To ignore house buyer complaints a month after completion

That’s ridiculous. Bankruptcy checks cost £2 each. I do this all the time for both conveyancing and probate stuff.

Good luck to them with that one. They sound very inexperienced.

Standard High Street bank mortgage, we went in with all the correct information, 3-month plan of required works and said I was happy for a condition to be placed on the mortgage that specific key build dates would be met.

In the end, none of that was applied to the mortgage; it was a bog-standard application.

We didn't get as far as a mortgage, but looked at a re-possessed house. The previous owners had totally stripped it-all that was left was the toilet. How could you get a mortgage on that? (A builder bought it, to re-fit and flip)

When we purchased our house, it didn't have a kitchen, bathroom, or heating! And I don't mean it had an old one; it just didn't have it at all. It had one toilet and a wash basin.

There are circumstances where contact is justified - this is not one of them

My daughter had problems in her new home. I can't believe for a minute the vendors didn't know .A few were breach of contract and were settled , but the major one a leaking bathroom which came through the ceiling into the lounge wasn't. ( this was the day after they moved in )The emergency plumber said by the condition of the pipe work and damage beneath the bath it had been leaking for months. However the solicitor quoted 'buyer beware' and the only option was to take the vendors to the small claims court.

Comedy gold! 😂

I had one surveyor’s report that stated

There could be woodworm. The surveyor hadn’t spotted any signs but it could still be there.

Equally there could be damp but they didn’t have any readings of damp but they hadn’t put their meter on every single bit if wall

It’s these type of reports that make me wonder why sirveyors went to university to get a job which anyone could do as they don’t actually offer a definitive opinion

I bought my place without a survey but I think I know enough of what to look out for when looking at a place.

I got the place for around 30% cheaper than it should have been because surveyors had seen the slanted flooring and smelt the musty damp smell and declared the place to have settlement and damp and every potential buyer had run away.
I went in and realised straight away that it didn’t have settlement. It also didn’t have damp. It was just badly laid flooring and condensation because of no air flow through the house

Surveyors have cost me so much money in the past and I refuse to use them any more unless I have to.

Most of the time the survey doesn’t say anything definite

Its just a list of faults you could get with a house and the rhetoric is it might have this or could have that.

My last surveyor cost me so much money when they valued a house I really wanted at £0 because there was a sapling growing in the front garden and they thought that it would cause heave and the house would fall down. Wouldn’t remove the valuation even when I said I would remove the tree as I couldn’t remove the tree before I bought.

I know, how thoughtful, it would have me crying into my Yorkshire tea.

Me too! I think this is so lovely!

@BMW6 i told her she should have checked the weather forecast as there had been warnings of a bad storm. She came back again 6 months later to say there was big hole in the back garden and that I should have told her. When questioning her politely at first m, apparently she had pulled up the water companies drain cover (yeah the metal ones) and obviously found a big hole as we most have in our rear gardens. I said are you serious before I told her to fuck off. I seriously thought the way that she was going on that this massive sink hole had appeared in the rear garden. But it was the sewage pipes that are laid by water companies that runs the length of everyone’s rear garden

We were promised half a tank of oil from our sellers. Come moving day the new house was cold and there was no hot water. Needless to say the oil tank was empty. After a very long and fraught day I sat amongst the boxes and cried that I wanted to go home. Took the kids and went to the in laws for a hot shower and had to emergency order a tank of oil the next day.

The cheeky fuckers also tried to charge us £300 for the old shed that they’d left behind. We said no thank you, feel free to come and get it. Funnily enough they never showed. Cheeky twats, it was knackered and eventually Dh chopped it up for kindling.

For years afterwards, we’d find random bodge-it jobs round the house. Mysterious bits of wiring that went nowhere, empty pipes, unconnected sockets, all sorts of little oddments. The neighbours told us the previous owner had been a bit of a DIY fan, except that he wasn’t actually any good at it. Fortunately my Dh is very good at it and was able to sort most of it.

They are chancers! I'd ignore

Have you not read it properly? We paid to fix it. Equally, after putting in an offer, getting £30K off and his searches taking 6 weeks to come back, I think we were within our rights (as the decent estate agent said) to tell him to do it himself.

That sounds ridiculous, Cherrysoup, but last time I checked lenders were only looking at the size of the loan versus that of the property when it comes to surveys ... in other words providing they're assured of getting their money back if the worst happens the rest is the buyer's problem, and often it's down to just a drive-by "valuation"

In fairness it's bound to be thus and solicitors do warn buyers about this, but at what's an expensive time anyway folk all too often convince themselves it'll be enough, only to regret it later

• @Camenbertsmuggler "on moving day there were delays up the chain, we had finished loading but hadn’t received the keys to where we were moving to as they were still loading. HE CALLED THE POLICE, to evict us!"

Your buyer does sound a complete dick BUT once you'd received their funds for the house, it was no longer yours, and you needed to leave immediately. Not yet having keys to your new house is not the fault or the problem of your buyer, so you should not have delayed him in moving into HIS house.

In instances like this, it's normal for you and your removal van to wait outside of your new house, not linger at the house you no longer own. Doing so also helps put the pressure on the people to load up quicker!! It's also been known for the new owners to start unloading their own stuff to make a point that the others no longer own it and should have been out already.

It's just really disrespectful to new owners to not have been prepared enough to have packed in time for completion, it's not like people haven't had months notice that they're moving!

Tell me about it! We’re selling a terrace with a communal alley to take out bins/garden rubbish. There’s a communal sewer running along the passageway. I was asked-3 times-to confirm that nothing had been built along the passageway. If anyone had been to look, it’s clear that nothing has been built there. I bloody hope the buyer had a survey, surely you have to for mortgage purposes?

@Cherrysoup "He asked if we’d repair a slipped couple of slates on the roof, we dithered because we’d repaired loose slates when we bought so thought he should do it"

I mean, that is a pretty crappy reason to not make this minor repair. I do think asking you do get this repair seen to was very reasonable. So you'll only have yourself to blame if they pull out unfortunately.

hi op,

noone likes this kind of surprise but then again it isn’t your fault and it is now their house. Ignore.

tough though 🌺

Sorry this has happened to them but it’s not your problem. Similar issue happened to us when we bought our first house. We didn’t have any spare money but didn’t even cross our minds to go back to the vendor. It was our problem not theirs. Not yours either.

Absolutely don’t believe that to be true.

I fear we might have issues with our buyer who couldn’t be contacted today to give consent to exchange-completion allegedly on Wednesday. He asked if we’d repair a slipped couple of slates on the roof, we dithered because we’d repaired loose slates when we bought so thought he should do it. Then the very rude estate agent got involved and told us he was threatening to walk away from the sale! We’ve paid and I’m just dreading him finding something else once he takes possession. Apparently the back of the property’s roof is fine, to my non-professional eye it looks terrible! He’s bought for £30k under the going price for the street so has twice been told not to expect anything more from us.