First house joys what did you get?

My previous house, we arrived with our removals van to find two weeping teenagers, their (divorcing) parents screaming at each other, my dad's new bedroom filled with racist and obscene graffiti, a house full of stuff that they left behind when they finally went at 7pm, and a dead oven and dishwasher, which they had sold to us separately.
A family member moved recently and was welcomed with a massive dog turd in the middle of the bedroom.

My current place is in a converted pub; the developer flipped my bit and modernised the rest. When I moved in the condition was really poor - which I expected and was how I could afford it - but the surprise was that the builders had been using my loo while working on the other flats.

Oh my days. The very first thing I did was change the loo seat (which was corroded with uric acid) and pour down enough Harpic Black to finish off the ocean. But it was harder to fix the nasty cheap laminate floor, which was curled and lifted where it had been weed on. Five years later, that floor still smells faintly of builders piss but I can finally afford to get it replaced, joy of joys.

I think you will that you were just his live in caretakers and that was HIS flat.

The resident still in situ after completion. A garage full of stuff (they had to come back the next day to empty it but still left bits). Random items left in the house, a fridge and washing machine we didn't agree to take. The shed, but we didn't mind that one.

Dog poo in the bathroom on the (pink) carpet
It was ripped up immediately along with all other carpets.
We viewed in the dark. Big error.

Our current house needed a total rewire and the electrician found a newspaper from the 1960s and a flyer from a school fair which we dated to a similar time (through working out when two schools merged and which year the Friday would have been that date - gotta love local FB pages!).
It also didn't have an earth. At all. Electricity board came round within the day as we had DH (diabetes) and DD (under 5) so counted as a vulnerable household.

The owner had taken all the curtain rails down, and removed most of the light bulbs. This despite my having allowed her to stay for 4 days past completion, since her new house wasn’t ready. My solicitor had a pink fit!

She was majorly pissed off with dh for having bargained her down over the price. Dh was working in the Middle East at the time - she said (clipped German accent) - ‘You are not in an Arab marketplace now!’

Oh my goodness I would love this! Did you keep them?’

I didn't buy the house but rented it off a 'friend' (who turned out to be the biggest wanker on the planet)

I'd agreed for a reduced rent,he didn't have to clean it,I would (I was a skint single mum and every penny counted)

Students had been there before us-that should have been my first red flag

They'd smashed a window (that he refused to replace) glass still all over the floor and the window still boarded up

Dog shit,traffic cones,wet floor signs,a set of mini traffic lights,used condoms,the limescale in the loo was so bad it refused to flush and piles of vomit everywhere

The carpets where at least 30 years old and stank (he told me I had to replace them)

A smell of damp

Dodgy electrics (he told me this was my fault for being too fat-i didnt get that either)

A kitchen that was falling apart

The front door lock was glued together with tippex

No heating-the system was broken

I'd seen the house about 4 months earlier (when I'd agreed to move) and it just needed a good clean so this was a bit of a shock

I contacted the council about him not doing gas checks ('it's your responsibility!') and they came out

I'll never forget the look on the council blokes face-the house had most of the repairs done within 2 months (to a lot of moaning,guilt tripping and 'you should be paying for this')

He dropped down dead on a hockey pitch a few years later and his son took over (who was a tiny bit better but only because I got a beefy male friend to 'have a word')

I met dp,we moved in together and I finally left that shit heap behind

The house we moved to was immaculate (bar one grain of rice in the larder) and the only thing she'd taken that she shouldnt where the loft ladders

We just left it-something had got lost in the translation and we replaced them for £100

A mummified rat in the loft.

The armchair the previous occupant had died in. I really expected they were taking it with them but no it was there still in the lounge. Dh is scared of ghosts. We put it out in the garden. I massively contemplated moving it slightly closer to the house each night whilst he wasn’t looking. Scare dh no not me 😂

Not my first but my second.

Fleas. Took 6 months and two fumigations to get rid of them.

The house was filthy too. I left mine spotless, literally mopped my way out the front door.

Speed reading had me thinking it was gonna be a dead body in the chest freezer….too many day time movies in my retirement lol

Mine was a garden shed rammed with decades of junk. They just hadn’t bothered emptying it. It was literally floor to ceiling. They’d actually emigrated to the USA so we just paid £50 to a scrappy (this was about 30 years ago) who came and took the lot including the shed itself and we built a lovely new one.

No bulbs in any of the light fittings.

That's so lovely I want to do this if I move home

Omg 🤣

Similar here too. Our sellers left a new home card, bottle of red and the local takeaway menus, alongside all the instruction manuals for the built in appliances and the boiler, all neatly lined up on the fireplace surround. The floors had just been mopped when we stepped in too - they were still wet!

They offered to leave us the massive beautiful rug in the lounge. It’s a lovely rug and it’s a huge room, so to have bought something similar probably would have cost us £2000. They were downsizing and had no need for it anyway.

We lived here a year before we actually looked under the rug. The floor around the rug had been done, but underneath is just bare concrete. 😂

That said, they did try to sell us a lot of things. A gate, a granite planter, garden tools, and we said, no thanks. They just left them all anyway.

Been here 3 years now and still haven’t looked in the loft. It has a side window and sometimes I think I see movement or a light on in there. Access isn’t great, so other than chucking some rat poison up there occasionally, I’ve just pretended it doesn’t exist. 😳

1st house: lots and lots of empty bottles of wine in the loft.
2nd house: garage absolutely full of junk. We had to hire a skip. Solicitors were useless.
3rd house: refused to hand in their keys until 4.45pm as they were ‘busy’. They moved onto the street behind! Arseholes.

Not immediately but after a few weeks we started getting bills from the council for a lock up garage we knew nothing about, visits from people about rented TVs etc they had taken with them, summons regarding non-payment of council tax etc. They had given us a forwarding address to redirect mail but told us not to tell anyone where they had moved to

He was. He was very much a London cat, so when I moved to Wiltshire 5 years later, the next owners of the flat took him on. They sent me pictures of him in Christmas cards for a few years after that. 😊

Electric company came and cut off the supply. Said the house needed a complete re-wire.

About 4 skips of absolute junks, plastic toys, broken garden storage, bikes, fridge without the plug, mugs etc. It was everywhere. We kept finding new stuffs for ages.

Most noticeable items are baby pictures (binned), panties 🤢, syringes and weird liquids in random squash bottles 😱.
There was also a paper copy of an email the owner had sent her boss complaining about her workload. At least she uses the same smug tone than for the tomatoes (see below).

Despite my multiple requests to the agency for the house to be cleared (people had already moved out so no reason to not clear the house), we spent the first week clearing and cleaning.

Owner had made a big fuss for clearing some tomatoes from the cupboards as I'd been really insisting for them to be cleared as I didn't want them to stay there for the 6 months required for paperwork to be done (it was just after covid so loads of houses were sold/bought, clogging the system.

This is my wisdom tip for the next purchase: make sure you have one last visit before exchange. If you have a doubt, make sure they are aware that you will not exchange if house is cleared and any delay will results in penalties to be paid by them.

My first house I was left limescale in the loo that was brown. Family of 4 moved out, obvious the loo hadn't been cleaned for months. Ended up scraping it off with a knife.

Last house was a rental. I was eligible for free insulation which the landlord was more than happy to agree to. Engineer came and got up in the loft to find it jammed full of the previous tenants stuff. Needed a skip to dispose of.

Current house the previous owners were supposed to be taking everything that wasn't bolted down - light fittings, appliances, curtains etc. I was mid-divorce and scraping every penny together and they left the fridge, washing machine, all the curtains and lights. Winner!

We turned up and there were no appliances - fridge, freezer or washing machine. I was sure we'd agreed them in the sale!
Turned out the solicitor had missed the email saying they were taking them. I was cross!

Some of these posts are making me feel better about my contribution (which at the time we cried about!):

Double garage full of rubbish (couldn’t even walk in the door) also the garage door fell off after a week
2 sheds full of rubbish (including fireworks/flammables)
1 bathroom was so filthy we shut the door and waited to have it ripped out rather than clean
cupboards full of food so mouldy it was mush
kitchen took 10 hours for my mum and I to clean - thick with grease/mould
All carpets had to be ripped up (threadbare and they stank - if we had shampooed I think they would have disintegrated!)
Every room was covered in rubbish all over the floor - our movers said they’d never seen anything like it before

Luckily had a couple of friends over who helped decorated the kids rooms before they moved in (they had to stay with grandparents). Unbelievably, this wasn’t an empty house - previous owners were living in it right up to moving day! I still can’t believe people live like that. However the state of it meant we got the house about 50k cheaper and it looks nice now.