Looking through it I found loads of other minor problems in the survey that just didn't exist, or that he had misunderstood.

Next time I'll look into commissioning my own survey instead of using the muppets my mortgage company deals with.

Go back to you lender NOW for a FULL REFUND!

or get intouch with the surveyor and demand that he underwites the condition of the house.

seven-day-weekend

When we bought our house in Spain, the Spanish owners told us they were leaving us some furniture. We were pleased as we thought it would save us some money on furnishing it.

They left us a huge cushion, a wobbly wooden kitchen chair, a tiny formica 1950s-style chest of drawers, five metal beds all going rusty and a huge calor gas cooker.

We threw all the beds away (they were Spanish size anyway, really short and in between a double and a single) although we did keep the best two for about a year before replacing them. The chest of drawers we couldn't bring ourselves to throw away, it is so awful! It is up a dark corner in the main bedroom. The cushion looked quite colourful once it had been washed and makes a nice floor cushion to use when answering the phone, We burned the kitchen chair on the woodburner. The cooker, although old, was great being so big and last year we replaced it with a new one the same size with five burners.

We bought all the furniture from IKEA.

After all this waffle, the point I'm trying to make is, I don't think things are ever exactly how you think they are going to be. The state of the wallpaper is just wear and tear, caused by living in the house. I suppose they could have cleaned the carpets (although I wouldn't have done) and got rid of the rubbish.

Enoy your new home and don't let a bit of tatty wallpaper spoil it for you.

elmer

I'm obviously one of the slobby people, my tiles in my kitchen are put up with blu tak, as are the curtains in my loo. It works fine and will be easy to remove if necesary.
However I would never expect anywhere to be perfect, this house was a new build, but the bannisters were only placed in, not attatched, and the same with the shower!
Both a bit of a shock, and in our last house we discovered that the nice surface protectors that were in the kitchen were actually covering massive burns in the work surface, and the drawer fronts were stuck on with my favorite blutak, so look at and in everything even if you risk being thought of being nosey, as it will all be yours, inside cupboards and everything.

Good Luck Elmer

Sugarplumfairy_2

My house is clean and tidy but I can assure you I will not be shampooing carpets before i leave it. And I do not expect my new house to have shampooed carpets ! Think both I and the person I am buying the house from have more important things to do, like packing.

The house will be hoovered from top to bottom, all windows, bathrooms, cupboards cleaned ... but I wouldn't go to the extreme of fixing wallpaper and cleaning carpets.

Jet

I've bought 3 houses and 2 of them had loads of stuff left behind. My current house had beds, wardrobes, carpets, pc's etc. just in the loft. Before I allowed my solicitor to complete, I insisted that everything was moved out from the rest of the house. Cheeky vendor said she thought "I might like the stuff" - none of worked or was worth anything!

This time I am going to ensure that my solicitor writes into the contract that the house must be clear before completion.

I can't go through that again.

The other house I bought was absolutely disgusting and there was no hot water as the boiler had a fault which hadn't been rectified for months. Don;t ask me how the vendors used to wash. Yuck!