Abandoned houses

[user64332]

I pass an abandoned house everyday on the school run and I'm so curious about how it came to be left. someone's life just frozen in time. It has a Lexus parked outside that is growing weeds and moss around the wheels, inside is spotlessly clean, no trace or belongings but part of the interior is now sun faded. The window frames are rotting, the front and back garden has very tall weeds, but you can tell it was once neat and well kept. It is a shame to see such a solid period house rotting needlessly. It is semi detached and the house next door, and all the others on the street are in perfect condition.

I can't help wonder how on earth this happened? If someone owed money they surely would have their property and car repossessed. If they died with no next of kin, doesn't the state claim the property? What happens? Has anyone ever lived next to a house like this and found out the story?

I see plenty of dilapidated and falling down houses with boarded up windows and rubbish filled gardens and assume they were worth very little and hard to sellnand further deterioted, but this one with the expensive car parked outside obviously has a different story.

@DDIJ why not sell it?

Why not auction it and let someone else have a go at bringing it back into use ?

Do neighbours have any recourse in this say if a house is abandoned and it's terrace/semi, surely you'll get dampness etc coming through!!

@DDIJ

I left mine. I'm not in prison or a fugitive.

Why?

I bought an abandoned house! I don’t know what happened to the owner, it was bought from some long lost relative who never lived in it, it was a Victorian terrace, lived in by foxes mainly, the previous occupant had been a heavy smoker, everything was yellow and sticky, carpet was horrendous, curtains all torn, no back door, windows smashed, no kitchen left, I spent around £12k getting it in a liveable condition, basic kitchen, bathroom, new windows and door, painted and carpeted and sold it for £40k profit, the person who bought it still lives there 14 years later and redone the kitchen etc, I left the garden, just strimmed it back, I was on maternity leave and lived in it with a newborn on my own whilst doing it up, we lived in one room and borrowed water from a neighbour, happy memories.

there's one near me, beautiful chocolate box looking place but completely dilapidated & garden overgrown.

It changed hands over 40 years ago, the new owner wanted to alter and extend it but some neighbours complained & the PC and planning dept. rejected their plans so they abandoned it out of spite. They moved abroad and died some years ago and left it to relatives who have never been here. people ask our PC about it and make offers from time to time, I gather one wants to sell, the others continue the spite toward the village and refuse so it just sits there slowly going back to nature. They all live overseas and don't need the money.

My DC have a lovely den in there, they don't know I know. the wild garden is bursting with crocus and daffodils at the moment. there's a haunting romance to it.

There's a couple in our village in a prominent position. They've been decaying for years. The council have served enforcement a number of times. Each time a small amount of work would be started and then stopped again so the Council had to go back to square one. Apparently the properties are owned by 3 relatives who didn't agree on what to do with them and one of whom lives abroad. One has now died so it forms part of the estate and everyone was hopeful it would now all move ahead but a number of years later it is still in the same state - so either sorting the estate has proved problematic or the 1/3rd share has passed to someone who is equally disinterested.

Years ago it was part of my job to "manage" the abandoned houses you could see as you drove down a motorway in Scotland. Were purchased as part of developing the motorway. A few, maybe all by now, were sold on but anything like that takes ages to sort. A lot of property owned by statutory bodies isn't looked after, as they tend not to have maintenance funds available. Total disgrace.

@Rae36

Apparently it's family that won't sell or inherit due to a family dispute

There's one abandoned near us for this reason. Inherited by 3 cousins. One wants to live in it, one wants to sell it as is, one wants to renovate and sell. Its been boarded up for 18 years now.

There was once a farmhouse like this near us except there were about 10 cousins some of whom lived overseas. Nobody could agree what to do after the matriarch died and the property had no upgrades since about 1930. Eventually it got put on the market but because it was dilapidated and a 1/10 share was not worth very much ie not worth fighting over. Many developers came along and wanted to increase the footprint of the site to which the local parish council objected. We put an offer in which was accepted - by now the cousins just wanted out - and because our plans to develop were just adding amenity buildings to serve the main house (garages, washrooms, stables, workshops, sheds etc) we received no objections. Now it looks completely different and the farmhouse has been restored to its former glory.

More than 40 years ago there was a double murder in Dundee . An elderly doctor and his wife were found dead in their house .
As far as I am aware the once beautiful Victorian villa is still boarded up.

Property law is quite different in Scotland. Whether that prevents or encourages abandoned properties, I have no idea.

George Clarke did a telly programme about this about a decade ago. It showed the stunningly beautiful period houses in Mayfair that have been bought by foreign billionaires and left to rot - an absolute tragedy, as unlike the macmansions on Bishops Avenue these are historic listed buildings, which once lost can never be replaced.

If I remember rightly the show featured a tenacious council employee who had made it his mission to return these houses to circulation, or at least persuade/force the owners to maintain them. It was fascinating, and gave me hope that things might change. But, this was a decade ago...

I used to visit a huge abandoned mansion when I was a child. The property must have been hundreds of years old, and I would have loved to have found the story for how it came to be so unloved and abandoned. It was quite vandalized inside, although it was in a nice part of town and I knew the neighbours often called the police out to it when they saw people inside, so it was never totally destroyed or set on fire. It was fascinating just going inside and wandering around the large empty rooms. Many of them had big wooden doors that were locked, I don’t think anyone ever managed to break inside. There was a staircase to the attic which was completely blocked by a sofa wedged into it, but I’d have loved to have gone up for a look!

Around 10 years ago it was demolished and a new build estate was built on the land.

We went to look at a house where the owner had gone into a home, then died. It was a thatched cottage with an old layout (one room lead to another - no corridors). The only room that was ok was the kitchen. Every other room had outdoor plants growing through the windows or ceiling, mice droppings, fusty smell.

She can't have maintained it at all once ill health took over, but there was a photo album showing her and her husband lovingly renovating it 30 years ago. They'd had marble work tops put into the kitchen, a large pool built and wooden a conservatory. All gone to pot through lack of maintenance.

My grandparents house looks derelict as my uncle only lives there part time. It's a very loved house, but when you walk in everything looks 'old person' and nothing has changed since they died (90s). My grandparent's three piece suite, furniture, piano, carpets, net curtains etc. Everything is at least 30 years old if not more. He will live there full time when he retires, but until then...

Thanks for the explanation alwayslucky

There are lots of derelict cottages around us, in a very rural area.

As far as I am aware it is down to the agricultural clauses on them. As the need for men on farms declined many of these cottages were abandoned as they couldn't be rented out or sold. The agricultural tie basically states that the property can only be occupied by someone who is 'wholly or mainly occupied in agriculture or forestry'.

You can get the AOC removed, but it's not guaranteed - and many of these properties were abandoned so many years ago now that they are derelict.

Current obsession is abandoned urbex Canada on YouTube, so many channels don’t respect these places but I find this one great.

Me too UponAMidnightBeery fascinating.

There's a Victorian house near me with a metal shutter over the door and the bay windows are knocked out and filled with breeze blocks instead.

I know there was a murder on that road, but not sure if it was that house. I often wonder what the story is with the house. There's another abandoned one nearby that has had scaffolding up for years, I know that one was something to do with a house fire.