Curious - what did your seller take or try to sell to you?

DRP

A friend of mine moved recently and found an envelope with £2000 in one of the fitted wardrobes.
The vendor was a policewoman....

Young_Turk

Scotbot said:

Young_Turk said:

Scotbot said:

When I lived in Aus the buyer had to do a final inspection day before completion and sign off on the property before completion took place. As a result houses were always spotless and nothing untoward was missing.  I  wish this was the norm here.

I can see how this would provide an incentive to vendors to leave their house in a reasonable state. But doesn't it also cause problems?

What happened if it wasn't spotless or something was missing? Does that mean the buyer could simply delay completion? Can the vendor then refuse to clean, giving the buyer an opportunity to pull out of the purchase? 
Presumably this also requires that everything has been packed the day before completion. So you have to pay for the removal people to have your possessions in their van for longer. Also the inconvenience of having nowhere to eat, relax or sleep the night before you move! (Do people tend to stay with friends or in a hotel in Aus the night before moving?) 
There is still the possiblity that the vendors could remove things after the inspection. What then? Isn't the sign off the day before just like the fixtures and fittings form months before?
Also, what if someone is buying a long distance from the house they are selling? Can they do an inspection a long way aware and be around for their own inspection to deal with issues?

Yes you can delay completion but because people know this they don't  risk it and make sure the house is in order. The EA will also ensure that is the case, they get higher fees but they also do more for them.

But if the vendor doesn't want to clean and doesn't care about a delay, doesn't that give him the upper hand? The purchaser can say: "This house is filthy! I'm not completing tomorrow!" Can the purchaser then reclaim the costs of delay from the vendor? If not, can't the vendor just call his bluff: "You can either complete tomorrow, or delay and have another inspection at a later date."

Drawingaline

Morbier said:

Drawingaline said:

 The curtains wouldn't fit in the house we are hoping to buy as they are tracks and new one is poles.  

Not very MSE !!  Easy to convert track curtains to fit poles.

Our vendors are moving back to mainland Europe so we are hoping they are leaving most of the curtains and blinds. Worse case we have sheets at the windows for a few weeks. I much prefer tracks to poles, so will change them if necessary. Having lugged curtains from previous places I find it's rare they actually fit other windows and I am not one to spend a lot of money on soft furnishings. 

We are still waiting for our vendors list, but hoping they leave the fridge freezer. But I won't be buying it from them. If they don't leave it we will get a new one 

Young_Turk

Grabs39 said:

Wow, I wouldn’t have thought people would try to sell the contents, I thought you listed them on the contents form and left them, or didn’t!  I would’ve refused to buy anything above the sale price, out of principle.  

What principle is that? If something is useful to you, it's worth buying. If it's something that you think should be include you could turn the tables: "I'll reduce my offer by a few hundred if you remove these items, but will pay the full price if you don't remove them."
But if they offer to sell you something that wouldn't normally be assumed to be included (e.g. furniture) and you might want it, then you shouldn't refuse to buy it.

tweet86

NameUnavailable said:

When you sell you are meant to leave the place empty - totally empty - apart from anything you have stated via solicitors that you are including such as carpets, curtains etc. If you leave other stuff or a load of junk in the cupboards or garage for example your buyer can charge for its removal. I sold via auction and made sure the place was clear of everything as I didn't want any comeback.

When I bought my flat I agreed to pay for the washing machine which promptly broke down the moment I tried to use it. I should've taken that up via the solicitors but just bit the bullet and got a new one. The vendor had left a few other items which were useful to me at that time (some bedroom furniture and curtains).

see that’s what I thought. We obviously left the light fittings, bulbs, carpets etc but I’d read that it should be empty or you could be charged. I even googled whether we could leave a bag of rubbish in the black bin (to which I found a thread about buyers walking into houses with people asleep in bed and sinks full of washing up 😂 so didn’t worry too much). 

tweet86

We didn’t try and sell anything to our buyer. Anything that was fitted we left. We did take the curtains however, I didn’t think to leave them as we didn’t think she’d want our old curtains. We felt terrible as we left the toddler toilet seat on the toilet as we didn’t have time to buy a replacement. I did get the place cleaned however and leave a gift. 

All I keep thinking is I hope my buyers don’t take the carpets 😂

trix-a-belle

My first house the sellers left an archive box full of kids drawings & school work and Halloween dressing up outfits, a spare key for someone elses house as it didn't fit any of the locks there and no one ever came to claim it, & a toilet brush. They took, rather unhelpfully, all the manuals & paperwork to everything, oven, heating (complicated fly you to the moon looking system), the lot!

When I sold the house I offered the buyers my dishwasher as there was an integrated one in the place I was moving to, they hadn't had one in their previous place and with 2 kids would have been useful, left them some dishwasher tablets to get them going, labelled keys, organised file of manuals & details of any fitments or bits i'd installed (carpets, blinds etc) in case they wanted the same & most of the curtains & lampshades which were fairly neutral.

The seller of this house said verbally & in the agent details about the range cooker which then in the f&f form turned into a freestanding oven (excluded), freestanding hob (included), freestanding grill (included) which eventually once clarified as it was physically impossible given they were all in the same housing was that they were taking the range, which then 2 days before completion was offered for me to purchase by text, I declined as I'd already ordered one after exchange ready for delivery & half to see if they did actually leave it as they had suddenly realised what a hassle it was going to be to get disconnected and shifted in 2 days over a weekend (bet the movers were really pleased too about suddenly having to shift it)
They also took half the keys to the back door, which were eventually returned 3 weeks later with the alarm system manual (all other manuals had been left neatly including the one for the oven they had taken), also a curtain pole as it had 'sentimental value' & were going to take the landing light but as its a double height ceiling I think the hb pulled rank on that one, & a bit of a biggy they took their full set of keys for the house with them to their new house for 'safe keeping' when my removals van was on the doorstep and my housemate was parked round the corner waiting to unload her fish who were at the limits of being bagged up.
They did leave the fitted wooden blinds which I was grateful for & most fabric blinds (though as they were LA i'm not sure I was that grateful for them)
& I think i've now 2.5 years down the line finally stopped their post including catalogue parcels being delivered here

MoneySeeker1

Scotbot said:

Silvertabby said:

Friends were buying a house that had been fitted with an ornate house sign, which showed the street name as well as the house number, and so would have been useless to the vendors in their new home.

Nonetheless, the vendor wanted a ridiculous sum for it 'because it was a specially commissioned work of art'.  My friends refused the offer, as it wasn't to their taste.  They moved in to find the vendor had indeed taken the sign with them - leaving 4 unsightly holes drilled in the brickwork at the front of the house.

I  ca sort of understand someone taking that as a keepsake but you think they would replace it with a standard sign, they only cost about £25!

Signing in - at £40 when I had one done for my current house.

But the thought wouldn't cross my mind of taking my sign with me (even though it's not an uncommon house name here and so might be saleable) - even if I weren't aware I'm not "allowed" to anyway (because it's fixed to the house - and so is "fixtures and fittings").

So - even though this is an area where a noticeable number of people would think nothing of me taking a (by then) worthless piece of junk with me and trying to sell it - I'll stick to my own viewpoint of "What a faff - and how mean that would be" to do so.

lady1964

We’re about to exchange on the sale of our house and, with our buyer’s agreement we’re leaving the large Ikea wardrobes and two others in two of the bedrooms as they were put together in the rooms and honestly, would be a complete faff to take apart. We’re leaving the blinds but taking the curtains, poles and a few light fittings. Our buyer is fully aware of all of this and we’re also getting a professional clean done.

Scotbot

Young_Turk said:

Scotbot said:

Young_Turk said:

Scotbot said:

When I lived in Aus the buyer had to do a final inspection day before completion and sign off on the property before completion took place. As a result houses were always spotless and nothing untoward was missing.  I  wish this was the norm here.

I can see how this would provide an incentive to vendors to leave their house in a reasonable state. But doesn't it also cause problems?

What happened if it wasn't spotless or something was missing? Does that mean the buyer could simply delay completion? Can the vendor then refuse to clean, giving the buyer an opportunity to pull out of the purchase? 
Presumably this also requires that everything has been packed the day before completion. So you have to pay for the removal people to have your possessions in their van for longer. Also the inconvenience of having nowhere to eat, relax or sleep the night before you move! (Do people tend to stay with friends or in a hotel in Aus the night before moving?) 
There is still the possiblity that the vendors could remove things after the inspection. What then? Isn't the sign off the day before just like the fixtures and fittings form months before?
Also, what if someone is buying a long distance from the house they are selling? Can they do an inspection a long way aware and be around for their own inspection to deal with issues?

Yes you can delay completion but because people know this they don't  risk it and make sure the house is in order. The EA will also ensure that is the case, they get higher fees but they also do more for them.

But if the vendor doesn't want to clean and doesn't care about a delay, doesn't that give him the upper hand? The purchaser can say: "This house is filthy! I'm not completing tomorrow!" Can the purchaser then reclaim the costs of delay from the vendor? If not, can't the vendor just call his bluff: "You can either complete tomorrow, or delay and have another inspection at a later date."

No there are stiff penalties for delaying the completion date. If a house were really filthy the vendor would have to pay for cleaning or pay the penalty,  which would be a damn site higher. If any of the agreed  fixtures and fittings had been removed the vendor would also have to compensate the buyer.  But in reality vendors want  the cash/ need to pay off the mortgage, no one is going to jeopardize a sale at that point. 

But in over 10 years of living there  I never heard of it happening, the cultural norm is you leave the place spotless.