So angry at sellers, left the house FILTHY

[Oldperithia]

I feel so sad for DS and his GF. They’ve saved and sacrificed so much for 3 years to scrape together a deposit on a house. Finally were able to buy a small 3 bed semi. Viewed it, offered 5% under asking and it was accepted.
They’ve been no trouble during the process whereas the older (60’s) sellers (who are apparently moving to Spain) have dragged their feet throughout the whole process to give them as much time as possible.

Well, DS and GF finally got the keys yesterday and were so excited but that soon turned to dismay when they got there to find everything really dirty, like they’ve not cleaned for months.

Carpets, skirtings, blinds thick with dust, walls all grubby and marked, light fittings greasy dusty, light switches black with dirt, the kitchen thick with grease and food stains and spatter over cabinets and cooker. Wasp nest in the roof.

Floors are sticky and grimy, the whole house is just dirty.

How do people live like that and how do they think it’s acceptable to leave like it for the next person.

We will all muck in and help clean and decorate but I feel so sad for them, it’s really taken the shine off the whole thing.

I know that they are fortunate to be in this position but it’s still made me so angry. If you know of an older couple moving to spain soon know that they’ve lived like dirty pigs and they’ve no thought for the people they’ve sold to. I hope karma bites them!!

Non issue. Cleaning is cleaning… if it’s beautifully clean, lovely… but no one died from deep cleaning a house.

When we bought our current house we were buying and selling so had to move in the day we got the keys.
The sellers were elderly (late 80s) and they actually paid a company to clean it after they left. When we moved in it wasn't cleaned at all, we informed the estate agents as I felt the sellers should get their money back from the cleaners but I don't know if they did.
Made it really hard as we were cleaning behind ourselves in the old house and shifting everything to.the new one at the same time, then having to.clean everywhere before we could unpack!

Well they'd be giving it a good old clean anyway wouldn't they? Sorry, not being flippant. The sellers were an older couple who probably got sick of the house and couldn't wait to get away. They can use the money 'saved' to get some cleaners in, or even better, get scrubbing to make their new house truly theirs! They'll laugh about it one day. I hope they grow to love it
😊

I must have been very lucky.

From student flat through private rental, council rental then two bought flats none has been dirty at all and my present flat especially was immaculate.

I know other people's dirt looks worse and there's likely to be some in a tired empty house but many people must live in squalor.

You certainly don’t want to move into your new home after all the stress of packing, the legal process, the move, all the rest of it, to find the new house filthy. Especially when you’ve had to clean your old house as the move had been going on. It’s horrible to find the new house dirty.

This happened to me too with first home. We were buying a dump to do up so we weren't terribly surprised the previous owners didn't bother to clean it. We had to move in to the shit hole with our 2 kids and gradually do it up over the next 7 years. By the time we sold it looked incredible. We passed it on to the next owners looking immaculate and with a bottle of wine on the bench.

Rubbish. A professional clean is NOT in a Contract. Might be in a rental but absolutely not in a residential house sale.

@bramleygirl it absolutely has been and is the norm afaiac. If you were my conveyancing solicitor and this was news to you, I'm afraid I would change firms.

I wonder what sector of the market makes up your business?

I haven't had professional clean in either of my contract

There are a lot of entitled shits in the world (especially I'm afraid to say in the UK) who just seem to feel that the world owes them something and they can cruise through life doing the absolute minimum.
An earlier poster (wisely) said that everyone needs a first-buy horror story to joke about in later years.
Ours was the extensive 1990's porn collection found behind a bath panel, and the 100's of empty gin and vodka bottles found behind the kitchen kick boards, and the cat flea infestation we moved into. John and Leigh thanks for the anecdotes. It took 10 years to become funny...

I look at it as a rite of passage. Last year we moved in to property number 5 and had a pleasant surprise when it was legt nice and clean by the previous owner’s daughter ( he had died) and I am very grateful to her as every other purchase had been a bit grim . We always left ours clean and said it would be great if someone else did the same and after 26 years it finally happened.

The worst was a flat that had been tenanted by a lovely couple with a small dog, she sadly had cancer and the council told them not to move out of they would make themselves intentionally homeless and they wouldn’t rehouse so I ended up helping them find somewhere.

The Landlord turned up the day after the move to remove some rubbish from the garden and said he wanted to take the horrible dog pissed carpet to reuse but that he wouldn’t be able to fit in the garden stuff as well, That worked for us as DD had just turned one and thankfully had learned to walk the previous week which was a massive relief as wasn’t crawling on it and we were planning to rip it out that afternoon. The garden waste was easier to remove than revolting carpet and I hope he was planning to refuse in his own house and not inflict it on tenants somewhere else. Strange man.

When I bought my first house, we walked in when we got the keys & thought what have we done. The kitchen was inches deep in nicotine & chip fat, the walls, units & floor, my mum scraped it off with a scraper. The wiring in the kitchen was lethal, my dad was an electrician & when it came to ripping it out, he ended up turning off all the power because nothing was wired correctly & safely. We couldn't use the shower because the chances were we would have been electrocuted, it was lethal. Every wall in the house had been painted bright purple from us last viewing it. My mum took the stair carpet up with a wallpaper scraper, we must have spent hundreds on sugar soap & bleach. We ended up buying the biggest tins of magnolia emulsion to create a blank canvas to start us off, we had to replace every internal door from where the husband had attacked his wife with a hammer. We got the keys on 12 October & moved in on Halloween with just 2 bedrooms decorated,one for sleeping & living & the other as a dining room. We had half a kitchen, no cooker, just a fridge freezer, sandwich toaster, kettle, toaster & a microwave, but we managed. By Christmas, we had most of it finished, a living room, a kitchen that just needed tiling, no stair carpet & one bedroom not finished. When we were doing it up, exh suddenly had to work nights, we went & fetched enough laminate flooring for the lounge, worked his night shift, came home & we started laying the flooring about 10.00am, by 7.00pm we had a proper living room & we were sat eating a takeaway. It just takes time & some of our best times were when we were doing all the work. It will be worth it.

Yes, the sellers shouldn’t have left it in that state, but save the angst all round and just get in a move out cleaning service. Yes, it costs money but if they don’t have enough for that tucked away so it won’t effect them untowardly, they really weren’t in a position to buy a place as you need a decent buffer for unexpected things, urgent repairs etc.

Things do get gunged up with moving out also. Last place we moved out of, we did it over a few days. It was clean to start with. After the furniture was moved over the course of a week (sold a lot of it to buy new at next place)and cupboards opened to pack, it seemed to kick up greasy dust that must have been lurking behind furniture as by the time it was empty there was a layer of sticky, grimy dust everywhere. No way was that there the week prior!

Gosh, what expectations people have nowdays. I agree it’s sad that they left it dirty but if that’s how they lived then it may not have been on purpose, they may have just left it to their personal standards.
The point being though, that no one puts in any elbow grease with life anymore. My first two properties I had to completely renovate let alone clean. The carpets I pulled up disintegrated in my hands. I had to live with an absolutely filthy disgusting kitchen and bathroom for 2 years before I could replace it all. My toilet didn’t flush for 6 months and I had to use a washing up bowl to flush it each time. I think working your way up teaches you to respect and look after what you’ve worked for. I don’t think this is learnt by paying people to clean or getting everyone else you know to clean for you. What happens if they want to paint the walls?

Good luck to them anyway, I hope they make a lovely home for themselves however they go about it 😌

A professional clean is NOT in a Contract. It's not even in the Property Information Form nor the Fittings and Contents Form. A seller signs to say they will remove all rubbish from the property, if taking light fittings they should replace with a basic fitting, supposedly make good any holes left when removing fixtures. A Tenancy Agreement is a different matter and the return of your deposit usually ensures the property is cleaned on vacating. I see Contracts from firms up and down the country on a daily basis and none contain a cleaning clause because it simply isn't a thing.

The first house bought with ex husband was a huge disappointment the day we got the key and raced round after work to see it.

It was dirty everywhere, especially the kitchen, ground in dirt and food and the smell was horrible. Thank goodness we weren't going to move in straight away as it gave us several weeks to deep clean right through before we put anything in there.

I was hugely disappointed and it did take the shine of the house for a while but I've moved countless times since then but can say that that house was the worst one.

The couple we bought from were both nurses too, cleanliness and hygiene obviously not being anywhere on their radar.

@bramleygirl Clearly it isn't a thing in your experience. However, it is in mine. You do know that a solicitor can add clauses to a contract and a client or purchaser can insist on their inclusion. In my experience such clauses are commonplace but I have only bought four houses and sold three houses so what would I know. In my experience such a clause is a pre-requisite for both parties.

May I ask if you are a qualified solicitor, specialising in residential conveyancing?

I am a paralegal with 40 years experience. 20 years at my current firm working alongside fully qualified solicitors with over 60 years experience. Residential conveyancing is our speciality. Of course clauses can be added and removed. A cleaning clause has never featured in any Contracts we have dealt with. I've just messaged one of the solicitors and asked the simple question regarding a cleaning clause and his response was a straight no. If you say you always insist then crack on but it certainly isn't the norm. Can I ask whereabouts in the country you are?

@bramleygirl SW London.

The Law Society's Standard Conditions of Sale (5th Edition), which sets out the terms of all residential conveyancing contracts, says nothing about cleanliness.

For new build houses some contracts have a "clean and tidy" clause.

As with all contracts, it is up to buyers and sellers to negotiate and agree additional clauses, but cleaning is not standard.

Please can you give it a rest now?

We recently sold our house and left it pristine. We'd actually put our stuff in storage prior to move out date which helped but it was deep cleaned from top to bottom and I got someone in to professionally clean the oven as well.
I'd be so upset to think of our poor buyers all excited to move in and then being disappointed with the condition of it.

We haven't moved into our new house yet but not too fussed as there will be some quite disruptive work happening first thing so will all need a clean after that anyway.

Certainly can 🙂

Not you, t'other one! 😙

I will never understand why people do this, it's utterly disgusting. I've always left the property pristine alongside a gift and notes about rubbish collection, window cleaner etc. Yes it's hard work when you're moving but it's also common decency. I would also get the pros in so they have a clean slate to start making it their own. I hope they are very happy there OP, and the grubby bastards turn up to an equally grubby property 😑

You buy them a gift?! Why?! What's the point??