Awful woman slagging off my family home

If someone started complaining to me about the previous owner of their house I’d think they were weird, not the previous owner.

And that someone would tell you as much.

I would tell a friend if someone was bad mouthing them with something personal, accusing a friend of raising children in an unfit home.

I'd have just replied, well yes, that's why you took her £5k less offer. No-one does up a house they are planning on selling, it's best to take the lower offer and the buyer can do it to their taste. But just shut it down. Ignore her. If anything is said by another parent, then just reply, "isn't putting up with a bathroom etc, standard, when you plan to sell?"

Tbf when you buy a house it often seems like you find something wrong every other week. We bought in 2024 and since have had the boiler break, the roof need fixing three times, the bath leak through to the kitchen, the windowsills fall off, the doors break (both of them), the ovens break, a leak in the ceiling, a hole appear upstairs to downstairs.

Bloody everything seems to have been on their last legs when she sold and was not apparent. It’s likely she didn’t realise everything was very close to being completely fucked but it is annoying when you’ve paid a lot and it happens.

@misscee5

To my previous post, I'll that the reason that I was anxious when selling was that I'd had three developers all trying to tell me that the house was falling apart at the seams. They'd offered me less than half its worth.

One of them owned a house round the corner plus the house adjacent to his. I'd been thinking about renting it out at that time and had told him (truthfully) that a letting agency had said that the house was fine.

"Oh," he said airily, "That depends on what kind of tenants you're looking for."

He pointed out that he'd replaced the entire roof of the house he was renting out and claimed that ours needed the same. He told me that he'd modernised the entire house.

Yes - he'd done the neighbouring house the same time as he'd retiled his own: very cost effecting for him, since he had a roofing company.

Then neighbouring house is currently standing empty (after his tenant died) and he's now renovating the house that was supposedly in immaculate condition.

I've no idea what it's like on the inside but I've realised that he's just painted the old council door from the '70s grey. (Fife council used the same door on all its properties). So much for it being completely renovated. It's being lying empty since last year. (I know, because he's complained about empty home council tax.)

So far as the roof of our old house is concerned, I got a local roofer to inspect it for me before the I got the surveyor in - I was all set to pay for him to replace it.

The roofer informed me that the roof was in good condition. He spotted one tile that could do with being replaced and did that.

Let her get on with it. She brought it as seen and she is entitled to do what she wants with it. It is incredibly rude of her but also the friends or neighbours feeding this back to you are dicks. I'd challenge them "And do you agree with her and think I lived in squalor? Otherwise I'm not quite sure why you are telling me. She sounds very rude and I don't wish to hear any more about it thank you"

I think YABU for overthinking this.

I would just be glad the house has sold for only 5k below asking price. Lots of houses aren’t selling.

She probably just wants to gossip with neighbours.

Next time someone says anything I would say ‘That’s so odd, she couldn’t stop raving about the house and my decor when she viewed it.’

We had a similar situation in our village, we all thought the buyer was being a moany cow if it makes you feel better

"how can people live like that?"

is not an unusual comment, and a fair one. If you have to immediately change or modernise something, you can wonder how and why people put up with that for so long.

"would have been a waste of money to modernise, it sold anyway and we are redoing the new house" is the answer.

When I sold the family home, I made no bones about what needed doing to it, as I saw no point in doing it up simply to sell it, to somebody who would prefer to suit their own taste, Nothing serious, but as you describe; dated decor and a bathroom which needed overhaul. When a possible buyer questioned me, I replied that I had set a lower price accordingly.
The buyers had their own survey done and the sale went through; a young couple who were clear that they were buying a "doer-upper" in the area they wanted.
I suspect that your buyer did not realise, either how long DIY projects take, or how much a builder will charge to take the work on for you.
She had her chance to weigh the prospect up, and is now trying to blame you for her miscalculation.
If she had a justified grievance, she has the option of tackling you about it; she lives close enough to have DC at the same school, but she opts to blank you and mutter behind your back instead. She knows that she has no real grounds for complaint.

it could just be "bathroom is in a such a dreadful state, can you recommend anyone, we need it done urgently"

Unless you are there to witness the actual conversation, it's pointless getting upset about normal conversations.

I'll add to my previous posts that our old house had a pink bathroom. I was all set to replace it with a white suite, but the estate agent told me that it wasn't worth it.

When a cousin sold her mum's old place, she put in a new kitchen and bathroom. She told me that she passed the house a week after a completion, and there was a skip containing the brand new kitchen with the protective film still on the sink.

No, I don't mean hers are higher, I mean just different. Each to their own. She can have her opinion, it doesn't mean she's right, it's just her view that's all.

Calling a house where you only spent 12 years, and that you were happy to sell, "family home"

Is taking things way too personally! It's just a house, you lived in it for a decade, sold it and moved on. It's not your family home.

It honestly sounds like you need a purge of friends. A hive of gossipy drama llamas is too much hard work. I keep my circle small, with maximum integrity. Don’t dwell on it, they will find a new morsel to chat shit about soon enough.

She sounds rather odd, I wouldn’t worry about her. People will know you’re a decent person.

Eh? How long does one have to live in a home with ones family before one is permitted to call it a family home?

don’t care about her opinion on decor, like you say each to their own.
all your friends and neighbours have been on rightmove to check your house and have their own opinion anyway 😂

Dated yes, modernisation needed
other people will call that "grim". Again, you are taking it far too personally, you have moved, why do you care!

way below her clearly very high standards. So why buy it then?
she's paying to modernise it, isn't she?

Can’t you just phrase it as yes we knew it needed work doing but we’d planned for a while to move so wasn’t worth doing anything, glad it’s off our hands now tho

but you sold it. Thinking about it and calling it your "family home" when you should have long moved on is silly.

You are the one getting upset about the new owner, when you should be concentrating on your new home. Even the neighbours are no longer your neighbours, it's not your "family home", it's one house where you used to live...

I genuinely think she feels threatened in some way and has to prove that she is 'better' in some way because she has your leftovers so to speak. So she feels the need to tell people how shit the house was because she is insecure that you have moved to somewhere bigger and she bought something that you felt you had outgrown. Otherwise she really wouldn't be saying these things.