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?

Very few of the houses we've looked at seem to have a happy origin. Death, divorce, and re-possession. The "happiest" stories we've seen are "elderly widow selling their long-term house to [reluctantly] downsize to something more manageable and closer to relatives".

I used to pass the carl brigdewater house every day. Watched it slowly fall into neglect.

I was only a child but always thought it looked bereft. An awful thing had happened and now nobody wanted it any more. It just looked so lonely and unloved.

I wished I could buy it and bring it happiness again. It was demolished in the end.

One that has always stuck in my mind was a old lady who was seriously ill and given weeks to live and was in a nursing home waiting to die. Her daughter put her house on the market and had her house cleared by a local auction mart.

We found a buyer for her house and just before the sale went through she had a miraculous recovery. The sale was put on hold and a few weeks later she left the nursing home. She didn’t have a stick of furniture or piece of clothing left. It was awful 😢

This thread is so sad

I've got a non sad story.
We bought our place from the family of an elderly couple who had died. When we viewed it, it had a happy feeling and we loved it instantly. It was the only one we viewed.
The family dressed the house with rugs and lamps which they left for us (some of it useful).
It was spotlessly clean and perfectly maintained, although outdated.
The family had left a card saying that it had been a family home to them for over 50 years and were very happy here, and they hoped we could be just as happy and make it a family home.
It's been 3 years now and I still love the feeling of the property.
It's also set to become a family home next year with the arrival of our first child.

I can understand family struggling with it, but my point is, this is the estate agent's job.

Just from the tiny sample on this thread almost everyone has said they just wanted to leave the house quickly, or it felt so sad, so they didn't consider putting an offer in.

As said upthread A few hours with a roll of bin bags and it’ll be as good as new! - I can understand family not wanting to / not being able to / or where there is no family, but why the Estate Agents don't employ a cleaning / house clearance type firm {with vendor's permission obviously}. More cleaners really - you can see past beds and wardrobes, but someone clearing out food, a dirty mug, a pair of slipper, and flannels and shampoo from the bathroom would make a considerable difference.
Why wouldn't they suggest that to the vendors Teeniefae ?

Mil went into a home recently. She left washing in the machine, plates in the sink. Her bedroom looked like she was about to go back in. Oddly, the people who've bought the house have requested we leave several ornaments. Furniture I understand, ornaments strikes me as strange.

This thread has made me think.
I have no dc and no sibling.
DH isn’t very close to his family.
I wonder if there is anything we can do now to stop this happening.
Or to say that all of our stuff should be given to the food bank or the Salvation Army.

It makes you wonder,doesn't it?

Hundreds of thousands of houses across the country, full of things that people have worked hard to buy, to make their house nice, things they've loved and cherished, and in the end nobody really wants any of it.

This is a bit different, but related. We used to live in Paris and were moving back to UK. DD1 has to go back early with her Dad to start school - she wasn't coming back to Paris at all. I don't think this had occurred to her at all - I went into her room after she had left and it was as if she had just gone out shopping or to go to school. There was a half done drawing on her desk, a half cup of tea, clothes hanging out of her drawers and her pyjamas left on her pillow. I absolutely howled.

We views a house many years ago and I just had a horrible feeling from the moment I went in. Even worse on the kitchen. Later mentioned it to a friend who was local and she said ‘oh that’s the murder house!’ Someone had been murdered in the kitchen. Didn’t buy it and it was still on the market for a long time later. This was in a highly sought after area where houses normally go in days.
Not the same thing but still a sad feeling,

Jock I viewed a murder house too! Where the husband had murdered the wife in the kitchen

Not a death but we were shown round a house by a slightly frail seeming woman in her 30s probably a divorce situation. The house was fairly empty but behind several doors, presumably attempted to be hidden, was a bottle of vodka.

This is a very sad thread. on a similar theme I looked up my childhood home last night and saw that it have been divided into flats. The original sash windows and shutters that my Dad had spent weekends repairing and making lovely again after years of neglect ripped out. All the hard work my parents had put in over years gone to make bland non-descript flats.

@BackforGood most vendors and executors do take our advice on board to clear a house for putting it on the market but some don’t. If there is money in the executry then we can ask for funds to pay for cleaners/removal companies to clear it. Unfortunately we can’t force the executors to allow it, many just want to bury their heads in the sand.

I've bought stuff from house clearance auctions in the past to sell on. One lot was obviously an old lady's sewing kit, it also contained her glasses. There was one item in it that covered what I paid for the lot and I've kept and used everything else myself because it was so sad.

We bought a house from a widower, who had lost his (30 years younger) wife a few months previously. He said how happy he was, and his wife would have been, that the house would have a family with Children again. A few weeks later I noticed on the floor in the garage “Rob loves Hannah”, which must have been marked in when the concrete was still wet.

The irony is that this house was nothing but sadness for us as a family, we experienced the near-collapse of my husband’s business, the death of our second daughter and my complete nervous breakdown. We sold it for a loss and have never looked back.

When we were house-hunting a couple of years ago, we saw a beautiful house. It looked as if the family had just gone out for the day - the little girl’s room was full of teddies, toys and books, the teenage boy’s room was all posters and guitars. And in the main bedroom, the bed was neatly made and the mother’s dressing gown was hanging on the back of the door. The estate agent told us that the mother had died and the children had gone to live with relatives. It was so sad. I still think about the children and whether they realised they wouldn’t be coming back to their home, and if they managed to grab a few keepsakes before the house was finally cleared out and sold. It was a lovely house but I’d have felt so guilty living there.

Sorry, slightly OT, but it made me think of the “vibe” you get when you see a property.

I went to view a gorgeous gracious old house. FiL told me it was owned by an unmarried elderly lady who had been a gynaecologist at the local hospital.

When the estate agent showed me around it was obviously quite neglected: windowsills covered in dead flies and mould covered plates in the kitchen. Then we went to look in the back sitting room and the agent would only open the door a foot or so for me to look in.

Because the old lady was lying in bed there, groaning and completely out of it and apparently awaiting a place in a nursing home!

Then we went upstairs: four lovely big bedrooms and one really poky one, kitted out like a hospital room with a hospital bed and such a terrible feeling of sadness. And I really didn't want to know what sort of treatment had gone on in that room. The thought of one of my babies sleeping there made me feel cold all over.

Gorgeous house, but I wouldn't have touched with a barge pole.

Is anyone else having a little cry at this thread?

Ffs, I haven’t got a tissue. Curse you OP! (not really)

Oh Christ Tinkly. That’s appalling.

The house I bought belonged to a woman for over 50 years. When I went to view it things had just been left as if she had just got up and went out. A calendar was up which was months out of date, used plates and cups left on the side. I left and then asked if somebody had died in the property. I was told no one had. But when I bought it and moved in my neighbour took great delight in telling me that the previous owner had died in the living room (where I am sitting now) and that the front door had to be kicked down! Anyway, I have only ever had a good feelings in this house, we completely gutted it so no traces of previous owner and I like to think that it must have been a happy home, the woman lived here for 50 years!

I recently bought a house where the couple had both died (unbeknownst to me at the time) in the house a few years apart and then it was left vacant for a while. (I knew house was being sold by the children, but didn't know the owners had died until we'd gotten so far along the process of buying. I didn't know they had actually died in the house until after I'd moved in and the neighbours told me.)

The house did have a 'feel' about it when we first came to view it. It wasn't 'creepy' but just 'different'. The house was like a time warp from the 70's. There was furniture and a few personal items which the children did clear away before we moved in. They left us a lovely note saying how it was a happy home and they wished us happiness here as well.

I've lived in the house for a few months now. At least two people have died here, but it doesn't bother me and I've had no strange occurrences. I can tell it was a house they loved for decades. I'm doing a lot of remodelling, but they did as well during their time here and I feel they would 'approve' of what we're doing and that we're looking after the house and trying to make it a 'home' again.

Actually Gilly and backforgood an elderly neighbour died and the Bank sold the house just as it was. Food in the cupboards, everything as it was when the old lady went into hospital. Just looked like she has popped out for an hour. The attic was full of stuff. Young couple bought it and had to clear everything out. they sent as much as possible to charity shops but nobody wanted albums full of photos and other personal stuff so they binned it all.