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!!

I feel your pain. Our first house was like this. The husband and wife were getting divorced. Clearly neither cared about state of the house anymore after offer accepted. Both just took what they wanted and left so much crap. 5 van loads and a. Skip. Didn't even bother emptying the loft. Didn't empty fish pond despite us specifying this on the contract. Dead fish later as we didn't know there were fish in there that needed feeding. It ruined us buying our first home. We got there in the end and had a lovely 5 years before moving again. When we moved we left it as clean as we could and left a bottle of prosecco for the next buyers (who were also first time buyers) as I just remember that feeling when buying your first home.

They are lucky to have you to help but it will all be forgotten shortly and they will be settled in 🌷

I’ve just never experienced this in numerous house moves.

When they looked at the house to put in the offer, was it clean then? I assume so. It just seems really weird that someone would stop cleaning their house because they sold it. There's a lot of awful people around though.

Lucky you I guess! Plenty of people have unfortunately

I don't think its that shocking- even if people clean or intend to clean lots of time moving creates/reveals dirt and i'd always clean moving in and out anyway. it feels like a bit of an overreaction.
And please don't have the "mums" go round - teach them that maybe men can clean too

OP I feel so sorry for them. R bought our 2nd home 5 years ago & left our previous (1st) home absolutely pristine. We left a welcome home card, a vase of flowers and a bottle of champagne, a kettle, tea bags, coffee, milk, even 2 cups & saucers. I wanted them to feel as welcome as we did from the previous owners when we bought it.

Later that day we pulled up to our new home. Waiting for us was a house still being loaded into vans. A garage full of decoupaged guitars (really), a rotting chicken in the oven and a bathroom spattered in faeces. It was horrific. She had removed every light bulb. I was so so upset.

I know exactly what you mean about it taking the shine off. They will get there but god - cleaning a strangers filth on your own dime is so disheartening.

Here too.

Unfortunately I stayed home packing and taking care of three DCs, and exH did the walk through. Saw nothing. Smelled nothing. Felt nothing slimy or sticky.

My DS first house was not only filthy, items were left in each room; dead plants, half used bathroom stuff; half bottles of opened wine (well I assume wine as they were wine bottles, but who knows, as everything went in the dustbins anyway), plus a 'deposit' in the toilet which to be fair did not flush properly, but that only required a 5 minutes sorting to flush.
How the owner managed to live there and why he thought it ok to leave like that, I do not know.

I thought we were clean people till we moved out. Shifting so much stuff kicks up a lot of dust and debris that you just didn't realise was there. We didn't bother cleaning it though, mainly because the landlord booted us to make way for demolition and redevelopment. Seemed a bit like trying to shine a turd waiting to be flushed. Still, even though I thought it looked filthy, it wasn't that bad in the videos I took of every room. A bit of advice to people moving who actually did love the place, don't watch the video. Just keep in case of landlord damage jackanory time. It's painful to watch after the fact.

When we bought our house it was the same, I had to use a wallpaper scraper to get the grease off the top of the kitchen cabinets and the first window I opened fell out of the frame! We also discovered the the bedroom carpet was laid on top of old carpet and they’d cut it around their wardrobe, so we had to fork out for new carpet.

I feel for them. When we were ftb the celebration was ruined by opening door (after gettimg keys late) to house which has not been cleaned probably since we had offer accepted....
We spend next day clenaing, airing the smell and only after that we finally felt ok. Still haven't forgiven the seller and it's been a decade

The first few days in a new house are dedicated to cleaning anyway.
This situation is by no means unusual, it is to be expected. Are the dads also helping with the cleaning or just the mums? There is something about your over reaction in the post and your drama that you and the other mum are swooping in with all the cleaning products… time to cut the apron strings of your son! He is a grown man now and can do his own cleaning and sort out his own issues. Get them a nice home-warming gift and that’s it.

They last visited the house in May, they knew it was tired and needed upgrading but they said it didn’t look especially dirty.
It seems that since May the sellers have thought ‘we don’t have to clean now’. They had a big dog so lots of hair too. Their adult daughter was living there too and these people aren’t frail elderly, very fit and active. Daughter was moving out first to her own place, they were following into her place temporarily then going to Spain.

Dads will be involved too, there’s carpets to rip up, painting to be done, they’ll be cleaning high level stuff and along with DS will be moving stuff from the loft that was left (old carpets and rubbish).

They’ll get there and yes, they are so fortunate to be in this position to own at their age (24), they’ll look back and just see it as a blip, I’m probably more annoyed on their behalf

We put in an air vent system in each room so the fresh air comes in and old air is sucked out, along with some new radiators and windows. Very lucky my husband is a builder and quite good at most aspects of home improvement so didn't have to pay for any trades to come in but it was a stressful few months and had to get rid of the mattress from the cot and all the clothes underneath as they were ruined.

Honestly I couldn't get upset about this!!

It's all temporary... It can be cleaned/decorated, no-one ever achieved anything without getting their sleeves rolled up.

Kettle on, radio on, trips to B&M and the tip... seriously... just enjoy it!!

Yes this. Get some food delivered, some music on and everyone chipping in and helping to clean a room. Could be good fun and a good memory to make albeit a bit of a rubbish start.

Not me,but a friend of mine did a council house swap

Friend was mopping and dusting her way out of the back door so it was lovely for the new tenant

Got to the new house-shit smeared up the bathroom walls
Wee and poo ground into the carpet (both child and animal)
Thick layers of fat everywhere
Sticky floors
Mould in the bedrooms
Garden covered in dried dog poo
A shed full of dirty junk
Piles of unbagged and unbinned dirty nappies everywhere
Windows so dirty,you couldn't see through them
A layer of dirt on everything-god knows what else

I knew the other woman-she was a nasty piece of work but I didn't have her down as filthy

It was so bad,it took my friend,her family and her ex 4 days to get it clean again

We bought from a frail lady on her own in her 90s. The house was generally clean and tidy but the grime on some things was unreal. She didn't see it or couldn't get to it.

My friend recently bought a house and they left all the kitchen appliances which seemed great. Until she found a sausage in the grill, stuck to it. That was the tip of the iceberg....

Ours left half a Domino's pizza in the wardrobe. I had a longer complete time with not coming here until uni was starting and the owner had been out for weeks due to their breakup. The pizza was blue.

I also once bought from the neighbourhood coke dealer. I knew he was in prison and the sale was a condition of his release but I didn't expect to find:

Giant dog poo in the attic
A rusty scrap pile
The broken head of Mary
Monkey tiki lights
Underwear under the stairs of an unfinished basement
A man's license under the furnace (not his)
And a plethora of often creepy things

Though never cash or drugs

Yes! It's brilliant stuff! I'm on my third bottle in this kitchen 😬 the oven took a day and a half to clean too and that was with one of those oven overnight cleaning kits melting the worst off.

We had this. It was almost like when we exchanged the previous owner just gave up. The garden previously immaculate was full of weeds. The house had so much dirt that my crawling children were covered while I was trying to clean. We had someone come in and clean it for us in the end because I couldn’t get it all done.

Amongst all the other typical surprises you expect (things needing repair that were not visible) it was very depressing.

We had left our home immaculately clean, with instructions left, a nice note and I think even a hamper. It’s not always like this, so upsetting when your first day is though.

We had the same thing - I was very pregnant and we had just left our old house in a beautiful condition with a hamper for the new owners. Then we arrived at our new house, the previous owners were late and still chucking things in the back of a lorry. It was disgustingly dirty and they had left a load of their stuff in the garage, loft and garden. I cried so much. We had to spend so much time getting the house into a livable condition, which was soul destroying after spending so much time already to get our old house up to scratch.

It's just so incredibly rude, all of it, but the disgusting toilets was the worst part. Once we got over that hump and made the house our own, it was nothing but lovely. I hope they get to that place soon.

I'm not defending filth... but chain purchases don't leave a lot of time. You need to empty the house in the morning, give the keys over by midday... when exactly are you supposed to deep clean?

The dreaded Military march outs... we had 24hrs after the stuff left at least to clean everything!

No chain either side. They’ve had weeks to move out slowly as they were going into their daughter’s place short term. No excuse.