What a lovely, sad, beautiful thread. I've been teary-eyed throughout, but then @Vanguard put me right over the edge.
The stories of beloved homes and things just being thrown away break my heart, but I've been crying tears of joy at the stories of people using and keeping and loving the left-behind things. I think their previous owners would be very happy to know their items were useful and loved again.
We were told by our agent that the seller had two identical offers, but they chose ours specifically because we planned to live here full time and love the place as our permanent home, while the other offer only wanted a getaway type place.
Actually, I think the story of my current house fits into this thread. This could be a bit outing, as if you know this area then you probably know the property, but there aren't too many people who'll fit that bill anyway, so here goes.
Our current house is VERY rural. As rural as you can get, I imagine. We learned through the agents that it had belonged to the seller's (almost elderly?) now deceased parents, who had used it as a weekend retreat every single weekend, and had been working toward moving here full time. However, before they could finish it completely, they both passed away, rather suddenly, within a few months of each other, leaving it in a half-remodeled state. They had saved for years to acquire it, had worked very hard on it with their own hands, and had loved it very much.
After they passed, the house and land were left abandoned for a few years, and vandals had squatted in the house and really torn it apart. They stole everything except the toilet - all the cupboards and worktops, all of the bloody flooring, the radiators, the wires and pipes out of the walls, the water heating system (whatever it had been...), and even the front door, I mean everything, and it appears they may have burned the furniture for firewood as well - and damaged everything else, and then left it, quite literally, a fly tip. The house is structurally VERY sound, yet everything on the surface is quite weather worn and run down. The entire property outdoors was wildly overgrown and had been taken over by ugly weeds and vines and such (I'm learning plants still, forgive me!), but we could tell underneath, as soon as we'd cut things back, that it had once been very beautiful and very well cared for.
We spoke to a 'neighbour' (word used loosely here, haha) who knew the previous owners, and he - this very tough, very stoic and stiff upper lip, hard as nails, ex forces, life-long farmer and hunter type - actually got a tear in his eye when he spoke of what happened, how the previous owners had left and not returned so abruptly, and how awful it was what had happened to the place after. Everyone we've spoken to, in fact, has thanked us profusely for taking the property and making it right again.
Though the house looked quite terrifying when we first entered, given the amount of work it will (still!) take to get it back to good, but there was never any feeling of sadness about it to us. In fact, the overall feeling here is quite happy and carefree, safe and cosy, and very much a feeling of home, and we both fell head over heels in love with the place from the instant we laid eyes on it.
However, it sat here unsold and abandoned for years though it was going for a shockingly low price, even considering the work needed, so I imagine it likely DID have that terrible feeling to the many previous viewers who maybe weren't right for it...
(Right, sorry for the long post! I have really got to stop doing that!)