Awful woman slagging off my family home

I'm sorry that this has upset you OP, moving is stressful enough as it is!
I've moved a fair few times, mostly chosen to do up.
The 'friendly' inquiries from new neighbours about the state of my new home or the standard it has been left in tell me who are the sh*t stirrers & gossip mongers.
Eager faces dying for me to put down previous occupants get no truck from me, I simply say that I love making a house my own with decor/projects etc.
I do like to buy a house at a price adjusted to allow for my choice in decor rather than spend on someone else's taste -win, win.

If she keeps doing it I would respond to (these unhelpful) friends by being clear it was clean, surveyed and you agreed a price. That is all you need to say.

But she is going way beyond that by implying it wasn’t fit for children to live in and then it was ‘grim’ and dirty which are outright lies. I don’t care about her opinions on the house but I do care about the reflection on my family.

Many people would think that living with walls that need plastering is grim and not really fit for children. But not everyone has the money for repairs and maintenance and families do sometimes have to live with poor conditions. If you had to choose between repairing walls and buying a bigger house, then that's what you had to choose. You couldn't afford to do both and passing the problem on to the next person is a perfectly valid and logical step. Honestly, don't worry about it. She will fix it up and everyone will be happy.

It's her responsibility to check the house before buying. It was sold as seen. She chose to buy it with work needing doing. There's no rule that houses have to be perfect before selling. It's now her responsibility to get it how she wants it. If she doesn't like that she shouldn't have bought it.

But seriously why be so bothered what anonymous posters who don’t know you think about you??

Focus on real shit. Like your crappy “friends”

This all seems like a lot of people with far far far too much time on their hands

All you do is focus on posts about this woman who supposedly means nothing to you

rather than the more serious issue which is you seem to have shit friends!

You think your “friends” are “stirring”.

why don’t you focus more on that issue then someone you say you don’t give a damn about

people keep quoting me, I am just replying!😂

I know you disagree, but you asked a question on AIBU, and my reply is that you are BU. I am not giving any narrative at all, you are taking all the comments from your buyer personally, when you really should let it go.

YOU are the one who gave a rather negative description of the place, none of us has seen it, but everything you say confirm what the buyer is saying. It's HER home, she can say anything she wants about it, she seems to spend a fortune to make it liveable for her own family.

If it was so amazing, why did you sell it, you should be grateful to have got rid of it? Anyone else would 😂

you are completely missing the point.
they have SOLD it. They don't live there anymore, it's someone else's home.

it's not about how long you live there, it's about NOT living there and not being the owner.

They only had it for 12 years, it's not even like a childhood home where they were born and have live ever since 😂. It can't be that hard to move on?

So she has purchased a house in need of renovation, got £5000 knocked off and is telling people when she moved ved in it was dirty, is that the crux of her tails?

did she have a survey that she paid for?

there is no rules about cleaning a house when you’re leaving, don’t worry about it

Your solicitor cocked up by not requesting the building reg cert @Sunbringer .

Unless you totally destroyed the house between her viewing and them moving in, she got no reason to be angry at you.

Just sounds like a jealous bitch, insecure that all she could afford is the regret of someone in her circle, who has now moved on to a bigger home, so trying to 1 up you.

Most people she speaks to about that will be curious and look at the listing themselves to see how much of a shit tip it really is, so don't worry about her fabrication. If you here her just say that is how you got it so cheap as we knew it needed work, but it was certainly not dirty or unsafe. It was never a forever home for us so we didnt sink money into renovations, to get a few extra thousand pound, that may not have been to the buyers taste anyway when we knew we wanted a nicer house

Have you actually heard any of this directly from her? It may just be hearsay and gossip, which I'd pay no attention to. Your 'friends' could be saying things to both of you. I'd just ignore it.

If anyone is that interested they will just search on right move

its a bit awkward that you know her... but the two perspectives are entirely normal.

I've just moved house and we have had the previous owner come back to visit... they were shocked at the amount of things we've "fixed" because in their eyes it was a perfectly fine house. They joked about us destroying it all..

In reality, it makes sense. They lived there for years, and the gradual slow accumulation of issues that happens with houses isn't something you are really focusing on when you live there. You either don't notice or just accept small problems, and the stuff/decoration/furniture makes makes rooms nicer and allows you to overlook issues etc.

But someone comes in, from 0, no previous experience, no emotional attachment, no furniture, no slow adjustment, or gradual change - and they just see the stark reality and all of the flaws leap out at them.

They also want to fix it all at once, because they want their perfect house, so it all seems like a much much bigger deal that it was to the previous owners.

Both perspectives are valid and reasonable.

Next time I saw her I'd say hi Sally how are you settling in? If she moaned I would say ah yes I had heard you were finding the house a bit harder work than you'd thought, still i would appreciate it if you wouldn't make negative comments about my family to mutual friends and the neighbours as it is unkind. I hope you get it all sorted soon, good luck.

This is a really good point, OP. If someone came to me gossiping and putting down my friends previous home, I’d shut that down at the source. And wouldn’t be sharing it with my friend in case it hurt her feelings.

At a guess I'd say that the renovation work she had done before moving in opened up a whole can of worms that she wasn't expecting. It might have been a bigger and more expensive job than either of you realised.

Tell your “friends” to stop passing her comments on.

The people that bought my house in 2008 now have a son in my son’s class. They bought just as the market was tumbling so while I didn’t get the price hoped for, the market fell further and they almost certainly resented that the house next door went for 75k less a year later. So I’d say they resent the price and the renovation cost, and they’re directing that with a bit of spite at you.

The dad, whom I met for the first time on a football sideline, was sarcastic and said ‘yeah, we absolutely loved having to dish out for new windows that first winter’ so I just shrugged and said ‘well, we were very happy there, even if we had to put on jumpers in December.’

its not you, it’s them.

the woman who bought your house is a wanker. why would you give it a 2nd thought. id be laughing at her everything I seen her. people are dicks. what sort of wanker gets on like that. you're giving her too much power