Homeowners: did any of you discover your new place had a surprise feature AFTER moving in?

london21

Doing a 2nd+ viewing might help but sometimes difficult to spot everything within short space of viewing time. 

Gavin83

We’ve just moved into a house and we’ve found an entire parking space we didn’t know we had. It’s a very overgrown area but it’s all getting cut back shortly!

74jax

Thrugelmir said:

[Deleted User] said:

What the hell would disguise a swimming pool that well ?

Aren't swimmimg pools kept covered when not in use. Sounds as if the purchasers never looked around the garden. 

Or the estate agent... 

[Deleted User]

Thrugelmir said:

Catsacor said:

What the hell would disguise a swimming pool that well ?

Aren't swimmimg pools kept covered when not in use. Sounds as if the purchasers never looked around the garden. 

Agree with you  @Thrugelmir
Covered, yes, unrecognisable though - come on, anyone can identify a swimming pool with its cover on, especially as it was a 'giant' one. 
I wonder if the OP omitted a relevant piece of information though, maybe they meant it had actually been filled in 🙄 

Davesnave

The first thing we found was a wine bottle dump in an overgrown hedge. There were about 150 bottles and a few glasses too.Voles and/or shrews had got into some bottles and were decomposing, so the trip to the recycling place 12 miles away was incredibly smelly.

Then we discovered the huge pile of what appeared to be stable manure was actually the remains of a nursery that had been pushed into a corner with a digger, set fire to and then covered with muck-out for a year or two. We spread it all out with another digger, picked through it and filled countless dumpy bags with the plastics and non-burnable waste.It took many weeks. Fortunately, the dozen or so journeys to the tip with my big van took place just before they began charging for loads. Similarly, we were just in time to rid ourselves of about 50 tyres.

We also discovered 2 x 12' pig arks; one is still in use so that was a handy find.

About a year or two into ownership, enquiries revealed the neighbour had somehow removed a telegraph pole from his garden and planted it on our property without the knowledge of Openreach. We got them to re-locate it more sensibly,as it was partially in a stream, claimed £175 for the wayleave and kept the old pole for gateposts.

Also, on a sunny spring day some time between the above events, a nice guy from the council came to enquire if he could inspect the horse burials. This was news to us, so he explained his colleague had recently retired and at the bottom of his 'in' tray they'd found unfinished business going back years! Luckily, the guy had a map, so we visited the points where two horses are apparently interred, but there wasn't so much as a hoof showing, so that was OK.

Affordable country property with a bit of land is rarely straightforward. If things are very overgrown, expect a few surprises!

Davesnave

GDB2222 said:

Davesnave said:

Also, on a sunny spring day some time between the above events, a nice guy from the council came to enquire if he could inspect the horse burials. This was news to us, so he explained his colleague had recently retired and at the bottom of his 'in' tray they'd found unfinished business going back years! Luckily, the guy had a map, so we visited the points where two horses are apparently interred, but there wasn't so much as a hoof showing, so that was OK.

Affordable country property with a bit of land is rarely straightforward. If things are very overgrown, expect a few surprises!

[DELETED BY FORUM TEAM]

Hmm....tricky! I seem to remember the council demolished [DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] house, but burying a dog is far less controversial.

As it happens, we had a dog burial here too in the 1990s, When we cut down an ailing cherry tree and dug the roots out, the dog's tag came to light. We knew the owners, one of whom is a vet, so we returned it to them and they could pinpoint the date of interment quite accurately.

I'm similarly careful to plant a tree or large shrub wherever we bury animals, hopefully one that will look good at the time of year when they died. So far, we have two cats and two ferrets in a little avenue of bushes and there would be room for me on the end, but the septic tank pipe runs there!

Kinski

We moved into an old Victorian town house many years ago, the last occupants had left some furniture and other stuff, on moving the couch we found an old postcard, it had been sent to the last owner from a very small village in the highlands which was where my husband was born and brought up. We started decorating one of the bedrooms and when we took some wallpaper of the wall there was a date on it, it was exactly to the date 50 years before we stripped the paper off. 

ciderboy2009

I was taking out the airing cupboard in my last house as we'd had a combi boiler installed  and noticed that one of the floorboards had been cut and just put back in place without any nails/screws.

When I lifted it out to see where to put some screws I realised that it had been boxed out underneath to turn it into a secret hiding place.

It contained a previous owner's !!!!!! collection, a number of (well out of date) condoms and a selection of "toys".

I did consider emailing the vendor to see if it was his and he wanted it back but decided to just chuck it all in the bin :-)

bpj

Davesnave said:

We spread it all out with another digger, picked through it and filled countless dumpy bags with the plastics and non-burnable waste.It took many weeks. Fortunately, the dozen or so journeys to the tip with my big van took place just before they began charging for loads. Similarly, we were just in time to rid ourselves of about 50 tyres.

Sounds like the introduction of charges may have been related to your moving into the area!

Soot2006

Not very exciting, but I found a large pond in the middle of what I thought was a thickly planted bed of shrubs. It's a big garden, but I was quite surprised I hadn't noticed it on viewings.