To feel sad feeling after this house viewing?

[RainbowsAndCrystals]

Empty for years and still had the items in from the previous owner .. shoes, teddy bears, scrapbooks full of newspaper cuttings. Even an old highchair.

I just got a sad feeling about the place, like something bad happened there.

Aibu? Or has anyone else had a sad/error feeling about a place?

If you have been in position of having to sell your much loved childhood Home to pay nursing home fees, perhaps you might understand all the pain and heartache many families have to face.

You sound like you feel people are being judgmental on this thread?

No one is doing that.

There was one for sale near us last year a friend went round. It was an old couple, one had died and the other had gone into a home. There was still books either side of the bed with bookmarks in part way though, and generally there was a feel of they had just popped out to the shops, but also the house felt empty.

Apparently neighbours had said there were adult children, but they lived a long way away from our town, they had moved the surviving parent to a care home near them, and frankly didn't have the time to come dress the house for sale before it went on the market. Assume they did before it sold.

A little different but we went to see a immaculate house once. It belonged to a child minder and all the little toddlers were all sitting round a table doing hand printing. It was such a happy lace. The EA told us that the she had gone off with another woman and the house has to be sold. I felt so bad for that lady who was losing everything through no fault of her own. Still think about her to this day.

Her dh had gone off obviously...

My last house was a bit like that. The woman had been there around 60 years. She ended up living in a couple of rooms downstairs and the rest was closed off. The two rooms where she lived had all her stuff - flannel neatly on the sink, ashtray on the arm of her chair. She had fallen, been taken to hospital and went from there to care home and the house was being sold around a year later.

We made a happy home of it. Lived there 12 years,

We recently thought about looking at this house, it looks like it's been left quickly, shame as it's a lovely house.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-60472282.html

A friend of mine bought a house the lady had died in the bedroom....no family so house was being donated to a dog and cat charity. In the bedroom someone had hung a magic tree air freshener on the wall (presumably to deal with any odour)

In the shed was gorgeous pieces of hand painted pottery that the owner had clearly enjoyed doing. My friend kept some of the pieces in their garden as was such a shame to throw away

I just don't understand why whoever has put the house on the market would not tidy out some of the more personal stuff. I was looking at a house on line and it made me cry. It was a little bungalow, clearly lived in by an old person, now dead or gone to a care home. Their things were everywhere, the walking frame parked beside the armchair by the fire, the commode thing by the lavatory etc. I just thought what sort of estate agent takes photos like that? Would they not just move stuff like the walker out into the shed while taking the photos?

Diyhater that's a bloody lovely house and it doesn't look too personal. You should have a look!

There was a house like this near my parents, tucked away down a lane in the middle of nowhere. The same family had lived there for generations and by all accounts were nice people, but the son was a bad lot. Various scandals and tragedies ensued at his hands, which I won't go into because some actually made national news. Anyway he did a moonlight flit before getting arrested, and left the house. I used to give myself the shits by going in to explore as a child. It was like the Mary Celeste - there was a school book open in a child's bedroom, with some French homework half done. Birthday cards up on the mantelpiece. A lovely piano, beds all made etc. It's still there, but the windows got smashed in winter storms and eventually the top floor fell in, but it's all still there, entombed. God knows what they'll end up doing with it. Nobody who knew the history would dream of living there. I wouldn't, and living in a house where people have died wouldn't bother me usually. But that house has the worst atmosphere

We went to look round a Victorian semi in need of some updating. I can’t remember if owner had died or had to go into a care Home. But I teared up when I saw a faded photo of a dashing young man in uniform still framed on a doily next to the bed.

We went round a house once which had been somewhat cleared, but there was food and kitchen things in the larder and a notecard on the mantlepiece that said something like are you all right Aunie Em because we haven't heard from you for ages.. it was so sad.

This is such a poignant thread. I am surprised that so many of us have had similar experiences.

FrancisCrawford we’re clearing out my Mum’s house and it’s breaking my heart. It was my childhood home and I’ve hated having to throw most of Mum’s things out but I couldn’t leave them for other people to look at and comment on and then bin. I stood on the drive looking at the skip and crying because that’s what Mum’s life had come to.

I can understand why some families can’t face doing it.

Yep Op. dead wonder with his milk left out from making tea and gutter stop cheap developers/ landlords skulking around eyeballing us.

An hour later we put in an offer £30k over asking price and it was the lowest they received.

My son bought a flat which just had furniture left in it, other things had been cleared. But under the chair were papers, and there was a detailed diary where the lady had described every bit of the weather as each day went by, almost hourly.
She had been a teacher but pretty much housebound and it was so sad to think of her writing about the weather as she looked out of the window, obviously wanting to keep her mind alive and to have an interest. It choked me up and I will never for get it.

(The lowest they'd received within the hour i mean- they'd had 7)

A lovely old chap a few doors down from me died a few years ago. A few months later skip after skip was filled with the contents of his house/life, including stuff that obviously belonged to either his children or himself as a child. My very non-sentimental, chuck-it-all-in-the-bin type husband came back almost in tears after finding this old stieff-style bear abandoned and unloved. He is now very well cared for and loved in our home. Made me really sad though that someones life just ends up in a skip.

Diyhater that doesn't look hastily left at all! It's gorgeous

There's a house in my DPs street (bungalows, 20 years old), where the lady owner was murdered by her son a couple of years ago at Christmas. The son is in prison but is appealing his conviction so her estate is on hold.

Sadly, the house has sat for 2 years with its Christmas decorations still up, including lots of happy, festive stickers on the windows. The drive is overgrown and empty and the lights are never on. It's never been fully ascertained that she was killed in the house, but it's more than likely that she was.

My grandmother's house was a terrace spanning three floors. She died in 1994, when I was 12, but she hadn't been able to manage the stairs for a good decade before her death. Unbeknown to me, my mum kept her house (I always just assumed it had been sold.)

After it passed to me after both my parents died I went upstairs and it was really, really weird, as no one had been in the house for fifteen years anyway but no one had been upstairs since the 1980s. It was like a timewarp.

When house viewing this year we saw two which were being sold by family after the owner had died. One had washing in the washing machine. All personal things, clothes, everything still in the house. The other had been cleared of personal things and just had furniture and bits left. It was definitely strange visiting the first house.

Oh that is creepy dot!

I bought a house where the elderly owner had died.

On completion I walked in and everything was still there. Sheets in the cupboard, cups, plates, furniture, the lot. Turns out the family just couldn’t face clearing the house.

As it was iit was my first house, i’d spent every last penny on it. I’d been planning to sleep/sit/eat on the floor until I’d saved up. So I was incredibly grateful to have a bed and a sofa. Some of her stuff was lovely and very much to my taste, and I still have it now, a couple of throws and a few ornaments. I always think of her when I see them.

I’m an estate agent and this is very common. It’s so sad seeing someone’s life just left for people to poke through. It’s the calendars that get me, you always know when they died by the month/year on their calendars 😢

That's so true teenie