AIBU to actually want to physically murder the previous owners of my house?

[lacroixsweetie]

So my DH, DD (1.5 yrs) and I moved into our new home two weeks before Christmas (2.2 family with two cats moved out)
They left us with:

• a broken boiler - it thankfully was repairable but coincided nicely with a cold snap
• utterly (squalidly) filthy house - weeks of scrubbing required.
• a flea infestation

The two cats went with them but the fleas are still here and 5 weeks of sprays, hoovering, carpet and clothing washing, and bombing is making little difference. I am being eaten alive and our toddler has a nasty selection of bites and is developing a keen interest in any black speck she sees. I can't invite anyone to the house, especially anyone with a child in tow. I have their address, they live about 6 miles away and I could cheerfully murder them (or kidnap their cats so they can appreciate the full effect of a cat less, flea full house). Suggestions that will a) cheer me up and b) won't put me in trouble with the law gratefully accepted.

The fleas might be living in your Hoover after you've hoovered them up as they can be wily little wotsits.
Try putting a cat flea collar in your Hoover bag to finish them off.

Oh and no YANBU

Oh dear op, I feel for you. The problem with fleas is (clutching at straws here) it is possible that the previous owners didn't realise they had fleas, flea eggs can hatch years and I mean years after they have been laid, and the cause of the hatching can be anything like moving furniture, severe changes in temperature etc..

If it were me I would contact my solicitor regarding the boiler and electric surely what they have done in that respect is out of order and they should face a financial penalty imo.

WRT fleas, I would contact my local council for a professional fumigation (round here it's under £50 for a 3 bed house and they will come out once more after for free if there are still some hopping about.

A dead dog???!!!

This thread is making me want to give the previous owners of our house a big kiss when I next see them in town.

They left us coffee beans for the coffee machine and beer in the fridge. As well as a spotlessly clean house.

They may not appreciate the big kiss as much as I appreciated the beer though.

A friend of mine moved into a house that was fllthy once. She complained to the estate agent and the previous owners were made to pay a compensatory sum for the cleaning. I'm sure that would cover fleas, too. I'd kick up a fuss about it.

I looked after a dog for a friend of a friend once (more fool me) and the owner hadn't de-flead the dog. My house ended up over-run. I had to vacuum everything, wash anything that could be fitted in the machine (36 loads ) and spray the house liberally with indorex spray (an insect growth regulator, which is the only thing that works) then repeat the vacuuming and spraying a few days later. I won the battle but it was immensely time-consuming, inconvenient and expensive. You have my sympathies.

I'm with you Pickle - previous owners to our house thoughtfully left us a bottle of wine, 2 paper cups and a "good luck" card.

Seriously, a dead dog in the freezer?

I don't think it's possible to murder anyone in a non-physical way.

If the bombs and sprays aren't working, is there any chance it could be something else? I went a bit crazy with sprays and hoovering and frontline on my cats one year because 3yr old DD was scratching like mad and covered in little red bumps. She had chicken pox

We have contacted our solicitor about the issues with this house but am not holding my breath tbh....have already found out that the safety certs only mean the appliances/lights/boiler were tested as safe, not whether they actually worked properly! I mean, wtf????

Am very unhappy in this house now...all I can see of the future is ££££££ that needs to be spent on it....new fridge freezer (the one they left is dreadful), new windows on the back of the house and back door....it goes on......

You have my sympathy.

I moved into a house where the previous owners had cats. We tried everything - spent a fortune on sprays, bombs, rentokill but nothing worked. It was miserable. In the end we had to pull up every carpet in the house. We couldn't afford to replace the carpets immediately so had to beg and borrow rugs off friends and relatives until we could afford to replace them.

I moved recently and top of my list of questions on the houses we liked and were considering viewing was "do the owners have cats?". If the answer was yes, the house didn't get a viewing.

I will never EVER move into a house where the previous owners had a cat again.

YANBU. I share your sentiments exactly. Moved into a new house to discover - a broken boiler, dishwasher and washing machine. And the worst part - BEDBUGS! My whole family was covered head to toes in bites and we cancelled our xmas plans apart from running huge fumigation and laundry bills.

Then I tracked down the previous owners' email id and gave them a piece of my mind. The wife wrote a very abusive and nonsensical reply about how we must be paying for sins committed in previous life and they can not take any responsibilty for it.

I have day dreams now where I fancy taking them apart limb by limb.

Why are people so vile?

I think some people just have no moral compass....I left a bottle of wine and local take away menus for the chap who bought our house! (and he was a git!!)

This house was pretty clean to be fair, just dusty. They had also taken down pictures/mirrors etc and not done a great job patching up. Carpets were pretty vile but got a guy in to steam clean them prior to moving in and bar one, they all came up really well.

I just dont know how anyone could sell a house to couple with 2 young dc and know that it had a leaky roof and dodgy boiler and not care.
I wouldnt be able to sleep at night

Paying for sins committed in a previous life??? Bloody hell, I must have been Stalin!!!!

Lacroixsweetie Would it be a worth a letter to your Solicitor detailing your complaints? Perhaps they could do a letter to your seller's solicitors to get some sort of reimbursement for your expenses.

I pity you but if you want someone to add to your hit list please feel free to add the former owners of our property. We moved in to find among other things

Carpets covered in cat wee and a filthy litter tray stinking out a bedroom
All the furniture left downstairs with all soft furnishings covered in afore mentioned cat wee
fleas
broken boiler
huge pile of rubbish in garden (later discovered rubbish buried in garden)
all the curtain rails missing
Dirt grime and dirty filthy plates in all the kitchen cupboards
The dishwasher which we'd paid extra for broken beyond repair and stinking
A broken disgusting vile fridge which had an infestation of something crawling about it in
A broken washing machine IN the bath
Canniness planted in the loft and stubs of joints scattered randomally about the house

It was disgusting to say the least. we had to stay in rented for an extra 2 weeks while it was al sorted out as moving in was not an option. In the end we had to get industrial cleaners and 2 skips to get rid of it all. We knew when we put the offer in that they were not the cleanest of individuals but it went far beyond anything we anticipated. when we tried to take legal action we discovered they'd gone bankrupt and it wasn't worth our while.

Feel a bit of a wuss complaining now!!!!

We rented for 4 months before buying this house and I spent a whole day cleaning it from top to bottom before we left...it sparkled! It was much cleaner when we left than when we went in!

Its just...common decency isnt it?

On the day we moved into our house some of the things we discovered were that the total ground floor was soaking wet, a new kitchen ceiling, and mold growing on the back of all the kitchen cupboards.

We found out that the day before we had exchanged contracts, a pipe had burst above the kitchen ceiling (it was an extension) and had flooded the whole ground floor for 8 hours. They repaired the pipe and ceiling and didn't tell us what had happened

We had to rip out all the carpets and put in a new kitchen. When we tried to claim some compensation via solicitors we were told it was a case of "Buyer Beware" and we had to leave it at that as we couldn't afford legal fees.

The house was a total mess and they had even left dirty knickers in the bedroom

You have my sympathies, we dont have cats now but when we did I seemed to be the one the little buggers were attartced to. As a previous poster has said fleas lay eggs that can hatch - so you need to kill any eggs as well as the actual fleas. The only stuff strong enough we had to buy from the vets. failing that a professional defleaing seesion is called for.

mya - OMG, a dead dog in the freezer??? Dirty tampons below the carpet??What kind of skanky person does that?

When we moved into our house we had to spend 3 days cleaning it before we even started unpacking but the biggest reason I want a 'word' with the previous owner ( or her exdh) is the fact that it was an absolute death trap. He was a bit of a DIY nut and rather bad at it. The first thing we discovered was both the bathrooms had serious leaks and causing the house to subside, we rectified that and got on with other improvements. We were aware that the electrics needed looking at so had the fuse box changed. Electrician informed me that there was no trip switch and the fuses that had been used wouldn't even have blown if dc had stuck something in a socket

We then knocked through into the kitchen and we discovered a mains wire that had been joined with blu tack and plastered into the wall so a huge fire risk as that wire was supplying the lounge, kitchen and utility room- all with high energy appliances.

And the most recent thing, the boiler pump started leaking and because he is cack handed DIY nobber and he had installed the central heating himself, the water was dripping down into the electrics of the thermostat. If we hadn't changed the fuse box, the electrics wouldn't have tripped rendering ALL the radiators and pipe work live

I hope for her and his sake I don't ever see them again.

But on the bright side, we didn't have fleas :)

I can sympathise with you totally. We moved the week before christmas and had a nightmare.
Previous owners were still in the house at 4 o'clock, our removal men had been sat outside since 1. After much toing and froing between our solicitors, we were advised to just move our stuff in to any rooms which were empty. The previous owner then started ranting at me in the street about how we were lucky because we could afford a fancy removal company and they were doing it all themselves.
It took ages to clean the house, built in hob was filthy, built in freezer was completely frozen solid, drains were all blocked and inches of dust everywhere.
When we had viewed the property, it was immaculate. Think that maybe once they had accepted our offer, they didn't bother doing any cleaning.
To top it off, a week after we moved in, our cats got fleas. They have never had fleas before. This then gave me the creeps as we have a 4 month old.
I can recommend RIP, as previously mentioned. I took the LO out for the day and OH sprayed the whole house.

OP have you had a chat with the estate agents? what did they say? Also, contact your solicitor and get a sabre rattling letter for some compensation as you are going to have to get the council or Rentokil in or something. I think you should take photos of the flea bites too.

if all this fails, a stinking letter to the old owners is in order. It won't do anything other than give you the opportunity to vent and let them know what sorry excuses for human beings they are.

ah, well, um, my DM and SDF moved just before x-mas leaving the new occupants (parent with 2 kiddies under 5) with:-

a broken boiler (buttons glued on to keep it alive long enough for the sale).

the only toilet in the house not flushing.

broken water pipe above the kitchen (they painted over the mould the day before the move).

problems with the roof (missing lead flashing) causing leaks and mould in the bedrooms (again painted over).

leaking conservatory with all the double glazing blown.

a lovely front garden that they built up to cover a drain so that it was over the damp course level causing damp.

and the worst by a long way was the rat infestation (under the floors, in the walls and loft) caused by the broken sewage pipe under the conservatory.

There might be others but I felt a bit sick at this point and told them so and there reaction was "fuck em - they had cheapo survey done so its nowt to do with us"

At least they cleaned the carpets before they left eh?

Can you afford new carpets? Or rip up the old ones and sand the floorboards if not? We had to do that as our previous owners had dogs and dog hair was embedded in every carpet, especially in the downstairs room where it had obviously slept. DH is very allergic to dog and became very asthmatic.

To be fair though, the house was clean, just doggy. Poor you - it sounds absolutely awful.