Absolutely fuming - why are some people so bloody selfish - moving house hell :-(

[DeludedDay]

Some mumsnetters may well recognise this but I need to vent now as furious.
Yesterday we brought a new house, all completed at 11am - all contracts agreed that all parties would vacate property by 1pm. At 1pm armed with keys to our new house we went in to be greeted by the place still full of junk, three dogs running rounds, cats shut in the bedrooms, stuff everywhere... we were not impressed but proceeded to be kind when they eventually turned up over an hour a later, offered to help move out etc. We had to unload our stuff as van was due back so we put all of this in one room whilst we waited for them to shift.
During this time they were repeatedly rude to us about our 'right' to be in they're house, their dogs were terrified and pooing and peeing over the house and on our furniture, they decided it was ok to smoke in the property whilst they finished packing and became increasingly aggressive towards us as we asked what was happening with the seemingly increasing pile of junk building up.
They eventually left about 7pm in the evening. They left any furniture they didn't want, against our wishes and agreement, there is junk and crap everywhere, and there was an overflowing skip in the front garden full of more junk. There is at least another skip laid left around the place.
We were told skip man would take skip today - and indeed a very nice man turned up to take away skip... unfortunately he had turned up yesterday, had been turned away by them which he thought was strange and told to come back today... unsurprisingly he hasn't been paid! As the skip is so over flowing we will have to have a second load, and likely a third to deal with the rest of the rubbish - so I am now facing about a £450 bill for their crap.
I am so upset - this is supposed to be our lovely new family home, and it feels tainted and grubby now and framed in conflict! We know we have to do some work to it anyway and have cleaners, carpets and painters coming this week but just so flaming furious as these people - how can anyone think these behaviours are ok?

That's really shit op. In your shoes I think I would get as much evidence of the amount you've had to spend (receipt from the skip man etc) then i'd present it to the other party (through the Solicitor) for payment, making it clear that if they don't you will pursue it.

Then go online and pay the 40 quid for a Small Claims Court claim.

Similar happened to us - when we moved in the house was full of their crap, including around 100 black bags in the attic which cost us a fortune to shift.

In our case though, they left an old and fairly unattractive fruit bowl in the kitchen. Which turned out to be a rare and original Clarice Cliff piece, which we sold to a dealer for £600

^Am I reading this right?

Two hours from completion to moving in?^

Yes and that's slow! You would normally expect to be out with the door locked behind you within minutes or before completion. You don't get faffing around time, much less this nonsense with dogs and skips and aggression.

As someone said, you'll get this sorted and laugh about these twats in time.

"I think you are getting conrfused between exchange and completion diddl?"

guilty as charged!

💐 and 🍷 that all sounds horrible. I have rented several skips over the years, and we have always had to pay when the skip is delivered. Are you sure that the skip company are being honest with you?

diddl

I'm relieved by that as otherwise you have had sellers taking the piss!

What a nightmare :(

We had similar issues with the people not being gone by the time they were supposed to be and also with things being left in the garden etc. They did come back for them later in the week. The house was left really messy though. I'd spent days cleaning our previous house for the new people moving in and just seeing the mess made me want to cry. Cleaning two houses from top to bottom alongside packing and unpacking all within the space of a week was exhausting!

I hope you get things sorted on Monday.

Similar happened to me, complicated by my solicitor being sports-friend of vendor, unknown until too late. and I was widowed and alone. Vendors had been in local shop that morning, seeking boxes, and they were hours late, ceiling of "conservatory" had central light wires exposed, with rain dripping down, plus surveyor (and I) had missed fact that kitchen floor near sink had only wooden supports remaining when I took lino up; flooring had been well-wetted at some time and impossible to stand on.
Friends moved rubbish they'd left, and offered to take their logs for woodburner, when vendor said they'd return "soon" for logs, which blocked side path.
I'll be checking next solicitor before engaging, and Estate Agents, and doing my own survey - it's still a bad experience ten years on.

Best of luck in your new home, OP.

When we moved out of the FMH I made sure I had all my stuff moved out (shunted carloads to DSis's garage over a couple of days) but XH was still faffing around hours later. They practically had to drag him bodily off the premises. Then he kept calling round practically every day, and rummaging in the post box in case there was anything in it for him, for weeks, until they threatened him with the police. I think he had a problem with the concept that once you've sold a house it isn't anything to do with you any more.

It works the other way too; we had moved out of our house a few weeks before it was sold. The buyers asked if we could lend them our keys for an hour or so the day before completion to "drop off a few boxes".

We agreed but when we called by later that evening to give our house a final check, they had fully moved in to what was legally still our house and had their feet up watching their telly. Nothing we could really do to turf them out, but presumably our house insurance would have been invalid. Cheeky feckers.

were the occupiers tenants or owners?

YANBU. they'll get theirs someday.

OP, it sounds awful. If you're open to a bit of 'woo', you could have someone come and do a ritual to cleanse all the negative energy from the house.

Op are you in Scotland? Often solicitors add breech clauses into their contracts. Ours did when we moved house 5 years ago.

We got the keys at 9am on a Friday morning from our solicitior. Our solicitor always advises changing the locks when buying a house so we got a locksmith to meet us at the house.

The locksmith started changing the locks when we noticed there was furniture left in the house that wasn't on the list of stuff to be left. We phoned our solicitor who contacted the sellers agent.

We didn't need to be out our old house until 2pm so we went for a coffee to calm down When we got back to the house our solicitor, the agent and seller were there. Apparently she tried to use her key only we changed the locks.

She was convinced that it was reasonable to leave her furniture in the house until Saturday when her dad had a van. Luckily our solicitor mentioned that she was in breech of the sales contract and needed to be out immediately. Her agent had to find removers to move her furniture out asap as the breech clause was 1% of selling price plus had a sliding scale for any delays/issues with us moving in due to the seller.

Luckily she moved her stuff within about an hour and we got our stuff out of our old house before 2pm.

We weren't able to clean the house before unloading our stuff because of this so our solicitor charged her agent for professional cleaners who came the next day.

So its worth checking with your solicitor.

Had similar experience. Completion at 1 o'clock, agreed by all parties. OH gets to his new house only to find it was still full of ex owners furniture, toys and bags and bags of rubbish. Called estate agents who said that ex owner had booked a removal van but it was too small to take everything and they intended to come back for the rest the following day. Called conveyancing solicitors who immediately got in touch with ex owners solicitors and told them that a charge of £50 per hour storage would be levied until their stuff was removed because the property now legally belonged to us. Within 1 hour, a very disgruntled couple turned up to shove their stuff into an old van. Their parting shot was that they'd "given us a bargain" and it "wouldn't have killed us to hang on to stuff for a bit longer". When we went up into the loft space, a few weeks later, we found that full of bags of crap too. We didn't give them the option of collecting that.

We had similar when we moved into the house we're in now.

Our lawyers had kept a portion of the sale back (can't remember what it's legally called) and we ended up with £6000 back.

how disgusting.

and yes, completion means it is no longer yours and you and all your crap need to be gone. Sue them for costs. (This is why I never understand how simultaneous exchange and completion can possibly work, you don't know you are going until you have exchange and then you have to arrange removals, address changes, post forwarding)

I do suggest paying for a physical clean rather than a ritual one though!!

also print out a load of 'not known at this address, return to sender' stickers and pile all their post back into the postbox unopened.

It's stuff like this that just pushes the stress levels out the roof when moving. When we moved into our previous home, we spent 2 whole days and dozens of bottles of bleach cleaning what the former owner left behind (manky bitch!). She then turned up pissed at 8.30pm on the Sunday night and tried to use a key she had kept back to "see what we had done to her house!". Hubby, MIL, mum and I had to be held back from physically throwing her out and FIL ushered her out. Brand new UPVC door arrived at 9am the next day.....Years later, her mother walked past my hubby as he was washing the car and starting giving him abuse for "wrecking" her daughters house....by replacing the windows and doors and getting the gardens landscaped. Again, hubby sent her away with a few choice words and some more colourful ones. Assholes!

We had entry time delayed - meant taking a second day off work, at least the flat was more or less empty when we arrived, and a note to say "sorry" they hadn't had time to clean up. but moving IS a nightmare for everyone really.

This is craaazzzzyyy! Was this a 'forced sale' (i.e. pre-foreclosure, bank repo, or auction sale) or were these people tenants?

We had a problem in having the house clear at 2pm when we sold our first house. The house we were moving to was empty and seller living elsewhere, but seller wouldn't let estate agent hand over the keys (even though we had exchanged etc a week before) until completion, which ended up being delayed until 3pm. We had accidentally got a removal company whose van couldn't fit all our stuff in in one journey. They had it all packed for first load at 10am and then we sat around until 3pm despite begging to be allowed to leave the first load in the house and get on with re-packing. In the end we didn't get out until 5.30 pm and our poor buyers didn't get to move till the next day :( BUT we did leave it sparkling clean, with a bottle of wine on the work surface for them.

What a nightmare!

What did you say in response to their moaning that you had no right to be in their home? As it was clearly your home at that point & had been for two hours? I'd have struggled to keep it polite I'm sure!

Definitely have your solicitors contact theirs re: breach of contract. I also second forwarding an invoice for the skip hire & cleaning costs to their solicitor.

Why on earth do people not understand that houses are supposed to be empty by completion? Do solicitors not explain their legal obligations to people? The normal thing is to have everything loaded in to a van waiting for a phone call to go and pick up the keys to your new place isn't it?

Did they give you a key when they left, because I'm sure they had one if they were planning to come back at their leisure for their dogs & other belongings?

Last time we sold a house, we took two keys to the EA on the morning of completion & left the third one on the kitchen side as we left for the last time.

Don't let this spoil your enjoyment of your new home though - that would be placing too much importance on these inconsiderate idiots.

What utter barstewards.

We managed to avoid a similar situation.

The people we were buying from messed us about so much during the purchase. I did not trust them. They refused to exchange on the day as they still had not found any where to go. We had to delay exchange and completion by 8 weeks, I was 30 weeks pg with DC 2.

The couple buying our house were getting married and I did not want to mess them about, so we had to put all our stuff in storage and live with family whilst waiting to exchange and complete.

On completion day, I felt that they would still mess us about. So I booked the removal men for two days later. Good thing we did, they did not move out till 10pm that night. I spent two days cleaning and then moved in.

Hate moving house!

In defence now estate agents have offered to cover all costs for skips, clean up etc and then they will pursue vendors. That takes a huge part of the stress off for us and we are just getting on - stripping wall paper and destroying cupboards has been very therapeutic today!

We simultaneously exchanged and completed but this was OK as we still owned our old home. We had both houses for about 6 weeks which made moving in slowly over a few days possible. Also the people from our new house had moved out two days before into a rental bungalow.

Don't know what they would have done if we had pulled out at the last minute! They did however leave an old shed full of bits of wood and old windows and the house wasn't very clean.

Our buyers asked for a final look around before exchange and by then the house was empty and clean and empty apart from two tins of paint in the garage (left for them to touch up the fences and walls)

Glad the estate agents are paying and you are less stressed now. Enjoy making the house yours and yes to binning their post