Bought a new house and the old owners didn't think they had to move out!

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So today we went to complete on our new house, very excited and all packed ready to go. We got a call from our solicitor to say it was completed and we left to go to our new home, with all of our things. Stopped off at the estate agents, got the keys, everything fine.

We get there, go to the front door, put the key in and have a massive shock to find the previous owners sitting in the lounge. We asked who they were and they introduced themselves as the previous owners. They hadn't even packed one box!! DH asks them why they are still in OUR house and they inform us that they decided not to move out until Sunday!? We pointed out that we had all of our things in a van outside with our 2 month old baby and DH politely asked them to leave to which they replied it would be too inconvenient for them to leave today!

We ended up threatening to call the police as we legally owned the house and now had nowhere to go, so they said they would leave in an hour but acted as if we were being very unreasonable. We had to get all of our helpers to help them pack and they ended up leaving 5 hours later.

I'm also quite pissed off with the agent as surely they should make sure these situations don't happen.

And I wasn't aware that you could specify a time to complete. It's not a process that's client-led. Completion happens when all the legal/banking bods are synchronised and give the go-ahead. If they pissed about with that because one of the buyers in the chain hadn't got their act together with packing their stuff (norovirus or whatever), there'd be chaos.

We packed up at our old house, cleaned everywhere and left a bottle of wine with all the instruction manuals for the boiler etc, takeaway menus and a note with bin days etc. We then drove to our new house, to find the vendor faffing about trying to pack boxes.
She then tells us that there is a problem with the funds for her new property, her solicitor had messed up and she was £2k short. The property was a new-build and the Developers were refusing to give her the keys until they had all the money. She announces that because of this she probably won't be moving today, so we may need a hotel!
My husband had to calmly explain that she had our money, so the house was now ours and we would be moving in. In the end her solicitor sorted the money and she got her keys, we did let her leave a load of stuff in the garage overnight as she ran out of time to move everything.
She left the house dirty, didn't tell us about the strange heating/hot water controls or the massive wasp's nest in the garden, fortunately we spotted it before letting out 2yr old play in the garden

That happened when my parents bought their new house. All exchanged and they arrived to find the previous owners still packing boxes. They had to wait a whole day for them to move all their stuff. Luckily my parents had been renting so they could buy quickly and they had another few weeks left on the rental so just went back and came back the next day - they were in their mid 70s so didn't want to wait around for hours either.

The estate agent didn't do a thing and the lawyers were useless too. They left the house in a complete mess with rubbish everywhere and we all spent the first couple of weeks cleaning and swearing about how disgusting they were.

You should have billed them for your helpers time if you helped them pack! People get paid lots to pack up movers.

This happened to us too. We completed and I picked up the keys - we weren't actually moving in straight away but we just wanted to go and run around our brand new home. Turned up to find the previous owners still there in their dressing gowns, no sign of a removal van and they were allegedly going to leave "after they'd had showers."

We'd taken on all the bills etc from that day, so we were effectively paying for those blinking showers.

We gave them an hour before we came back. To be fair they had left by then - left a tip behind them - but I couldn't believe people would actually do such things. Never even entered my head to mention solicitors police etc, I was too gobsmacked.

That's bonkers. Also marypoppins that's a bit risky isn't it? If thy don't want to move until 3 days later, just complete 3 days later. You're fully financially liable for anything that happens to the property once youve completed. Small risk but why take it?

This thread is amazing! Who knew!?

This totally DOES happen.

When we bought our current house the ex homeowners were still packing and moving a five bed house in one small car, so they would load up and drive to the new place to unload etc....

We exchanged about 10.30, but didn't get rid of them until after 2pm..I was so mad and it did taint our new home, but i am over it now. We still get mail for them 5 years later

I got mad after about 1pm and started chucking stuff outside in the garden and bring our stuff in

When I bought this place the vendors vendor was a total arsehole. They delayed everything for everyone. Luckily it was only a chain of three, but that was bad enough.

They refused a second viewing until our vendors withdrew their offer, refused to discuss completion etc and on the day of completion caused chaos. I had agreed to pick up the keys from the vendors at the house as they were (obviously) moving out that day but we werent moving in until the next day and all were happy with that rather than having to factor in a journey to solicitors etc. I get there to find a full van outside and the family inside, freezing cold as he had turned the heating off 2 days earlier , waiting on their vendor. They had been up to their new house to get the keys and the vendor hadnt packed a single thing, they were refusing to do so until every penny was in their account. Only when there was confirmation of that did they deign to actually pack things, their removal people were there and were apparently even more confused and pissed off than my vendors were. My vendors had stayed in what was by now my home, because they had nowhere else to go! This was at 12ish, the time we had been advised that all monies should have been transferred, and they had.

Finally, at 6pm after getting solicitors involved with threats to put them out on the street, their vendors handed over the keys. At this point mine had been discussing whether to go to a hotel nearby or go further away to relatives. The husband didnt seem too bothered but the wife and kids were really upset, poor things :(

Weirdest bit for me was when I said that it was stupid to sit in the cold and went to put the heating on, bearing in mind it was now MY house. Husband got very stroppy and said that he had turned it off so that there was a "clean break" between them moving out and me moving in, presumably he thought I was going to use the gas in his name. But we had already done and agreed the meter readings, so not sure what his problem was. I turned it on anyway and his wife was very apologetic.

The wife ended up working with my mum a few months later and their vendors had continued to be a PITA ever since, including but not limited to the wife turning up to do some gardening in "her" garden and going barmy at them for removing some of "her" plants!

Surely what you do is get the removal men there first thing, pack the house onto the van(s), clean the house behind the men - no matter how clean a house looks, there's all the dirt that lives behind furniture etc, then go to the pub/KFC/wherever for a couple of hours until you get the call that keys are ready to be picked up?

When I bought this place the vendors vendor was a total arsehole. They delayed everything for everyone. Luckily it was only a chain of three, but that was bad enough.

They refused a second viewing until our vendors withdrew their offer, refused to discuss completion etc and on the day of completion caused chaos. I had agreed to pick up the keys from the vendors at the house as they were (obviously) moving out that day but we werent moving in until the next day and all were happy with that rather than having to factor in a journey to solicitors etc. I get there to find a full van outside and the family inside, freezing cold as he had turned the heating off 2 days earlier , waiting on their vendor. They had been up to their new house to get the keys and the vendor hadnt packed a single thing, they were refusing to do so until every penny was in their account. Only when there was confirmation of that did they deign to actually pack things, their removal people were there and were apparently even more confused and pissed off than my vendors were. My vendors had stayed in what was by now my home, because they had nowhere else to go! This was at 12ish, the time we had been advised that all monies should have been transferred, and they had.

Finally, at 6pm after getting solicitors involved with threats to put them out on the street, their vendors handed over the keys. At this point mine had been discussing whether to go to a hotel nearby or go further away to relatives. The husband didnt seem too bothered but the wife and kids were really upset, poor things :(

Weirdest bit for me was when I said that it was stupid to sit in the cold and went to put the heating on, bearing in mind it was now MY house. Husband got very stroppy and said that he had turned it off so that there was a "clean break" between them moving out and me moving in, presumably he thought I was going to use the gas in his name. But we had already done and agreed the meter readings, so not sure what his problem was. I turned it on anyway and his wife was very apologetic.

The wife ended up working with my mum a few months later and their vendors had continued to be a PITA ever since, including but not limited to the wife turning up to do some gardening in "her" garden and going barmy at them for removing some of "her" plants!

This totally DOES happen.

When we bought our current house the ex homeowners were still packing and moving a five bed house in one small car, so they would load up and drive to the new place to unload etc....

We exchanged about 10.30, but didn't get rid of them until after 2pm..I was so mad and it did taint our new home, but i am over it now. We still get mail for them 5 years later

I got mad after about 1pm and started chucking stuff outside in the garden and bring our stuff in

This totally DOES happen.

When we bought our current house the ex homeowners were still packing and moving a five bed house in one small car, so they would load up and drive to the new place to unload etc....

We exchanged about 10.30, but didn't get rid of them until after 2pm..I was so mad and it did taint our new home, but i am over it now. We still get mail for them 5 years later

I got mad after about 1pm and started chucking stuff outside in the garden and bring our stuff in

tiigytape I have always been the same, the thought of trying to do it all in a day or two before just horrifies me. I like to be super organised. We had professional packers once because DH's company were paying for us to relocate. They said 'don't worry about a thing, we will just send in a team the day before to pack and then they'll come back on moving day to load up.' I decided to hang up my Control Freak pants for once and put my trust in them, as someone else was paying.

NEVER again. It was a nightmare. I couldn't find anything for months. The big things were obvious but the small things I would find months later just randomly stuffed inside non-related larger items but there was no master list of what had been put where. Things like scissors in a shoe for example - just totally random. There was no effort to group like things together, if it was in the same room it went into the same boxes but in no particular order.

And just because something came out of the lounge in one house doesn't necessarily mean I wanted it in the lounge in the next house IYSWIM, so trying to get everything unpacked and into the right room at the other end was worse than if I'd just sorted and packed and labelled it all myself in the first place.

I have a few disorganised friends who have still been packing on the morning their van arrives and it has been chaos. Removal men must see this all the time and get really cheesed off with it. They end up literally flinging loose bits of stuff into the van or struggling with overflowing, splitting black bin bags.

Surely what you do is get the removal men there first thing, pack the house onto the van(s), clean the house behind the men - no matter how clean a house looks, there's all the dirt that lives behind furniture etc, then go to the pub/KFC/wherever for a couple of hours until you get the call that keys are ready to be picked up?

This totally DOES happen.

When we bought our current house the ex homeowners were still packing and moving a five bed house in one small car, so they would load up and drive to the new place to unload etc....

We exchanged about 10.30, but didn't get rid of them until after 2pm..I was so mad and it did taint our new home, but i am over it now. We still get mail for them 5 years later

I got mad after about 1pm and started chucking stuff outside in the garden and bring our stuff in

What the actual frig? Who thinks that they can live in a house that they no longer own?

Happened to us, too. EAs were late handing over the keys because the previous owners still hadn't vacated, so we assumed that meant that when we did get they keys, they would have pissed off. As if.

The couple selling the house had divorced and the wife had cleared out her stuff, but the husband had come back to take his stuff and was taking his own sweet time about it. He seemed to be mostly showing the OW his new girlfriend round the wonderful things he'd done to the house - he'd spent years and a ton of money adding lots of massively tacky, fake period features to a house from which he'd stripped out all the real period features. His OW girlfriend kept inviting me to admire all the wonderful details he'd added, which we were going to bin as soon as we got them out of the house. No sense at all that they should have left hours before. Luckily, we were renting and not moving most of our stuff in until the following day, but we still wanted them out so we could enjoy our new house and start dealing with the tat. They went a few hours later.

Happened to us, too. EAs were late handing over the keys because the previous owners still hadn't vacated, so we assumed that meant that when we did get they keys, they would have pissed off. As if.

The couple selling the house had divorced and the wife had cleared out her stuff, but the husband had come back to take his stuff and was taking his own sweet time about it. He seemed to be mostly showing the OW his new girlfriend round the wonderful things he'd done to the house - he'd spent years and a ton of money adding lots of massively tacky, fake period features to a house from which he'd stripped out all the real period features. His OW girlfriend kept inviting me to admire all the wonderful details he'd added, which we were going to bin as soon as we got them out of the house. No sense at all that they should have left hours before. Luckily, we were renting and not moving most of our stuff in until the following day, but we still wanted them out so we could enjoy our new house and start dealing with the tat. They went a few hours later.

The people we bought from were fairly hopeless. The estate agents helped them to pack in desperation as they didn't seem able to sort themselves out. They didn't even know how to get hold of cardboard boxes

They left a few things behind which we kept for ages. After about 8 years, their son came round to claim one of them and was put out that we no longer had it. They did manage to move out on the correct day, although the house was filthy. I do wonder how such people actually get through life.

An ex-colleague of mine bought a lovely house. After about 3 months, they had a phone call from the previous owners saying that they hadn't settled into their new home and would like to buy the old one back. Sadly they had to be disappointed.

Not entirely relevant, but:

When we came to look round this place with our Landlord (who'd recently bought the property) it transpired it was the first time he'd actually been inside! It was ok but the carpets we're filthy (luckily there was work needed in one room which necessitated a new carpet, so he just told us to go ahead and replace all of them) and the kitchen - yuck! It took me and a friend a good few afternoons scrubbing it down - the units were a different colour completely by the time we'd finished! Obviously the guy who'd lived there previously had fried everything and never cleaned.

But all these stories remind me of the time DP and I helped a friend move. We went to hers fairly early, expecting everything to be boxed up ready to throw into the van DP had borrowed from work, drive the four hours to her new place, unpack, have a late lunch then drive back. We got there to find she'd not packed a thing. Luckily it was only a small, two-bed place so there wasn't too much to do but it did still take a few hours,esp as she would just stand around dithering. I did, at one point, yell at her to go and pack the bathroom up which, to give her her due, she did but she really shouldn't have had to be told. We did eventually get everything to her new flat but it was far later than she'd anticipated.

We moved into rented when we sold our old house - packed and left by 10am, and then the frigging solicitors pissed about until 4pm about money transfer, meaning we couldn't sign for the rented house. Our removal men were fab - they were parked outside the rented house from 11am and when we called them at 4.30 to say we were coming with the keys, they started unloading onto the drive. They had to call in a couple of extra staff to get the job done by 7pm and they all left with a fat tip from us for being amazing.

We then bought our current house and paid an extra two months on the rented place to make sure we had time to clean, decorate and put carpets down - well worth the money as moving day was then a piece of piss (apart from me being 7 and a half months pregnant....)

I must admit, when I sold my first house (never having been in a chain before) I asked the estate agents when I had to be out.... I hadn't realised how the process worked in my defence, I was 20 and hundreds of miles away from my family, and just a bit clueless! luckily I got organised and it went without a hitch but I got a bit of a shock when they explained immediately! Xx